New Xiaomi Mi4 Smartphone Announced Along With MiBand

The speakers, edges and buttons are looking all too familiar

xiaomi-mi4

Xiaomi Mi4

Lots of folks including ourselves were pretty disappointed when Xiaomi did not present a live video stream of Mi4’s launch event yesterday held in Olympic Green Convention Center located in Beijing. All they had were a page that was updated with the latest photo from time to time, one you had to keep refreshing to view, particularly frustrating since there wasn’t any audio to help us understand better and captions weren’t all that useful. Find yourselves lucky if you are only reading this now as presentation slides are uploaded to Xiaomi’s forums as well as the full recorded video of the launch event as we are writing this.

[fve]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sm7IjQWqs10[/fve]

Rants aside, Xiaomi Mi4 came a bit short of expectations and rumours and only feature a Snapdragon 801 quad-core 2.5GHz processor putting it on par with the US version of Samsung Galaxy S5. We were a tiny bit surprise since LG’s latest G3 Cat.6 comes with a Snapdragon 805 coupled with Adreno 420 GPU and 3GB RAM was announced on the same day. Mi4 continues to stick with a 5-inch screen like the Mi3 but gets a boost on the camera with a 13MP rear and a wide-angle 8MP front. The new camera from Sony also features a lower bokehlicious aperture value of f/1.8 and has a refocusing feature similar to Lytro.

[[perfectpullquote]]Xiaomi Mi4 has a Snapdragon 801 chip, not 805 as rumoured[/[perfectpullquote]]

Other upgrades include the 3GB RAM, squeezing a little more 30mAh into the battery, a faster eMMC 5.0 storage. MIUI v6 will land on 16 August 2014 and will based off Android Kitkat but no screens or demos were presented during the event, still a nice upgrade for everyone planning to get Mi4. LTE 4G is supported in China with the TD-LTE variant at the moment and we are awaiting for Xiaomi to confirm if they will release a model to support LTE-FDD here in Singapore.

[vid site=”youku” id=”XNzQ0MjcxMDQ4″]

Xiaomi’s smartphones has been manufactured by Foxconn, the same long time manufacturer Apple is using for their iPhones and it’s easy to spot the similarities when compared to Mi4’s metallic casing such as the buttons, SIM card slot, speaker holes and edges around the casing. [tweetable alt=”Xiaomi Mi4 is similar to iPhone 4S edge to edge.”]Xiaomi doesn’t hide that fact[/tweetable] as we can see from one of their presentation slides comparing Mi4 head to head with the iPhone 4S.

Prices for the new Xiami Mi4 starts at ¥1,999 (est~ S$399.52) for 16GB and ¥2,499 (est~ S$499.45) without telco plans and expected to be available in Singapore by mid-August 2014.

SpecificationXiaomi Mi3Xiaomi Mi4
Screen Size5"
Resolution1920 x 10801920 x 1080
Rear Camera13 Megapixels (f/2.2)13 Megapixels (f/1.8)
Front Camera2 Megapixels8 Megapixels
Processor1.8GHz Tegra 4 and 2.3GHz Snapdragon 8002.5GHz Snapdragon 801
RAM2GB3GB
Storage16GB/64GB (eMMC 4.5)16GB/64GB (eMMC 5.0)
Data Network Support2G, 3G2G, 3G, 4G LTE
Battery Capacity3050mAh3080mAh
Android OS4.34.4
MiUI Versionv5v6 (August 2014)
Price¥1,499 (16GB), ¥1,999 (64GB)¥1,999 (16GB), ¥2,499 (64GB)

xiaomi-miband

Xiaomi MiBand

MiBand is the second new product introduced at the launch event similar to sports and activity tracking bands from Nike, Jawbone, Fitbit, etc. that has been making hits and misses the recent years. Xiaomi is quick to create new accessories in a move to build up its ecosystem making consumers and fans sticky to its brand, the MiBand maybe such a product and priced at just ¥79 (est~ S$15.79), it beats all tracking wearables by miles in that category.

Xiaomi is no stranger when it comes to pricing their accessories affordably as we experience first-hand their earphones and power banks, both reliable and high quality products for a fraction of the prices compared to popular brands. The MiBand should see a similar sellout trends when it releases, possibly the first mass market wearable without the premium pricetag. Apart from being an alarm clock and a sports/sleep tracker, MiBand also acts as Bluetooth authenticator to your Xiaomi smartphone, unlocking and accessing features conveniently bypassing the password when both devices are present.

Not much more details of MiBand were presented during the event, more of that will come from the official apps and MIUI v6 in August 2014.

Update 22 July 2014, 5:33pm: Correction – Xiaomi has not upload the event video, we will update when it is released.
Update 30 July 2014, 2:15am: Xiaomi Mi4 launch event video link is now updated.


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