The device is pretty much what you would expect from a smartphone these days, a rounded rectangle with glass on the front, and a polycarbonate (plastic) back with a matte white finishing. The finishing feels pretty good in the hand actually, and is said to be resistant to fingerprints and grease. On the top left corner of the front sits a “Mi” logo, something normally only found on Xiaomi’s higher end devices.
Holding the phone in hand, you get the feeling of a well-built device. Unlike that of the Redmi devices from Xiaomi. The phone feels well-built with no flexing or creaking at all, and the buttons feel solid as well. In fact, it reminds me a lot of the other similarly well-built polycarbonate devices like the Lumia 920, and iPhone 5C. That is until you take you the SIM tray out though, which does feel a little cheap.
At the front of the device, there is a 5-inch 1080 x 1920 pixels LCD display. It is protected by Corning’s OGS (One Glass Solution) glass. (Which basically means that the touching device is integrated to the protection glass, and there is no space between screen and protection glass.) In my time with it, the display really does look great. Colours are vivid, viewing angles are great, and sunlight legibility is excellent as well. It looks better than the display found on the Nexus 5 actually, and certainly not what you would expect from a S$279 device.
The Mi 4i is powered by a 64-bit Octa-core Snapdragon 615 CPU (four 1.7GHz high powered cores and four 1.1GHz low powered cores) with 2GB of RAM, and an Adreno 405 GPU. For the most part, the phone performs pretty alright. I do see some dropped frames, and minor stutter when playing games like Real Racing 3. But for someone like myself who does not play a lot of games, or install a lot of apps on my phone, I have very little to complain about the performance of the device.
The phone also only comes with 16GB of internal storage with no expandability options, which might be a deal breaker for some. Xiaomi did say that they are considering the feasibility of bringing in the higher capacity model.
Which brings us to the software. The Mi 4i is the first device from Xiaomi that ships with Android Lollipop on top of their own skin MIUI 6. Which was why I was interested in the Mi 4i to begin with. Though MIUI is probably an acquired taste, since not everyone will be a fan of the iOS-esque design language. The UI aside, the OS does bring a lot of useful features, and customisation options along with it. I did see some lag and stutter throughout the UI, which I suspect is down to optimisation in MIUI, and Lollipop. Also, I am not sure how well it will hold up over time when there are more files and data on the phone.
Keeping the device powered, is a 3120 mAh battery. It is actually a pretty impressive feat considering how thin the device is. Using PhoneArena's size comparison tool, you can see how close in size the Mi 4i is compare to the Nexus 5. But despite that, the Mi 4i has a 3120 mAh battery compared to the Nexus 5's 2300 mAh.
In day to day use, the device was able to last me a day of moderate use with ease. That said, I am not a particularly heavy user, so your mileage may vary.
On the rear of the device, you have a single firing speaker. The speaker actually sounds decent and loud enough. Though it sounded a little tinny, and lacking in depth. The main complain I have when it comes to audio is with the soft volume on earphones actually. With the equalizer and Mi Sound enhancer off, the maximum volume is only equivalent to roughly three-quarters on other phones with the same pair of earphones.
Also on the rear, is a 13MP (Sony/Samsung) f/2.0 aperture camera with 5-element lens, and a dual-tone LED flash.
The camera on the Mi 4i is actually not bad. In daylight the camera is easy to utilise, and auto exposure (AE) works well. But when you do need to tweak the AE in auto mode, it employs a similar mechanism as iOS, which is very convenient. The capture speeds are decent, and live HDR mode saves a little bit of time as well. Though HDR mode still looks just a tad unnatural and over-processed, but overall still decent.
(HDR off)
(HDR on)
(100% crop)
(100% crop)
The image quality is decent, but when zoomed in, you can see signs of slightly over-aggressive noise reduction, resulting in slight loss in sharpness, and details. Which is why Xiaomi is pretty smart to limit how much you can zoom into the photos when viewing it in MIUI's default Gallery app.
The camera has a manual mode that allows you to adjust the white balance, focus, shutter speed, and ISO. But you would be better off with Auto mode most of the time, especially at night. In manual mode, the ISO goes up to a maximum of 3200. But in Auto mode, it goes up to over 5000. There is little use in opting for a slower shutter speed since that would likely result in slightly blurry images due to the lack of OIS (unless that is your intention). The trade offs are the amount of grain/noise as seen in the shots here. But for viewing on the high ppi screen of the phone, or on social media, the images still looks decent.
(Manual mode - ISO 100, Exposure 2s)
(Auto mode - ISO 5103, Exposure 1/14s)
(Auto mode - ISO 5103, Exposure 1/14s)
(Auto mode - ISO 3016, Exposure 1/14s)
(Auto mode - ISO 2928, Exposure 1/14s)
Here is the kicker though, while the limited zoom-ability of the Gallery app makes viewing images on the phone a better experience, it also makes it a little hard to spot those slightly blurred images. If you view your photos exclusively on your phone, this is probably not going to concern you much.
Overall, the camera on the Mi 4i definitely punches well above its weight, and I am really just nitpicking here. While the camera hardware is not the best out there, Xiaomi made a lot of good decisions here. The camera is easy to use, and quick to capture images. Image quality, and image processing are not the best in the market, but good enough in most situations. Considering the price of the phone, I am definitely impressed.
Full resolution images for comparison: Xiaomi Mi 4i, 2nd Gen Moto G, Nexus 5
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At S$279, the device is actually similar in pricing compared to the Moto G. But unless you really want stock Android, I do think that at this point the Mi 4i is a better buy. The Mi 4i is well-built, has a great looking display, good battery life, decent specifications, decent camera, and decent performance. It is not just a decent phone for its price. It is a decent phone, period. But again, only if you are okay with using MIUI.
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