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Xiaomi, the Chinese device major known for selling high-end smartphones at budget prices, has finally arrived in India. The company has kicked off its Indian operations with the launch of Mi 3, its flagship device that features high-end hardware rivalling the likes of Nexus 5, but costs almost half the price. Is it the best smartphone you can buy in terms of value for money? We find out in our Xiaomi Mi 3 review...Xiaomi Mi 3 comes in a very simple box that includes a charger and USB cable besides the smartphone. It doesn't come with earphones or a case to cut costs and it appears these two accessories will be sold separately by the company. Our unit came with a Chinese charger not compatible with most Indian plug points. We hope Xiaomi replaces it in the retail units.Xiaomi Mi 3 looks and feels like a premium smartphone. It features an aluminum-magnesium alloy frame coated with 3 layers of thermal graphite enclosed with a back panel made of good quality plastic and a Full HD display.The back has a metal finish that has been done in a manner which makes it really hard to guess that it is actually made of plastic. In our use, we found that the back is not prone to smudges and scratches won't easily show up.Xiaomi Mi 3 is 8.1mm thick but not too heavy at 145gram. Despite its large size (especially the length), the phone is easy to carry around. It reminded us of the Nokia N9 and the Nokia Lumia 800 with its rounded edges.The power and volume keys are placed at the right edge while the left edge is barren. The speaker grill and microUSB port are at the bottom edge while the 3.5mm headset jack sits at the top, along with a sim card tray. The single-sim phone supports regualar sized sim cards. So if you're using a nano or micro-sim, you'll need to get an adapter.The front panel is not flush with the back but is a bit raised. It features three capacitive keys for navigation, just below the display, and a 2MP front-facing camera above it. The phone doesn't have rounded corners. The corners are a little sharp but they don't impact usability.The 13MP rear camera and dual-LED flash are placed at the back, towards the top left.The phone is only available in metallic grey colour at the moment. Overall, Xiaomi Mi 3 is a well built phone with a design that is subtle, durable and pleasant to use.Xiaomi Mi 3 sports a 5-inch Full HD (1080p, 441ppi, 16:9) IPS LCD display manufactured by either Sharp or LG. We were impressed with the display's brightness and colour rendering. The phone offers three modes for colour temperature (Warm, Standard and Cool) and two for saturation (Brilliant and Standard).Text and pictures appeared crisp and sharp and the viewing angles were pretty good. Touch sensitivity was also great and the company claims that you can even operate the phone when you hands are wet. You can turn on the glove mode for increased sensitivity.Having said that, we found the screen to be very reflective, resulting in reduced sunlight legibility. While the company does not mention it on the official specs page, the phone's display panel does come with Gorilla Glass protection.Xiaomi Mi 3 runs MIUI, a heavily customized version of Android. You would be familiar with the MIUI ROM if you're an Android enthusiast and like flashing different ROMs on your device. The ROM is available for a large number of Android phones and tablets.However, the software shines on the Mi 3, which efficiently leverages its features.While the MIUI software is based on Android 4.4 (KitKat), it looks totally different. In fact, people used to draw parallels between MIUI and iOS as the former follows a similar navigation structure.The UI is devoid of an app drawer and app icons and widgets are spread across the home screens. The unified home screen-app launcher style may come across as user-friendly to people who have not used an Android phone before. But it will take some time to get used to if you have already been using an Android smartphone. You can of course download and install an alternate launcher.Unlike the MIUI ROM and the Mi 3's Chinese variant, the Indian version of the phone comes preloaded with Google Play Store and all Google apps including Maps, Gmail, YouTube and Hangouts.One of the highlight features of MIUI is the ability to customize the user interface with themes, downloadable wallpapers and clocks. The Themes app offers a large number of free themes, each of which comes with a different set of icons, wallpapers, app switcher, font style, sounds, lock screen styles and even system apps.Unlike themes that we've seen on other Chinese devices, the MIUI themes are really good looking with attention to detail.The software does not include any stock Android app and everything including the Gallery, Music, Calculator, Calendar and Email apps are built by MIUI team. The apps look beautiful and offer additional value added features, though most of them have skeuomorphic design elements trying to ape their real world counterparts.The MIUI app switcher can be launched by long pressing the Menu key and though it doesn't look as rich as the stock Android launcher on KitKat that offers app previews, it comes with the ability to free up memory by killing background tasks and clearing the cache. It even lets you lock certain background apps to exclude them from getting killed.There are a number of additional features that MIUI offers compared to stock Android. For instance, the phone app features the ability to block calls and messages from select numbers. It also offers a built-in call recording feature that allows you to record calls for all numbers or select ones, depending on settings.The Messaging app lets you pin important messages on top and hide messages from select contacts in a private messages folder which is smartly hidden in the inbox.The home screen widgets for the Music and Calendar apps look gorgeous. There's a even a widget mode for Notes and Music that lets you quickly access the functions without opening the apps.The software has built-in security features including a virus scan and permission manager for apps. You can choose to get data usage notifications and see the network speed at the status bar. You can even choose if you want a