The Good
- Large, 5-inch display screen (1080 by 1920px)
- 13MP autofocus main camera and 5 MP front camera
- Big, replaceable Li-ion 3120 mAh battery
- Sleek and comfy design
The Bad
- Many native Android Lollipop features replaced by Xiaomi’s MIUI 6.0 interface
- Non-expandable storage: only 16 GB space with no option to expand
- No optical image stabilization
- Heats up fast
- Low battery life
Customer Rating
The Silver Lining
Design and storage
The Mi 4i evokes the design sensibilities of the iPhone. It is rather slim at 7.8 mm and weighs just 130 grams. It’s neither light as a feather nor too heavy, despite its polycarbonate chassis. There are ample colors to choose from—white, black, blue, orange and pink. Besides, colorful covers to protect the phone are expected in the market soon.
The Mi 4i seems to be toeing the trend line by providing a 5-inch full-HD display. That’s 1920x1080 pixels, with the pixel density of 441 pixels per inch. The manufacturer claims the ppi of Mi4i is denser than the one provided by iPhone 6 (326 ppi).
The display is sharp, fonts are clear and colors are vibrant. The phone might be cheaper on the pocket, but its panel is definitely not like the cheap ones found on budget phones.
The lack of a microSD card slot is a dampener for a budding photographer like me who likes to download many apps and store images. However, the phone does provide a dual-SIM 4G slot, as if to make up for this missing piece.
Hardware, software, and performance
The Mi 4i has a 3,210 mAh battery with a quick-charge feature that delivers up to 40 percent charge in one hour with full charge coming in at three hours. The company claims that the phone can belt out 1.5 days of usage in typical conditions. However, if a fully charged phone is used for the entire day with data on, it would require charging in the night.
The Mi 4i comes with 2GB RAM. However, a little less than half of it is available to applications when you boot up the smartphone. The capacitive button on the extreme left (unlike the one on the right in Sony Xperia M that I previously owned) shows Recent Apps along with the amount of RAM being consumed by these apps. An on-screen button enables the user to kill apps and free up RAM. Users can also lock an app by sliding its icon down in the Recent Apps view. This means, the particular app will not be killed when the X button is used. This selection is also remembered across reboots.
Camera
The Mi 4i works well for users who are looking for a good camera at a lower budget. Its user interface is similar to the Mi 4 wherein you swipe from the left to get the camera modes and from the right to get the filters. The Beautify section is a new addition with filters such as Autumn, Indigo, Japanese, 1970, which will appeal to Instagram lovers.
The image quality in daylight shots is very good. The front camera provides good selfies, provided there is a good lighting source, such as outdoors. In fact, this phone can be a substitute to any point-and-shoot camera for those vacation pictures. Moreover, the low-light images clicked by the Mi 4i too look better than some of its low-budget competitors, and one of the phones I have used in the past—the Sony Xperia M.
Verdict
The Xiaomi Mi 4i might have some shortcomings; but none of them seems a major turnoff, especially at this pricing point. The phone comes with good design, great display, premium specifications, a decent battery life, and a good camera—all at an affordable price.