[Xiaomi Mi 4] yash3339:
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I’ve been quite a fan of Xiaomi products ever since I used the awesome little Mi 2S. Till date, the phone is among the most favourite ones that I’ve ever owned!

Come 2014, and I was tempted by more releases… iBuyGou sent over a Xiaomi Mi 4, and although I got to use a lot of phones this year, the Mi 4 and the OnePlus One remain to be among my favourites. And I’m a littlleeee skewed towards the Mi 4 thanks to my preference for smaller phones. Basically, phones that fit in my pocket.

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I do a lot of traveling on the motorbike and prefer to have the phone in my pocket than anywhere else. 5.5 inch phones haven’t gotten to a level where they’d fit (in thee sitting position), and therefore the Mi 4 pretty much hits the bullseye as far as size is concerned.

Unboxing video

[YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Q5HadtWS64[/YOUTUBE]

Form factor… and feel

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The Mi 4 looks a lot like another popular phone. The latest edition of that ‘popular phone’ is known for a very unique feature, i.e., bending. However, the Mi 4 looks more like a mashup of the previous versions of the phone. If you are a sucker for original design, you should totally stay out. If not… let’s talk!

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The bezels are extremely thin, thinner than any other phone I’ve ever owned. This is really what makes the 5-inch phone in a pocket a possibility, really. A lot of other phones have slim bezels, but the top and bottom part of these devices really makes up with abnormally large chunks of bezel. The Mi 4 however doesn’t do anything of that sort, and offers a very one-handed-usable experience.

The edges on the device are chamfered… or tapered if you like to call it that. This is more noticeable on the part that blends into the front than the rear. Not only does it give the Mi 4 a lovely visual appeal, but also makes the device easier to use… and your hands harder to slit. :P

Xiaomi phones traditionally featured buttons on the right, with the ability to change the look and feel because they’re attached to the rear cover. This changed with the Mi 3, which didn’t offer a removable rear at all. The Mi 4 does a bit better and does give you the liberty of taking off the rear… if you have a suction cup handy. And even if you do, you do not have the ability to swap the battery which is a bit of a shame. A bit. User replaceable batteries are overrated!

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The front of the Mi 4, as I said before, will remind you of ‘the other phone that shan’t be named’. On the top there’s the earpiece in a little slot of its own. I like it when earpieces are at the same level as the body, they otherwise tend to be dust magnets. Anyway.

On the left of the earpiece you see a little back spot which hides the proximity and light sensors, on the left to which sits the famous Mi logo. On the extreme right, you can see the impressive 8MP camera.

Below the screen, there’s the usual set of buttons -- overflow, home and back. Depending on what OS you’re running (MIUI V5 or MIUI 6), the leftmost button will act as either the menu button or the recent tasks button. In my case, it is the latter… because I love the look and feel of MIUI 6.

The chin of the Mi 4 makes home for the reinforced micro USB port and of course the machine drilled speaker grill. Before talking about the sound of it, let me tell you that it looks pretty kickass :D

Nothing on the left besides the camouflaged SIM slot. The right edge is where you access the power and volume buttons, all covered in great-feeling metal.

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The top is where it gets interesting… because not only do you see the standard 3.5mm earphone jack here, but also an IR sensor which is a first for Xiaomi. It is extremely useful as a feature, but unfortunately the range isn’t as much as you’d have liked, on the Mi 4.

Display

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Out of all the phones that I’ve had a chance to use and play with, the Mi 4 sits right on top with the other 5 incher… the OPPO Find 5. I totally loved that device but had to let go of it earlier this year to fund another purchase. Anyway, the Mi 4 does look as good as the Find 5 on screen quality terms. Like I’ve said before, 5 inches of screen is the maximum I can handle, and displays like the one used on the Mi 4 really make it worthwhile. I have another phone for YouTube and video, but that phone is increasingly becoming obsolete due to the presence of the Mi 4!

MIUI (6, in my case) lets you choose between 3 color modes and 2 saturation modes. I usually like to have a very balanced and consequently natural display, but on the Mi 4 it is the ‘cool’ color mode I use everyday. To be very frank, the ‘warm’ mode is on the verge of being called yellow; standard and cool are the only modes you will ever choose in between.

Saturation has a couple of modes -- Brilliant and Standard. The difference between these two modes isn’t as pronounced as the ones between the color modes. I use my Mi 4 in Standard mode, Brilliant gives it a tinge of warmness. Comes down to personal preference, imo.

Backlight bleeding is something Chinese phones have been suffering from for a long, long time. Thankfully, it isn’t the case here. Minus a little part. There’s a slight bit of backlight bleeding on the right edge (bottom), which is hardly noticeable and definitely QC-able. You can certainly live with it and it’s far from a deal breaker.

In a nutshell, I’d rate the display a healthy 9/10, at par with the OPPO FInd 5!

Camera

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If anything, smartphones from 2013 to 2014 have progressed leaps and bounds on the camera front. There’s of course difference in performance, but it isn’t as significant as the difference (read: improvement) in camera tech.