particular app to work and connect only when you're connected to the internet via Wi-Fi (or only on 3G.)Xiaomi Mi 3 sports a 13MP rear camera accompanied by a Philips dual-LED flash. According to Xiaomi, the Mi 3's 5-piece lens includes an infrared filter, that delivers more accurate colours in photos. It has an ƒ/2.2 aperture to capture more light, and 28mm wide-angle lens to cover more.The Camera app offers Simple as well as an Advanced mode with the latter offering granular settings for attributes like contrast, saturation, sharpness, ahi banding, and exposure, among others.It also offers HDR, Panorama, Burst modes in addition to filters. The video mode offers slow and fast motion recording options.Images captured by the camera in day light turned out really well with good level of detail, accurate colour reproduction, little or no noise and good contrast.Low-light and indoor shots were also good, but these had some noise, especially at 100% zoom. Shots taken under HDR mode had deeper colours and were devoid of shadows but were not as good as flagship phone cameras.The phone has a 2MP front-facing camera and we found the quality of selfies captured by it, to be pretty impressive.Xiaomi Mi 3 offers video recording in 1080p, 720p and 480p resolution and includes an image stabilizer anti-shake feature (doesn't include Optical Image Stabilization though). It takes good quality video and thanks to the three microphones, the quality of audio is also good.Overall, the Xiaomi Mi 3 offers the best camera experience under Rs 15,000 but you can't compare the quality with that of the Samsung Galaxy S5 or Sony Xperia Z2.Xiaomi Mi 3 is powered by a 2.3GHz quad-core Snapdragon 800 processor with 2GB RAM. The phone is extremely responsive and snappy with its MIUI software being optimized for the hardware.We did not experience any lag whatsoever while navigating through the home screen and menus, launching apps and switching between them. Scrolling was smooth and the phone was able to play Full HD video files without any problems.In synthetic benchmarks, the phone scored 30,441 in Antutu, 17,764 in Quadrant and 59.9 in Nenamark 2 benchmark tests. Some of these scores are much better than the Nexus 5, which costs Rs 15,000 more and sports similar hardware specifications. Mi 3 does lag behind the latest flagships from Samsung, HTC and Sony in the benchmark tests. We do not recommend a phone based solely on benchmarks as real world performance is different at times.Of the 16GB internal storage, about 12GB is available to the user. Unfortunately, you can't expand the storage as the phone doesn't come with a memory card slot which is such a pity. However, you can plug in a flash drive with a USB on-the-go cable.Xiaomi Mi 3 offers Bluetooth, NFC, Wi-Fi and GPS connectivity options. It offers good call quality and signal reception and we did not encounter issues while making calls even in areas where cell signal is relatively weaker. The phone was able to lock to GPS without any hiccups.It offers FM radio with recording capability and the app works even without plugging in headphones. We were able to play most popular video and audio file formats. The phone offers customized audio settings for different kinds of headphones.The external speaker outlet on the phone, located at the bottom edge, offers loud sound output without distortion but is not stereo. We also liked the placement of the speaker outlet.The phone is backed by a 3,050mAh battery (non-removable) and will last you a full working day (11-12 hours) if you put the screen brightness at the highest level and use 3G data all the time. You'll be able to make about 1-2 hours of phone calls, play some casual games and browse the web in this time period.We expected better from the battery but your mileage may vary with different usage pattern. The phone offers three power modes and you can choose the economy mode to save some juice.We were able to play games like Subway Surfers, Temple Run 2, Banana Kong, Asphalt 8 and Dead Trigger without encountering frame drops or freezes.Going by the features and user experience, it's hard to believe that Xiaomi Mi 3 costs ​just Rs 13,999.Before it arrived, the hardware specifications it struts were not available below the Rs 25,000 price point. However, it's not just the hardware specifications that make this phone special. It is a combination of high-end hardware, software full of usability tweaks and good build quality that places it right next to the likes of the Nexus 5 and other more premium phones. It is a 'no compromise' phone that offers excellent value for every rupee of yours.The only compromises it makes is the lack of expandable storage slot and 4G LTE connectivity (which is still at a nascent stage in India). The camera is one of the best in this price range but not comparable with high-end flagship phones. Some may not like its long frame or sharp corners but we didn't face any usability issues because of these. If you don't like MIUI, you can use a different launcher.Of course, a large number of people (barring tech enthusiasts) wouldn't have heard about the brand. It is a major player in the Chinese market and known for its high quality smartphones. The company released its MIUI Android ROM in 2010 and its first smartphone in 2011.It's only recently that Xiaomi decided to expand internationally and launched phones in Singapore, Malaysia and Philippines. In fact, Xiaomi claims that its entire Mi 3 stock sold out in 2 minutes in Singapore.The company sells phones almost at cost and earns profits from the fall of component prices over a period of time and by selling themes, apps and accessories. It doesn't advertise via conventional channels or runs physical outlets. The only way you can buy the phone is by going online (it's a Flipkart exclusive to begin with).But what about the after-sales service experience? Xiaomi has 36 service centres in India, with two exclusive ones in Delhi and Bangalore. It targets a turnaround time of one day for complaints and wants to reduce even that to a few hours.Overall, Xiaomi Mi 3 redefines the term 'value for money' and is certainly the best smartphone you can buy at a price less than Rs 15,000. It's very difficult to suggest an alternative in this price range.