Hi All,
I know there are a few threads about the Mi3 but I thought I'd start a new one and give you a guys a quick overview of the Mi3 from my perspective. I'll try to focus on the things you can't readily find on the Internet as you can find technical reviews and specs on Youtube and other websites but these are the few things I noticed only until I started trying to buy the phone and using it.
The screen comes in at 5 inches, which IMO is just right. A bit bigger than my iPhone 5 and is excellent at watching videos and browsing websites. The viewing angle looks about the same as the iPhone and the quality is about the same too. Build quality is pretty impressive, and a lot of people say it looks like a clone of the Lumia which I agree. The sim card slot is full size (not mini as some sites claim it to be), so you need to get an adapter if you're switching from the iPhone like me. Battery cannot be taken out, only the Redmi and Redmi Note have self replaceable batteries. Also there is no SD card expansion slot. The WCDMA version, which is the one you need to get in order to use it in Australia, only comes in a 16GB variant, the 64GB is only for the TD version. Also the WCDMA version only comes with the Snapdragon 800 processor, the Nvidia Tegra processor is only fitted on the TD version too. I haven't used the Tegra one so I can't comment on whether it's better or not, but I think I saw some benchmarking test somewhere and it claimed that the Tegra is a little bit faster.
In terms of the usage, that's where most of the issues come in. :) I changed the language to English, but you'll get some "residue" Chinese language here and there all over the apps and settings and etc. So for someone who can't read Chinese, this is very annoying. I can read Chinese so it's not too much of an issue for me, but imagine someone who can't read it!? The original firmware comes with Mi Market, but no Google Play store, so there will be some fiddling around to install it yourself. However, the MIUI is still probably one of the best Android interfaces I've seen by far. Since getting the phone (yesterday), I've flashed it with a Mi Developer rom, which gets released weekly, but if you rely on your phone for work or anything important, I suggest just stick to the stable rom. The developer rom is a bit unstable. Since yesterday I've already had to restart my phone twice, the first time the gallery just goes completely black when I tried to view a photo in full screen, and the second time, the settings menu went completely white. Both time a restart fixed it. The developer rom does come with some nifty features, it fixes bugs and adds features which are not yet officially released, and this week's one also comes with a really cool FIFA World Cup theme (which has more Chinese in the theme settings, so be warned).
This phone (or anything from Xiaomi) is extremely popular even in China at the moment, so don't bother bargaining the price down. The Mi3 currently sells for RMB1699 on the website, but in the retail stores, they're selling for RMB1899, and no bargaining allowed, they won't even throw in any accessories. I didn't buy online as I'm not sure how long it'll take for them to deliver it and my parents only had limited time in China (they went for 3 weeks and came back yesterday with the phone). Once again, I didn't buy from any of the online websites either because I wasn't sure about their reliability. I personally don't think the price is that cheap, I really wanted to get the RedMi Note, but they only release a small number every Tuesday online. I got my cousin to try for a few weeks and still nothing, so gave up after that.
Please feel free to ask me any questions you have and I'm happy to dig into my phone and answer to my best abilities. I'm happy to take photos of any parts of the phone you'd like to see also.
Cheers,
Jerri
Thanks for the write up.