Preview: Xiaomi Mi3 Usage Preview & Update

I am never going to get used to the pronunciation of that company name of Xiaomi. But, well that’s something I can live without as their product the Xiaomi Mi3 is quite a performer for the price bracket and may even challenge a few in the top ranks.

Well this is basically a basic preview of my usage of Mi3 in the past few weeks.

Design:

The phone has a design, which is a bit of an old one to my eyes by now, as I am used to seeing the much better finished Nokia 800, 920 & 925 (the last even has a metal unibody). Probably the only difference which I found, is also the issue with the design - that is the raised screen which puts the screen susceptible to damage on falls. It also takes away from it the smoothness/fluidity in design.

Display:

A 1080 x 1920 pixels, 5.0 inches LCD display with a pixel density of 441 ppi. There is nothing much to say here that sets this apart from the other HD display phones out there, other than the fact that this is on a sub-15k phone. It has good colour reproduction and decent sunlight legibility as well as viewing angles.

User Interface & Features:

The phone runs the Android 4.4.2 out of the box which is over-run with the heavily modded MIUI 5. The MIUI is what you would call an android forced to wear iOS clothing. It is basically a no homescreen or all on homescreen (yes everything from the newly downloaded apps to the widgets…I mean everything :@ ) , app drawer only oriented UI. For a regular Android it may seem a little annoying and for me I really miss the Home Screens.

That said there are a lot on customizations that can be done to the UI. From entire themes to the Boot screen to the fonts to the Dial Pads to the lock screens, everything can be changed. The customizations are good for the most part, but sometimes the themes are too heavy and are making the phone slow and even hang the phone sometimes.

Camera & Gallery:

The 13 MP back and 2MP front snapper are just fine in their performance. I won’t call them exactly the best camera phone cameras around.

The camera interface is really simple & easy to use with previews of the scene in filters before we apply them. There is also a panorama and HDR modes included. 

In the front camera mode there is a funny or novelty feature that tells the age of the subject person in the photo. Not a lot of women would like that.;P

The gallery too has no gimmicks & shows the preview of the number of images on the phone. It also has access to the photos stored on the cloud.

Sound & Music Player:

The sound of the phone is not too loud as compared to the competition out there. It is decent enough, but in case you work in a noisy environment then be sure to have missed a few calls.

The Music player has been kept basic, as was with the design of the camera interface. With the grouping of All songs, Artists & Playlists it makes life quiet simple.

But there could be some improvements like equalizer & Lyrics options.

Battery Life:

The battery life is awesome on the standby mode or on a low usage basis.

The story changes dramatically when there is heavy usage such as 3G, gaming and calling. I will be putting in the exact time in the full review coming soon.

Performance:

The synthetic benchmark results will be released in the full review.

On a day to day basis performance, it is a great performer & works without any glitches. Even while working with heavy, performance hungry apps it works well for the most time.

Which brings me to the question that how are the themes themselves not so optimized that they end up sometimes hanging & in general ruining the entire experience of using the phone.

Verdict:

My verdict for the phone is that it is a killer for the price that it sells. But, skip it if you want a vanilla Android experience or even if you are looking for a premium UI experience.

Watch-out for the comprehensive full review of the Xiaomi Mi 3 coming very soon.