Xiaomi Mi 4i review: A decent performer but not the best from Xiaomi

Xiaomi Mi 4i is another gem from the Chinese smartphone maker. Likewise previous products from the company, the smartphone packs all top-notch features at a marginally lower price point. However, there are some flaws. Lets dig deep to find out how Xiaomi Mi 4i performs.

Design:

Xiaomi Mi 4i easily fits in one hand and feels very light

Xiaomi Mi 4i is the most compact 5 incher in the competition. It is 7.8 mm thin and feels very light with just 130 grams of weight. The smartphone has a non-removable polycarbonate rear panel which goes from edge to edge and has rounded corners. It has a matte finish, which feels good to hold and gives a grip to the overall design. The volume rockers and the power button (made of steel) are placed on the right hand side and offer a good tactile feedback. The dual SIM tray rests at left hand side and both the slots can take 4G SIM cards.

The 3.5mm audio jack is positioned on top edge and the base houses the micro USB charging port that also support USB OTG.

The front is mostly the 5” full HD screen with minimal bezels and three touch capacitive buttons. The top of the display has the light sensor, the 5 MP camera and the earpiece. We must say that Xiomi Mi4i is very well crafted, does not at all feels cheap and can be easily operated with one hand.

Display:

The 5 inch full HD display delivers 441ppi and makes everything look crystal clear and crisp

Xiaomi has integrated a 5-inch full HD IPS display with OGS technology. The display is vibrant and has good viewing angles, which make it easy to use Mi4i in out-door conditions.  The text, icons, images and everything else looks crisp as the display boasts a pixel density of 441ppi. The colours are punchy and we did not notice any significant change in hues on tilting the smartphone.

Moreover the ‘Sunlight Display’ technology by Xiaomi, which dynamically adjusts the contrast levels of the pixels, makes it easy to consume multimedia content in the situation of extreme glare. You can read text messages, watch videos and take pictures in sunlight without any issues. Xiaomi Mi4i has one of the best display in the market in its price bracket.

Performance:

Xiaomi Mi 4i is able to deliver smooth performance but gets heat up frequently

The Xiaomi Mi 4i is backed by a second generation Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 SoC. This is an octa core CPU with four Cortex A53 cores clocked at 1.7GHz and another four cores clocked at 1.1GHz. They work in tandem to deliver performance without putting a stress on the battery. The four cores with 1.7 GHz handles the graphical intensive tasks such as 3D games and full HD video streaming and the other four cores with 1.1 GHz clock frequency is dedicated to basic tasks such as camera, screen navigation, apps loading, etc.

We did not encounter any issues with multitasking as the 2GB RAM handles all tasks with an ease. There were times when more than 15 applications were active in background and there were no significant lags. However, Mi4i heat up frequently during multitasking, gaming and other CPU intensive tasks and unlike the elder brother Mi4, it feels a bit slow in overall performance. There’s a millisecond lag in almost everything you do on the smartphone.

On the software front, the Mi 4i runs the latest Android 5.0 Lollipop with the MIUI 6 skin on top. It is the same UI we have used on Redmi 2 and feels exactly the same.

Storage and battery

Talking about the storage, it is disappointing to not to have a microSD card option when you have 12.9 GB available for actual usage out of 16 GB internal memory. You have to manage all your Play store apps, images, songs, videos in the available storage only. The reason of not integrating a microSD card slot is to accommodate a large battery unit, but sadly the 3120 mAh battery was just able to deliver an average battery back-up. The smartphone lasted for 5 hours 25 minutes in our video playback test which includes a full HD video streaming at Wi-Fi on maximum brightness and volume. In day-to-day usage, the smartphone lasted for 9 hours with 10-15 calls, texting, some gaming, and music playback. It is at par with other smartphones of this price bracket.