Xiaomi

Xiaomi

Xiaomi

Xiaomi

Xiaomi

Xiaomi

Xiaomi

Xiaomi

Apple

Last night, Xiaomi announced it's tackling the low-end phone market in India with a new product called the Mi 4i. It looks just a little like a certain Apple product, but the specs and pricing are what make this interesting. $205 (Rs.12,999) gets you a 5-inch 1080p LCD, an eight core, 64-bit Snapdragon 615, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of storage, a 13MP rear camera, 5MP front camera, dual SIM support, and—perhaps the most eye-popping stat—a 3,120mAh battery.

Most companies only seem concerned with packing as big of a spec sheet into a phone as possible. The battery is often an afterthought (the Galaxy S6 has a 1440p screen and a 2550 mAh battery, while the Galaxy S5 had a bigger 2800mAh battery). The Mi 4i spec sheet strikes a balance we would like to see manufacturers hit more often—Xiaomi claims the device will last a day and a half. There's no telling how true that is until (unless?) we get our hands on one, which will be difficult since the device is only for sale in India.

The company says it "put considerable effort into fitting the highest battery capacity possible" into the device, which, frankly, is something all OEMs should strive for. The size doesn't seem to have suffered too much. At 7.8mm thick, it's still in the range of the ~7mm iPhone 6 and much thinner than the 9mm iPhone 5c. Again, to all manufacturers out there, we will gladly trade thinness for battery.

The device is plastic—not a huge surprise for a $200 device—but Xiaomi says it's using a matte, soft touch finish. That should be a little nicer than the usual glossy stuff. The back and sides are a single piece of plastic, just like the $450 iPhone 5c, and it comes in a variety of pastel colors: blue, pink, yellow, black, and white. The white version is special since it has an "anti-grease" coating, which is supposed to stop fingerprints from building up on the back. Xiaomi says "colorful versions [are] coming soon."

Usually the first spot to cut costs on these cheap phones is in the display, but, at least on paper, Xiaomi seems to have shipped a decent one. It's a 5-inch, 1080p IPS LCD made by JDI or Sharp with a 178 degree viewing angle, a 95 percent NTSC Color gamut, and Gorilla Glass. There's even a sunlight mode, which besides pumping up the brightness, also increases the contrast to make the display more visible.

The device comes with MIUI 6, Xiaomi's custom skin of Android, along with Google Play. While Xiaomi's skin hasn't changed since we looked at the Mi Note, the Mi 4i is the first Xiaomi phone to get upgraded to Android 5.0.

We're a little disappointed to see Xiaomi is back to its old ways of shamelessly ripping off Apple's design, especially after the company's Mi Note looked like an original product. Still, given how good it and the Mi 4 are, it's hard to care about originality when you've paid so little compared to the competition. The phone arrives in India on April 30.

Listing image by Xiaomi