The design of Mi3 is quite impressive and has been appreciated by many. There is a reason they call Xiaomi the Apple of China. The device has been designed very well and you will notice that they have paid close attention to detail. It looks simple and is quite slim at 8.1 mm. it feels solidly built but is a bit slippery. The Mi 4 takes the game a couple of steps further. It gives an illusion of iPhone 5 due to the sides. They have worked really hard on metal parts and kept it from being wide despite being a 5 inch device. It is offered with multiple back panels for the user to choose from. The choices include bamboo, wood, leather and cloth among others. It also gets Nano coating on the sides so that it doesn’t attract fingerprints and liquids. While the Mi 3 is good, the Mi 4 has an edge here with the highly finished metal frame and not-so-wide design.
Both the devices come with a similar display. The displays measure 5 inches and have got a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels. This gives a pixel density of 441 ppi which is very impressive. You get very crisp images and even the smallest of texts is readable. Watching videos and browsing internet is a breeze. The displays come with gorilla glass 3 protection to keep from scratches. Both the device displays have got IPS panels so viewing angles and colour replication is pretty good. Sunlight readability is decent as well. Here both the displays are good and evenly matched.
This is where you will notice the differences. The Mi 3 has got an impressive hardware which is offered at an excellent price point. It runs a Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 chipset with a 2.3 GHz quad core processor. It comes with Adreno 330 GPU which is a decent performer. It has got 2 GB of RAM and 16 GB of internal storage. There is a 64 GB version as well but it isn’t offered in the Indian market. You get all the popular connectivity options except for the support for 4G networks. You get 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0 and micro USB 2.0. It also comes with support for USB on the go to connect external flash storage. It comes with a 13 megapixel primary camera and a 2 megapixel secondary camera. Both the cameras are pretty good and the primary camera can shoot full HD videos at 30 fps. It is powered by a 3050 mAh battery.
The Xiaomi Mi4 has got slight edge over the Mi3 in terms of hardware. It comes with Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 and runs a quad core processor clocked up to 2.5 GHz. It has also got Adreno 330 GPU but running at slightly higher clock speed. It has got 3 GB of RAM against the 2 GB on Mi 3. It is also available with 16 and 64 GB storage options. Both the devices lack a micro SD card slot. It offers all the connectivity options that Mi 3 offers and also supports 4G networks. It also comes with a feature that isn’t present on the Mi 3. That is an IR blaster to control various devices. Is comes with an impressive 13 megapixel camera. The camera can shoot videos in 2160p at 30 fps. The camera on these devices come with built in QR code scanner so you won’t have to look for third party apps for that. It comes with a very impressive front camera which has a resolution of 8 megapixels. This would really appeal to selfie lovers. It is powered by a slightly bigger battery of 3080 mAh.
Both the devices run a custom version of android operating system. While other Chinese manufacturers have given us weird and hard to get around interface, the people at Xiaomi have created a really nice operating system. The MIUI comes with lot of customisation options for the interface. We don’t really like skinned android interface but this one is a very well executed job. The Mi 3 came with android 4.3 but was later updated to KitKat. The Mi 4 comes with KitKat out of the box.
The devices are both really very impressive. Judging by the popularity the Mi 3 has gained so quickly, we assume the manufacturer won’t have much trouble selling the Mi 4 in good numbers as well. There is no clear word on the pricing of the Mi 4 in India yet but we assume it would be around 17-18K. This would make it another excellent value for money device like the Mi 3. It is expected to enter our market somewhere near the end of this year. Xiaomi is also launching various accessories in Indian market. They already sell many of them in various markets and we will see them soon with attractive price tags. It was reported that they are first coming up with an external battery pack of around 10,000 mAh for INR 999 making it a very attractive deal. They are also coming up with a fitness band at an ultra-low price of 19 USD.
About Author – The Author have great interest in writing article on Technology and Handset reviews, currently he is working with 91mobiles.
