I am using the phone from last 10 days. Will break down my review in three parts. The pros, cons and what more could be done.
First let’s see the pros that make it the best value for money phone currently in the market.
Huge battery : easily getting around 7 hours of screen on time. Battery is an issue with smartphones today. This phone is just a beast. It easily get overs 1 and half a day with quite heavy usage.
Screen Quality: easily one of the best screen we can find in the market at this price point. Very vibrant crisp and colours seems very bright. There is some kind of protection on the screen making it smudge free.
Build Quality: nothing sort of amazing. The metal body feels strudy and give a premium feel. The design is very ergonomic, curved edges makes it easier to hold though it has a huge screen. The phone is also very light weight and looks great.
Fingerprint Scanner: the scanner is blazing fast. The position is perfect for using your index finger to unlock. I tried it using 5 different fingers it without any hiccup.
Fast processor: the new spandragon 650 is very smooth and amazingly powerful. I was bit sceptical about it at the beginning, but am really blown up by the processing speed and it’s power handling whatever thrown at it. Heating is comparatively very minimal compared to its predecessors.
IR blaster : that is great and works with most of electronic devices. The best thing is that you can use third party apps too that gives you more control over the usage of the IR blaster.
Clear voice calls: this is a neglected aspect but Xiaomi has done a great job here. The calls are crystal clear without any distortion. VoLTE is an added functionality that is the future of the mobile networks soon. So you can be future proof with the device.
Heavy gaming: not an issue with the fast professor and ample RAM. Can play any graphic intensive game easily. Modern combact 5, Asphalt 8 runs smooth. Also the device doesn’t get heated up to an uncomfortable level. So that is a plus.
Sound quality speaker and headphones: the speaker is satisfactory. The quality is good. A little low at volume to my liking. Xiaomi added a small plastic hinge. That helps the speaker to be above the ground even if places flat on table. So sounds don’t get blocked up. The sound through headphones are really amazing and crisp. Use good quality headphones, I use sennheisers gives a great output. Love the sound output through the headphones.
Sensors: all major sensors present in the device. Along with the gyroscope that gives you the option to enjoy the YouTube 360 degree videos and stuffs.
other features I liked are the vibration motor. It gives a hepatic feedback while you type. I like the feel of the vibration motor. Not very aggressive and comfortable. Just what you need. No lag even when you use third party launcher. I use Google launcher I didn’t find any lag or hiccups all these days.
Sshhhuu. A lot of pros. Let’s check out the cons now.
Charging time: there is Qualcomm fast charge 1. But sadly that is not fast compared to today’s standards where many devices are coming around with fast charge option. The battery is huge so it would really take a long 2.30-3 hours to charge from 0-100% .
Camera: a little disappointed with the camera. The Quality is great in ample lighting conditions. But struggle in low light and complex lighting conditions. Dual tone flash gives a better exposed picture in darkness. Hope it gets a little better with software updates. That can be done expected as the sensor is quite good.
No water resistance: yeah that is a must now a days owing to the changing trends in the smartphones usage. You can live without it but it’s good to have it .
MIUI is very bloaty uses a lot of the internal space available. It has been a matter of dislike for me using the MIUI. I have been using MI phones from last 2 n half years. MiUi is bit irritating. That’s totally my view. Some may like the scope of customisation it offers. But I like a clean android experience. I suggest use Google Now Launcher if you want to have a clean android experience.
Still this cons doesn’t take away the crown of best value for money smartphone in the market at present.
What Xiaomi can improve in the device.
Make the camera performance a little better especially in low light conditions. Hope that is coming soon in the next updates.
Add functionality like scrolling, shutter button and app lock option to the Fingerprint Scanner. It was hinted at the launch event. So we can expect that very soon in the next updates. Especially the app lock option. That is very handy and useful.
Improve the RAM management so that you are left with a little more RAM free. You can usually get around 980MB free on the 2 GB variant and around 1.9GB on the 3GB variant.
Sorry I guess I took a lot of time.:
The phone is completely value-for-money, good performance with no specific slowness issues identified and can play graphic intensive games ( however it does take much longer to load individual game sequences, for example if you are playing Need for Speed or Modern Combat, then it takes about a minute for a new game to load, but once loaded, the gameplay is smooth till the finish.