I LOVE the Xiaomi Mi 4 as a camera phone. It might not have the most number of pixels, or even the most features (it lacks a substantial slow shutter mode, for one), but the Mi 4 does a very good job at capturing moments for you. It’s all about the right timing, and thanks to the super fast focus mode on the Mi 4, I am able to take a lot of pictures at the right time. On terms of camera performance, I would rate the Mi 4 second only to the mammoth OPPO Find 7 (which surprisingly uses the same IMX214 sensor as the Mi 4! But it turns out, there’s a lot more to picture quality than just the sensor ;) )

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The Mi 4 carries a lot over from the Mi 3. As in, it features the same ‘vivid’ sort of a picture tone with a little bit of exaggeration; but it’s definitely less than the Mi 3, making pictures seem a lot more real. MIUI 6 might also be a bottleneck as far as hardware performance is concerned, but even then I’m pretty satisfied.

During the initial days with the phone, it had a naggy issue where the camera wouldn’t focus during macro shot attempts. This has since been solved thanks to a multitude of OTA updates (the perks of being on a beta channel…) :D

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The camera app does lack a bit of functionality though, which I hope will be added with future OTA updates. Xiaomi are usually pretty quick in pushing new updates -- weekly, most often.

The camera also does 4K, but it isn’t relevant to me. It isn’t to you too, if you don’t have a 4K aka UHD television!

Another interesting feature is 'Refocus'. As the name clearly suggests, it allows you to focus on parts of an image AFTER clicking. I'm happy to report that it works wonderfully well.

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Curious, I wanted to know how it worked. Xiaomi advertised a 0.3 second focus duration, so it wasn't all that difficult. Snooping around the phone's file system told me that the device actually takes multiple photos (4 if I remember right) with different points in focus so that you're able to achieve the magical refocus feature later on. Intelligent, I must say! (HTC had to add a whole another sensor to achieve this ;) )

Battery

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I’m very satisfied with the battery life on the Xiaomi Mi 4. It isn’t as good as the OnePlus One, but it falls short only by a shade. On the upside, I get a display that’s way more vibrant and an absolute treat to look at. And according to Android, I look at it about 6 hours before it the phone needs another trip to the wall socket. Speaking of wall sockets, make sure you use the bundled Xiaomi Mi 4 charging adapter. Or be prepared to give it a good few hours of charging (4-5). The stock charger charges up the Mi 4 pretty darn fast; any other charger (even the 2A ones) take way way longer for some reason. Xiaomi don’t advertise anything like VOOC so I’m assuming its some secret tech they’re employing here to get the battery charged fast (unless it is Qualcomm’s fast charging, lol).

My usage often greatly varies from day to day. Most days, I’m left with a good 50% charge at the end of the day, with the phone unplugged for around 18-19 hours along with 3 hours of screen on time. I think this is pretty respectable for a small phone with a 5-inch display, and one that’s so bright.

It might be worthy to let you know about the apps that I use the most, so you get a clearer image about battery life: feedly, Chome, WhatsApp, Pocket, Gmail and a couple other apps that keep changing depending what season it is ;)

All in all I’d give the battery a decent 9/10. Please keep in mind that it took the device a good few weeks before the battery life got to this point; it was far far worse when I started off with using the Mi 4. It could also be the MIUI 6 ROM, but I suspect it has got to do with the hardware itself.

MIUI 6

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Its hard to miss what the Mi 4 runs on. Not only because its pretty beautiful and even more functionally useful, but also because of the fact that the media loves to hate the MIUI ROM; at least that section which hasn’t ever used a Xiaomi phone. And I don’t blame them for that. The MIUI ROM does leave an impression of being a bit of an iOS lookalike, but there’s much more to MIUI than that. Calling MIUI a lookalike of iOS is like speaking only one side of the story… if you know what I mean.

Controversy aside, MIUI is pretty useful and handy, but it takes a while to get used to. Especially when you’re coming from another Android smartphone that runs a more closer-to-vanilla ROM.

While I’m yet to come across any significant functional improvements on MIUI 6 compared to the previous iteration of the ROM, I do very much like the look of it. A lot of the settings previously near-unreachable are now easier to get to, which does leave a good impression in the mind of the user. You can now easily switch launchers and other default apps, in a very steamlined manner unlike earlier.

Conclusion

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I’ve had the privilege of using a lot of phones this year, including the HTC One M8, OPPO Find 5, Find 7, Xiaomi Mi 3 and of course the OnePlus One besides this… but guess which phone I like the most? Yeah you got it right. Of course this is a very subjective topic, since a lot of smartphone users these days tend to pick phones with displays larger than 5 inches. But I guess I’m just too old skool.

The way the Mi 4 is performing for me right now, I think I would be happy to use it as my main phone for a good one year. Like I mentioned before, battery is a very important component on a smartphone for me, and the Mi 4 hits the sweet spot. It almost lasts as long as the Mi 2S with a 3200mAh battery! (keep in mind that the Mi 2S has only a 4.3 inch 720p screen).

Stuff like an IR sensor (which needs a decent English language app at the moment) make the Mi 4 a real worthy smartphone for the money. I'm waiting to see how it performs in the market when it's available in more countries than just China, especially India. Untill then!

I would like to thank iBuyGou.com for shipping the phone. Go get the phone from them!