Xiaomi launched the Mi Max in India, price starts from Rs. 14,999. This Mi Max review will give you ‘the Max’ information that you would need to make a decision. It is a big smartphone (a Phablet), that is smaller than a tablet and slimmer than most smartphones.
Xiaomi Mi Max Review
Mi Max Unboxing
Content : handset, user guide, warranty card, data cable, SIM tray ejector pin and travel charger (5V / 2A).
Design, Display and OS
Mi Max Phablet is packed inside a metal body, again with very good build quality and finishing. In spite of the big size, this handset is not at all that uncomfortable to hold, in fact it is slimmer than most smartphones, and light weight too considering the dimensions and battery. Handset is slightly curvy from the back on the left and right side.
Xiaomi Mi Max weight is 201 grams with built in battery and dimensions are 88.28 x 173.1 x 7.31 (mm). Power button and volume rocker is on the right side, audio jack (3.5mm), IR port and secondary mic is on the top, SIM tray is on the left side and at the bottom there is a primary microphone, micro USB port and speaker out vent.
This is a dual SIM handset using a hybrid slot you can either use a micro SIM and micro SD card or micro SIM and a Nano SIM. 4G is supported, with VoLTE.
There is LED notification (you can even change the LED color as required) and following sensors – accelerometer, light, proximity, gyro, magnetic and hall.
Touch screen is 6.44 inches (using 2.5D curved glass) supporting 1920 x 1080p resolution. It’s sunlight display (as seen on other Xiaomi devices) and comes with corning gorilla glass 3 protection. Color reproduction, viewing angles and touch response are very good.
Mi Max is running MIUI 7.5 based on Android Marshmallow 6.0.1. It will get the MIUI 8 update.
Memory and Storage
Mi Max is packed with 3GB RAM and 32GB storage space. The 4GB RAM and 128GB variant is also available. Users can also use micro SD card of up to 128GB. OTG is supported.
On the first boot (3GB/32GB) you will get around 22GB free internal storage space and around 1.6GB free RAM.
Performance
Mi Max comes with 1.8GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 650 hexa core with 3GB RAM / 32GB ROM or Snapdragon 652 octa core clocked at 1.8GHz with 4GB RAM and 128GB ROM. I got the 3GB RAM / 32GB ROM version of review. It is the same hardware that powers the Redmi Note 3, it is powerful, lag free and heat up is under control.
Benchmark (Hexa Core SD 650)
- Quadrant – 30529
- Antutu (64 bit) – 72098 | 3D score – 18785
- Nenamark 2 – 59.9fps
- Internal storage Speed – Read (180MB/s), Write (83MB/s)
- Multi Touch – 10 Point
Gaming
Hardware is powerful, I did not find any issues with Modern Combat 5 and Asphalt (in high visual mode). Check the video review.
Camera
Mi Max comes with 16MP PDAF camera packed on the back with f/2.0 aperture and on the front there is a 5MP fixed focus camera. Rear camera can shoot 4K videos. Camera quality is above average, long shots turned out great but close-ups are not that sharp. Because of the handset size it also gets difficult shooting pictures with one hand.
Do check the sample images and videos at the end of this review.
Others
Sound is loud and clear, in-call sound is also very good. No issues with 4G LTE, WiFi, GPS, FM radio and Bluetooth.
Finger print sensor is fast and accurate, you can tap the sensor to automatically unlock the phone.
Screen is quite big, you get a lot of workable area compared with other smartphones. Check the image below to get an idea about the size.
Battery
The 4850 mAh non-removable battery gives awesome backup, you can expect 7 to 15 hours of non-stop moderate to heavy usage on a single charge. With normal mixed usage you can expect up to 3 to 4 days battery life, with moderate mixed usage up to 2 days and with heavy mixed usage an easy 1 day.
Xiaomi Mi Max Battery Performance (time / battery % drop / estimated battery temperature).
- Running Benchmark app – 9 minutes / 1% / 37 degrees
- MC5 + Asphalt 8 game play – 23 minutes / 5% / 38 degrees
- 4K video playback with full brightness (WiFi /4G on) – 27 minutes / 6% / 36 degrees.
It took me 2 hour 51 minutes to charge the handset using wall charger from 22% to 100%. For a full charge it will take about 3 hours 30 minutes or so.
Verdict
The Mi Max as the name suggests is a big handset. Specially made for those who are planning to buy a handset with a big screen or those who are looking for a tablet with voice call feature. The Mi Max fits perfectly in-between.
Hardware is powerful, camera quality is above average and battery backup is excellent. The only thing that you will need to consider when buying the handset is the SIZE.
Rating 4 out of 5.
Xiaomi Mi Max will go on (open) sale on July 6th at 2PM starting from Rs. 14,999.