Reviewing the chinese Apple: The Mi3

After successfully creating the vibes with it's flash sales; Xiaomi has attained a trend amongst the techies here. It has become a matter of achievement for people when they successfully order a Mi3 through flipkart.

Shipping/Delivery:

Well amongst many a few; I too became an achiever in the 3rd installment of the flash sale. However flipkart took much longer than usual to deliver the product despite opting for the 1 day delivery. Although Fllipkart refunded the additional amount, but they did so as a flipkart wallet balance which can be used only when you order the items sold my WS retail; which I consider to be unprofessional.

Unboxing:

In any case; all my complaints vanished when yesterday (18th August); I opened the flipkart box containing one of the most awaited devices I ever owned. The box was very well packed with bubble wraps which duly protected the Xiaomi mi3 piece inside. Despite the outer flipkart box showed signs of damage; but fortunately the inside packaging was capable to protect the contents.

On removing the bubble wraps, the Mi3 box was neatly laminated. The packing was so good from Xiaomi, that you really felt there is some premium material inside and rightly it was.

  On removing the lamination, the box had all the information which usually describes the  advertising feature of the mobile.

As soon as you open the box; you would see the mi3 piece well placed for the slot cut out for it within the box. Other items packed inside the box are a usb cable; a power adapter charger; warranty card, startup guide and the pin to remove the sim tray.

Mi3 hands-on:

As soon as you hold the mobile; you feel the premium finish of the handset. The edges are carefully tapered with the volume rockers and the power button are located at the right side.

The speaker slots and the usb is located at the bottom while the 3.5 mm jack; Mini-Sim card slot and the mic at the top.

The only flaw I see with the design is that the push buttons for power and volume  though embedded well in the chassis; sometimes feel as if are a bit loose. 

Once you power on the device; you will notice the mi logo at the startup screen and once you configure your device with the basic set of initial questions; like account set-up; wifi- setup and so on , you are now on your home screen. It would be a good idea to have a valid Wi-Fi connection at the time of first-time boot-up so that you can easily configure your device. On observing the notification pane; you would find an update already waiting for a download. It is the MIUI version 23 (stable) which is around 109MB. Apply the download and you have the latest OS running. You may have to re-boot the device once this patch is applied.

Notice that unlike the traditional stock android; you don't have a menu icon; which will take you to your apps. All your apps are available on your home screen. 

Just a tip; if you are looking for better organize your apps; MIUI provides you to create a folder on your screen with which you can group apps of same genre like Fitness, Social Networks etc and pack apps for fitness and Social Network related apps respectively. For this just long press on the icon of an app and move it over the app which you want it to group with. MIUI automatically creates a folder. You can rename the folder name by pressing the folder icon and then tapping on the "folder".

The next step to charge your device. As you would notice; the device will be having around 20-30% battery. It would be good if you do a full charge. This way you will avoid the issues some people are facing when they try to boot their phone with only 4% charge left.

You can now insert the sim by removing the sim slot using the pin. Note that you would have to press the pin a little harder so as the sim slot to pop out.

Setting up GPRS and 3G:

Once you boot up your device again; ensure that you get the internet settings from the service provider. I did get some weird message that airtel is not able to send the internet settings, since mobile does not have it. I called the service center and they asked me to send MO to 54321. This configured the device with the 3G settings.

Proximity Sensor:

Being sensitive on not removing the matt finished screen guard; is a usual tendency we have with new mobiles. I too did not remove it and I noticed that the proximity sensor did not detect that I was away from it and while making calls; the screen remained black despite of moving the handset away from the ear. It was then that it struck me about it and the guard which is covering the proximity sensor as well was causing the screen to not wake up while the call is in progress.

Performance:

In order to test the performance matrix of the device; I downloaded the Antutu benchmark to check the performance number. I was stunned with the results. With the latest MIUI 23 update; the performance numbers were exceedingly beyond expectations.

 

The score reported was 36,376 which is even above the likes of HTC One M8 and Galaxy S5.

Hardware:

As has been much advertised; there is no point repeating it; but just quoting it here again; the device packs a 2.3GHz Quad Core Qualcomm Snapdragon 800B processor alongwith a 2GB RAM which makes all the applications run as smoother as butter. The Qualcomm chipset uses a equally fast Adreno GPU for graphic intensive applications like gaming which is again capable enough of handling high end games like Asphalt8; FIFA etc. The display is a brilliant 1920x1280 Full HD and one can easily get mesmerized with the quality of this IPS display. To add to these great features; it comes with a corning Gorilla Glass 3.

One more feature I noticed with the battery was; it reaches the first 20% within 10-15 minutes. This is a highlighting feature as it can act as a life saver in several situations. The total time the device took for a full charge was somewhere around 1.30-1.45hrs.  

Battery:

On one full charge; the battery should easily last for more than a day and as stated above takes a little over 1 hour for a complete charge.

Camera:

The camera quality is pretty good and for zooming in and out; you need to control through the screen gestures and not the volume rockers (unlike my Sony handset). Although in low light the camera performance is not that great but with moderate lighting the camera does not disappoint. In sunlight; the pics are just marvelous and are upto the mark with any Sony/Canon mid-range camera's (except for the optical zoom obviously). The color brightness, saturation and the contrast are all perfect. When viewed on a Full HD display on a TV or a monitor they pics do not fall out in pixels.

The video recorder too is pretty decent and captures 1080p videos. Since the aperture if f2.2; the camera is capable of clicking pictures at a pretty fast rate.

Could be better:

The device gets pretty much heated up when the wi-fi is "on" and the device is getting charged. Not a major issue; but probably with a software update can be tackled.

When you press the power button once; the screen is supposed to go dark; it does goes dark but it just does so with a flicker; as we have it in TV sets. It would have been nicer; if the screen fades away instead of the instant flicker.  But I guess that would be a feature with the IPS displays.