Xiaomi Note – Competing Against the iPhone 6 Plus
Xiaomi Note or Mi Note was announced today to a well-attended product launch in Beijing which was broadcast live on Youtube. The Xiaomi Note will be competing with other flagship phones such as the iPhone 6 Plus and CEO Lei Jun waste no time in pitting the Xiaomi Note versus the iPhone 6 Plus.
Comparing the Xiaomi Note vs iPhone 6 Plus
- Thinner
- Lighter
- Narrower
- Packing a bigger screen
- Flat camera lens as compared to the Apple iPhone 6 Plus
The Xiaomi Note sports a slim angular design, bearing more resemblance to the iPhone 5 than iPhone 6 which sports a rounder bezel. The Note rocks a bright IPS display and with front and back glass panels.
A lot of emphasis on the Mi Note is that it is 6.95mm slim, weighs 162 grams and has a 5.7-inch 2.5D curved glass display. The Mi Note is protected on BOTH sides with 2.5D + 3D curved Gorilla Glass 3. It’s highly resistant to scratches and shattering. Unlike the iPhone 6 Plus, the Xiaomi Note would sport an all flat back with the lens flushed to the overall surface. It will be available in Black and White.
Nothing much was said on the internals though, and it would be running the Snapdragon 801. It is dual-sim 4G capable, with both a nano-sim and micro-sim slot so you do not need to worry about cutting your existing SIM card whichever variant it is.
The end of the presentation threw a surprising curve ball. The Mi Note was turning out to be a nice phone but not a super phone, and then came this. There will be special variant of the Mi Note running a Snapdragon 810, Adreno 430, 4GB LPDDR4 RAM, 64GB storage and finally, a 2K 2560 x 1440 screen. This is really a super Flagship Mi Note, dubbed the Mi Note Pro – and would be sold at 3299 RMB and around March 2015. Around S$710. Looks awesome.
The Xiaomi Note is a 5.7″ screen, 1080p, that sports anti-glare coating and has a reading mode that produced less blue light to reduce eye stain.
With glass panel, there’s also the worry about drops and shattered glass, which interestingly, Lei Jun spent a good couple of minutes talking about the manufacuturing process. He went on to mentioned how expensive it was to replace a cracked screen and tried to explain to Mi Fans why they charge so high for screen repair. The kicker then arrived. He shared that Xiaomi would be launching an Apple care-esque warranty. This would be for China only, with 1 year special protection for drops and water damage at a cost of 199 yuan. Sounds like an amazing deal.
On a sidenote, my ears are cringing from the fake applause and cheers on every announcement.
Xiaomi Note camera is a 13MP shooter, with OIS capability and dual LED flash. It will sport something called pixel by pixel local tone mapping. It looks a lot like HDR to me, where it balances out the contrast especially for landscape type shots. The front is a 4MP lens, with HTC’s ultrapixel technology.
Audio quality is also notable – the Mi Note sports similar ESS decoder as many high end HiFi systems, complete with a 2-level amplifier, to wow you and your friends.
The Mi Note would be selling in China for 2299 RMB, which translates to around $460-$500 Singapore dollars. It would be available in China in a couple of weeks.
