[Mi 3 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Kapiljhajhria:
1. Its available outside china. Officially

2. Have you even checked the MIUI stats. Its one of the most widely used custom ROM.

3. even after being closed source it has lots of stuff to customize and mods to flash compared to iOS. There are even custom ROM out for it.

REVIEW for OP

I was scared if the same stuff like you. Me n my sis bought it for my dad. But when the device arrived and i opened the box. I was surprised to see such an awesome device for so low cost. Felt like for once i was not being looted by big companies like samsung htc. I have owned plenty of smartphones. I buy nokia and samsung stuff, always the flagship devices but i know that they are overpriced. This one is not.

I can hardly think of any cons for this device.

16gb storage is a negative point depending on your usage. If you are an average user then even that shouldn't bother you.

Performance is superb

Camera is awesome. I have taken hundred's of pics to test it. Some people will say that low light photography is not that good. Show me one camera phone that takes awesome pics in low light and i will gift you that awesome phone. Maybe they are good or ok but nothing when compared to pics under normal daylight or lighting conditions. Have tested iphone5S, iphone 4, s3, s4 etc and plenty other phones. Low light pics in reviews are under certain amount of low light and taken at a particular angle and depends on light source and plenty other factors. And even the distance from the objects. I pretty sure that you will never take such low light pics. In practical every smartphone camera fails(relatively) in low light.

One again this phone has awesome camera you won't regret it.

Gps locks pretty fast.

Battery backup is unbelievable. I still check the battery left in my dad's phone when he come home and i still can't believe that how can it give such an awesome backup. My dad makes ton's of calls and is always using his phone is free time experimenting as this is his first smartphone. Sometimes he switches on bluetooth, gps, wifi etc on and it stays on the whole day until i notice it when he comes back home. And its been a month and till now it has never ran out of battery in a single day. Can easily last full day even if you use it heavily.

Screen is not. Amoled but its still awesome

Phone feels premium.

I showed it to some of my friends and asked them to guess the price. Everyone guessed over 30-35k and wanted the phone. But if you tell them its Chinese first then they are like it ok..not that good.... Its all in the mind. Not every Chinese stuff is bad. My sis and mom were even sure that it's metallic. Lol

Very light and thin phone. U suggest you buy cover for it to add some weight and thickness. Otherwise to me all these slim phones feels like they will slip off my hands and break.

It has fallen few times now from bed...table... From my dad's hand and no damage so far. So build quality is also good. Although i would advice you not to test it yourself. Because sometimes phone might not break from 10m height but it will break from 1m. Its all just luck (or you can call it angle of impact, place of impact, density of the material that it had impact with, temperature of the phone/surrounding at the moment etc. Which in short i call luck)

So don't test your luck until and unless you can afford a bad luck.