Today we are bringing you the review of Xiaomi’s Mi 4i. The phone has a 5 inch HD display, 1.7 GHz Octacore Snapdragon processor, 2 GB RAM, 13 MP and 5 MP back and front camera and 3120 mAh battery. Now when we are done with the basic specifications, let’s start the review.
Build: Mi 4i is a lightweight and compact phone with 130 gm weight and 7.8 mm thickness. It makes it easy to hold the phone despite of it’s big screen. It has a polycarbonate non-removable back cover with matte finishing which enables a good grip. On the right hand side of the phone, we have the volume rocker and the power button. Buttons are made of steel and gives a nice feedback. On the left hand side there is the dual sim tray. 3.5 mm jack and micro USB port are located on the the top and bottom of the phone respectively.
Now coming to the front we have a 5 inch 1080p display built on Sharp panel which is not common in mid-range phones like this one and it looks really good. The display is made by using One Glass solution which helps in keeping the phone slim. Xiaomi is using the display which they call the “Sunlight display” which makes it easy to see the display in bright outdoor conditions. Above the display there is the 5 MP front camera and earpiece along with the Mi logo. Below the screen there are three capacative touch buttons.
Performance and Battery: Xiaomi Mi4i packs Snapdragon 615 SoC with Octacore processor clocked at 1.7 GHz. This chipset allows Mi4i to support 4G on both the SIM card slots. It has Adreno 405 GPU. There is 2GB RAM in this phone but it is largely eaten up by the heavy user interface MIUI. Most of the time only 500-800 MB of RAM is free while on standby. The phone occasionally lags on running apps/ games or running too many apps at a time. Apart from that there is also an issue of overheating. Phone gets really warm when you play heavy games on it in Performance mode as well as while using camera and on running resource intensive apps . Also there is no expandable memory. The internal memory of the phone is 16 GB of which 12.9 GB is available for users. The reason given by Xiaomi for not including a memory card slot is the lack of space on the motherboard and to keep the phone compact.
Despite of a compact form factor, Xiaomi has managed to pack a 3120 mAh battery. The battery lasts almost for an entire day of moderate use which includes surfing the web, couple of hours of phone call, social media use, photography, video streaming etc. The battery gets fully charged in about 3 hours.
Connectivity: On the connectivity front, Mi 4i has dual SIM, dual standby and both of the slots are 4G enabled. Although there are some complaints of call drop and phone restart while on a call. The phone features 802.11 ac WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0, GPS and USB OTG.
Camera: MI 4i has a 13 MP rear camera and 5 MP front camera. Camera quality is pretty good . There is a beautify mode to enhance your selfies as well as plenty of photo filters. In daylight and bright conditions, photos come out brilliant with great deal of details but in indoor and poorly lit conditions, photos have some noise but still you can live with it. The front camera is also good. You can shoot full HD and HD videos on this phone. There is also a feature of slow-motion recording. So overall Mi4i’s camera does a good job.
Conclusion:
Pros:
- Good display
- Dual 4G
- Decent Camera
- compact design
- 3120 mAh battery
- Lollipop
Cons:
- RAM consuming UI
- No expandable memory
- Overheating
