[Review] Xiaomi Mi 3

For the first batch, 17 minutes was all it took for Xiaomi to sell 4,000 units of its flagship Mi3 handset in Malaysia. Its best feature – the unbeatable price of just RM889 is perhaps the biggest draw in.

To recap, this is a slightly dated handset, running on a quad-core Snapdragon 800 processor and on par with every other standard high-tiered devices’ specs; 1080p screen, 13 megapixel camera, 2GB RAM with 16GB memory, etc. On paper, this is as good as any top end devices released after the 3^rd quarter of 2013. But how does it stand up in real life usage?

As usual, we start off with its strengths. The battery rated at 3050mAh and is enough to power the device for a full day, without having to reserve its usage. In contrast, iPhone 5s battery is rated 1560mAh. I could browse my Facebook (top usage), reply to instant message (Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and LINE), browse for news (Flipboard, Engadget, The Verge, Kotaku etc), playing music (Spotify about 4 hours a day) and even occasionally viewing a few video clips on Youtube. This could be rather subjective without a graph to show but ultimately, the battery drain most when you have the screen turned on. Duh.

The screen, 1080p IPS display, performed as advertised. It’s not remarkable, the color does bias towards unnatural contrast but that is hardly an issue here.

What about other features? The MIUI interface as I came to use it was a love and hate affair. While polished and offered various (read : hundreds) of themes to choose and customize from, it just doesn’t offer the same mature feel that HTC has done for its Sense 6 interface.

I’m not saying that its glitch or pardon the harsh word, useless *cough S-Note, S-Translator, S-whatever cough* but at times, I was looking forward to the simple and effective vanilla Google UI. To the ladies however, MIUI could be the very reason they buy the phone.

See what I mean?

Maybe go a little Malaysian with this theme.

Or if you can be shameless and apologetically unoriginal (notice the cue), you can even do this.

Another note on its software, one important thing that shoppers overlook is the software updates. Sony was plagued with this issue where the updates are scarce and if any, is months later where another new version of Android is launching soon. Xiaomi and its community of developers and testers promises frequent update with stable built released to the masses every now and then. The history of MIUI had been proven to have one developer build update per week, and once they are stable it is then pushed to all users. Pretty neat!

Camera quality is good. The 13MP Sony Exmor sensor works in tandem with the heavily customized MIUI which produces images which are not too shabby. In fact, it’s on par, if not better than fellow 13MP shooter GS4. The samples from its website does impress deeply.

One perhaps not too surprising find on this phone, since it is advertised on its website being very capable of delivering Immersive Sound. The speaker indeed delivery loud but sufficiently clear output and on the audio front, it does adapt to the type of earphone you are using. Sound production, without being scientific, was crisp even without equalizer interference. *cough Beats Audio cough*

Now to count its weaknesses. The endearing device’s seemingly solid build seems to be its own bane. The flat slab design makes it rather hard to grip. Perhaps as the layer of graphite slowly integrates with the oil from my hand, it will improve. But until then, investing on a case seems to be a sound idea.

Not a weakness but rather deficiency, it could use a micro SD card slot with the growing content nowadays. 16 GB minus its internal software, 13 GB can easily be squandered with camera photos (average 1.4 mb per image), HD videos, or even to play some magnificent 1080p videos off the Mi 3.

Now to sum it up, this device is never meant to be crowned champion of smartphones. There is no true innovative advantage over any flagship smartphones out there. We can find better screen with LG G3 and its cousin, Oppo Find7, better sound and UI in HTC One, better camera with Sony’s Z2 and Mi3 doesn’t even have 4K video capabilities. There are even cheaper alternatives being the Asus ZenPhone and Huawei’s array of new phones. Then, what does Xiaomi’s Mi3 do?

What it does, is to bundle all the essentials of a modern smartphone, plus some more in the form of lesser price tag. It doesn’t offer you the state of the art capabilities but it does offer an all round experience, lifted out from a Nexus 5 and improved upon the looks, the specs and some could argue, the UI. The phone may not give you any boasting rights over any of its competitors but you’ll be delighted by it nonetheless. Remember how GT-R ruffled the turf of Ferraris and Lamborghinis? Mi3 comes quite close.

 

Score :  Screen                                                                                       9

Call / Connectivity                                                              9

Performance                                                                          8

Software                                                                                  8

Battery                                                                                     8

Camera                                                                                     7

Design                                                                                       7

Speaker                                                                                    9

Build                                                                                          8

Price                                                                                         10

 

Final Score                                                                              8.3

If you’re looking for a great Android phone on a budget, look no further.

---

Like our Facebook Page here at NasiLemakTech.com for more news and in-depth reviews! Also, join our Facebook Group for insightful information and memes!

Subscribe to our YouTube channel too!

---