Xiaomi one of the largest smartphone vendors in its homeland - China - and it's one of the most popular Asian mobile brands. It has given the world the popular user-friendly MIUI for Android. But the crown jewel, of course, is their current flagship phone - the Xiaomi Mi 3.
The Xiaomi Mi 3 is the company's best-selling phone to date packing top-notch technology and blazing-fast Android experience. The MIUI launcher feels at home on a Xiaomi phone delivering amazing performance. It is very easy to use and yet hides some powerful functions and services for advanced users.
The Mi 3 has it all - a wonderful unibody design made out of polycarbonate, a 5" IPS display of 1080p resolution, a top-notch Snapdragon 800 chipset with 2GB of RAM, a capable 13MP camera with Full HD video recording, and a massive 3,050 mAh battery for long-lasting smartphone experience.
Sounds great, right? Here comes the complete feature list.
Key features
5" IPS 1080p capacitive touchscreen with 441pi pixel densitDisplay
ing Gorilla Glass 3
Android 4.4.2 KitKat with MIUI v.5
2.3GHz quad-core Krait 400 CPU; 2GB of RAM; Adreno 330 GPU; Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 chipset
13MP camera with dual-LED flash, 1080p video capture
2MP front-facing camera with BSI sensor; wide-angle f/2.0 lens; HDR; 1080p video recording
16/64 GB of built-in memory
Active noise cancellation with a dedicated microphone
3,050mAh battery
Main disadvantages
No LTE
No 4K video recording
Non user-replaceable battery
No wired TV-out connectivity option
No microSD card slot
Sold exclusively online
The implementation of a unibody shell has required some sacrifices though, as in the inability to replace your battery being the most major. The lack of microSD card slot is surely a bummer for some, but this trend seems to be spreading among lots of popular manufacturers lately. The lack of 4K video isn't something we would hold against it, if it wasn't for its flagship status.
Design and build quality
The Xiaomi Mi 3 features a stylish polycarbonate chassis that wraps around the sides of the device a lot like some Nokia Lumia phone do. While this makes the 3050mAh battery inaccessible, the rounded edges mean the device is a pleasure to hold. We've always liked Nokia's choice of materials for its top Lumia models and we are glad to see the polycarbonate working out for another brand.
Xiaomi Mi 3
The rear side finish promises no nasty fingerprint smudges. The pitch black front contributes to the overall classy feeling and is very easy to clean. You can barely see where the IPS display ends and the frame begins.
Xiaomi Mi 3 was designed to look and feel like the flagship device it is. You will easily pick it up when put in whatever lineup of devices no matter it doesn't bet on any iconic elements as some of its competitors. It is likeable and beautiful, thoughtfully designed with usability and style in mind.
Handling the Xiaomi Mi 3
Handling the Xiaomi Mi 3 is as pleasurable as it can get - the polycarbonate unibody is solid and provides great grip thanks to its matte surface. The Mi 3 is just 8mm thin, but its wide footprint doesn't allow you to forget it's in your pocket.
Display
The 5" IPS display Xiaomi Mi 3
Here is the display matrix of the Xiaomi Mi 3 shot from upclose. Taking a closer look at it under our digital microscope reveals a standard RGB arrangement of the sub-pixels that make up the Xiaomi Mi 3 LCD panel, not that we've expected anything else.
The display on the Xiaomi Mi 3 is bright enough at 100% with good contrast and colors. Unfortunately dropping the brightness reduces the contrast and the screen becomes dim very soon, which makes us believe 50% of the brightness scrubber is way below 50% of the actual brightness.
Unfortunately, the brightness of the screen is uneven with the backlight source being pretty visible at the top of the screen. When you have a white page opened on the screen you can easily notice the gradual brightness falloff from top to bottom. On the positive side, that's only visible with a full-on white or gray screen - in any other case it's as good as invisible.
Connectivity
Even though the Xiaomi MI 3 runs on the capable Snapdragon 800 chipset it lacks LTE connectivity. It relies on quad-band GSM connectivity and quad-band 3G connectivity with HSPA support.
The rest of the connectivity features include dual-band Wi-Fi a/b/g/n/ac and Wi-Fi Direct. There is also support for Bluetooth 4.0, GPS and GLONASS, plus an FM radio.
There is NFC connectivity, too, with support for Android Beam for sending files to other Android devices.
There is a microUSB 2.0 port for charging and data connections. Media transfer mode is supported for accessing the phone's built-in memory and microSD card over a USB connection.
There's also USB On-the-go for connecting USB peripherals such as pen drives, keyboards or real USB hard drives.
The microUSB port doesn't have any TV-out functionality, but if you have a compatible HDTV, you can mirror your phone's screen wirelessly via the Miracast protocol.
User interface - MIUI v5 on top of Android 4.4 KitKat
Xiaomi Mi 3 runs on Android 4.4.2 KitKat out of the box skinned with company's proprietary MIUI v5. The MIUI ROMs have been around for quite a while and are fairly popular among the Android community. Xiaomi's customizations run very deep and replace everything including all Google services, but you can get them from the Mi Market.
In fact some regional versions of the Mi 3 come with the Google Services built right in so you don't even need to install them. The Mi 3 review unit we have is for the Chinese market, so there might be differences with other regional versions.
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