Xiaomi, often known as the ‘Apple of the East’ has gained a lot of fan following with its flagship phone Mi3.
Xiaomi Mi3 looks and feels premium, and the matte finish plastic on the back panel could almost be mistaken for metal. The phone's built from an aluminum-magnesium alloy frame that gives it a kind of sturdiness that should translate to durability. At 8.1mm, the Mi3 is not slim by any measure, and the long frame has sharp corners. The phone is pretty comfortable to use and hold in one hand.
The Xiaomi Mi3 sports a 5 inch Full HD IPS LCD display which offers crisp text and pictures with pretty good viewing angles. The color rendering of the 1080 p display with 441ppi density is impressive and quite vivid. However, the screen is very reflective, and has sub-par legibility outdoors in sunlight. Powered by a 2.3GHz quad-core Snapdragon 800 processor with 2GB RAM, the phone packs quite a punch and the performance is snappy. The 16GB internal storage with the absence of a memory card slot would disappoint most.
Xiaomi smartphones are powered by MIUI, a heavily customized Android fork based on AOSP (Android Open Source Project). The MIUI version in Mi3 runs on the latest Android 4.4.2 KitKat but mimics iOS a lot. MIUI allows uninstalling pre-loaded apps, and is a welcome feature. Few security features included in MIUI are pretty good and take care of the usual Android annoyances. There's a built-in virus scan and an innovative permission manager for apps through which you can allow or deny an app access to a certain feature or functionality.
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Verdict
The Mi3 is nicely built phone with great pricing. It is one of the best gadget of 2K14.
PS
Xiaomi is pronounced by Zio-mi by some, Ziaoo-my by some, but actually it is pronounced as SHAO-ME. xD
