mobile devices thread

The top of the range Xiaomi is £400. Its excellent value for money. That said, my Mi4i is also really well built. It easily trumps most flagship phones.

I really regret not getting the £10 more version which has a removable battery and a sd card expansion slot though.

Oh wait, there's an Mi4i with SD card slot?

It not having one was going to be my reason not to get the Mi4i so I focused on the Redmi 3. Still an awesome phone but with a 720p screen (no biggy, my current 5" is 540p and it honestly doesn't annoy me), but it does have SD card expansion and a 4100 (!!) mAh battery.
 
Oh wait, there's an Mi4i with SD card slot?

It not having one was going to be my reason not to get the Mi4i so I focused on the Redmi 3. Still an awesome phone but with a 720p screen (no biggy, my current 5" is 540p and it honestly doesn't annoy me), but it does have SD card expansion and a 4100 (!!) mAh battery.

yeah the Redmi is basically the same phone underneath. That said, there does appear to be a Mi4i with an expansion slot HOWEVER its very much a Unicorn. I've only ever seen it mention on Indian websites. You'd be better off looking at the Mi4C Advanced edition, which has 3gb ram and 32gb storage.


In other news, the Mi5 has been leaked and its going to be worth waiting for.
Specs wise it has:
We end up with a total of two models that will definitely be unveiled at the venue. Both will have a 5.2-inch Full HD display and a Snapdragon 820 SoC and will differ from one another in terms of memory: 3GB RAM plus 32GB of storage and 4GB of RAM plus 64GB of storage.
NFC, fingerprint reader and a 3600mAH battery as well! I might have to upgrade...
It'll also make the current flagship (Mi Note Pro) cheaper I'd expect.
 
Yeah I've had another look, but I think the Mi4c is too expensive for what I'd do with the phone, the Mi4i doesn't suit my needs and the original Mi4 costs €50 more than the Redmi 3, but still runs Android 4.4 and doesn't support LTE.

The Redmi 3 looks very solid for €150.
FDD-LTE on B1/B3/B7 which is what my current carrier supports.
Dual SIM with dual standby so I can have a Dutch and a British sim.
5" screen which is the biggest I'll ever go for a phone.
And a 4100mAh battery so I can easily use it for travelling and not worry about the phone dying on me.

The only downside is that for it to accept a second SIM AND an SD card at the same time I need to make a little sandwich of those two things to go in the tray, but according to the Xiaomi forums it has been done a couple of times now.

Other than that, it's a Snapdragon 616, 2GB RAM and 16GB ROM. Seems plenty for what I use my phones for. Tbh, I'm still pretty content with my Lumia 535. Also, I'd be going to a 720p 5" instead of my current 540p.

Oh, and one major downside is that it comes without all the Google stuff and has a locked bootloader, but Xiaomi have made a multi-language ROM available on their website (I use my phone settings in English, but I do want a Dutch keyboard for when I'm typing Dutch) and apparently it's possible to get all the Google services on there as well.


What would you say, worth it or nah?
 
Oh, and one major downside is that it comes without all the Google stuff and has a locked bootloader, but Xiaomi have made a multi-language ROM available on their website (I use my phone settings in English, but I do want a Dutch keyboard for when I'm typing Dutch) and apparently it's possible to get all the Google services on there as well.


What would you say, worth it or nah?

The Xiaomi EU forums have custom roms that can sort out things like 4g support and everything. I'd look there too as there is plenty of handmade roms that will convert the phone into what you want. I run the official rom from the Xiaomi website and its very reasonable (excluding the lack of 4g bands bit). You can unlock the bootloader, you just have to request it to be unlocked. I'll probably get round to requesting the unlock at some point so I'll report back if/when that happens.

-edit- the Xiaomi multi-language rom comes with all the google stuff.
 
Only problem is that I can't seem to find a ROM for the Xiaomi Redmi 3. All it comes up with is the Redmi Note 3, but that one is on a MediaTek platform so I'm not sure if they are the same?

Granted the Redmi 3 is still very new so maybe I just need to wait a bit? Also, I don't necessarily need to unlock the bootloader if I can flash the multi-language ROM on without having to unlock it.

EDIT:
I did find this ROM, but it doesn't state if it's the ML pack. I'm guessing it's just the stock one?
http://en.miui.com/download-298.html
 
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