Xiaomi Mi 4i goes official: affordable and colorful
At a huge event in New Delhi, India, former Google executive Hugo Barra took the stage to present the world to the Mi 4i, a Xiaomi Mi 4 look-alike that comes with a plastic wraparound body (similar to that of the iPhone 5c) available in an array of bold, vivid colors.
Xiaomi explained that the 'i' in the Mi 4i name stands for India, as the phone is inpisred by the country and its culture. The phone will be available in India only, at least initially.
Here is a quick look at the specs:
- MIUI 6 running on top of Android 5.0 Lollipop
- 5-inch Sharp/JDI fully laminated display with 1080 x 1920-pixel (Full HD) resolution
- Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 (2nd generation) octa-core chip
- 2GB RAM, 16GB of internal storage
- polycarbonate wrap-around body
- 12% thinner, 13% lighter than Xiaomi Mi 4
- available in black, white, red, cyan, pink
- 13-megapixel main camera (Sony/Samsung sensors used) with f/2.0 lens and dual-tone flash
- 5-megapixel front camera with f/1.8 lens
- 3120mah battery, 38% larger than other flaghips of the same size
The big part of the unique appeal of the Xiaomi Mi 4i comes from its battery that is smaller in terms of physical size than the one one the original Mi 4, but has a larger actual capacity. Xiaomi is also adding support for quick charging on the Mi 4i with a 2A 5V charger in the box that recharges the phone to 40% in one hour.
In terms of camera, Xiaomi boasted that it has further improved its already excellent HDR mode (Hugo Barra bragged about it being the best in the industry, "bar none, full stop"), and new capabilities of the camera include automatic gamma tuning, color correction, and low-light de-noising.
The performance is taken care of by the new Snapdragon 615 system chip (2nd generation with improved performance over the first generation), a 64-bit solution with four higher clocked Cortex A53 cores running at up to 1.7GHz and four additional Cortex A53 cores running at up to 1.1GHz for better power efficiency.
An interesting fact is the Snapdragon 615 chip is fully designed by Qualcomm India, another tribute to the country that Xiaomi pays with its new device.
Xiaomi Mi 4 price and release date
The Xiaomi Mi 4i price has just been unveiled and it is an absolute shocker: the 5-inch phone with a 1080 x 1920-pixel display and Snapdragon 615 system chip will be sold for just 12,999 Indian rupees. Okay, so how much is this in a more recognizable currency equivalent? That translates to just around $200 off-contract.
The phone will be available in a variety of Asian markets (India first) with registrations kicking off on Flipkart (the Indian equivalent of Amazon) on April 30th.
source: Mi
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