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Business News/ Mint-lounge / Features/  Review: Xiaomi Mi Max has a screen size you will learn to love
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Review: Xiaomi Mi Max has a screen size you will learn to love

What makes the Mi Max a notable addition to the budget segment is its mammoth screen which is a rarity despite the market being dominated by 5.5-inch devices

The Mi Max is a solidly built phone with an all-metal finish, chamfered edges and a sleek form factor. Premium
The Mi Max is a solidly built phone with an all-metal finish, chamfered edges and a sleek form factor.

Priced at 14,999, the Mi Max with the 6.4-inch display is an entirely different beast and doesn’t really have any rivals. Even more so at this price. And once you start using a big screen phone, it is hard to shift to a phone with a smaller screen.

Also read: Xiaomi MIUI 8: The evolution is now very real

Design: Big but sleek

The Mi Max is a solidly built phone with an all-metal finish, chamfered edges and a sleek (7.5mm) form factor. Despite tipping the scales at 203g, it doesn’t feel heavy as the weight seems to be evenly distributed across the phone horizontally and vertically. In comparison, most 7-inch tablets weigh more than 300g.

As expected, the dimensions are on the larger side. At 88mm, the Mi Max is quite wide. Holding this up while watching a video or making a phone call is still very manageable. The phone also features a fingerprint sensor, which rests close to your index finger when you are holding the phone. It is circular and barely noticeable due to the phone’s huge profile. However, it works well most of the time.

Also read: Xiaomi Mi Max: Five key highlights of the huge Android phone

Display: Huge screen

With a screen size of 6.4 inches, what you will get is a Full HD 1,920x1,080 resolution. On paper, this is a very good canvas for anyone who likes to read a lot, or will use the phone for watching their favourite TV shows or movies. Colours in photos, videos and games look rich, while text looks sharp and very readable in web pages as well as e-books. Visibility under bright light, and also from various angles, is good. The Mi Max also gets the Sunlit display feature which adjusts the brightness of each pixel automatically to alter screen brightness in a natural and user-friendly manner. This does make a difference in terms of detailing while watching a video, and also saves on battery the rest of the time. There is a reading mode which gives the screen a yellowish tint and reduces stress on eyes while reading.

The only niggle at the moment with a screen of this size is that some Android apps are not scaling well enough to fit the screen. One such example is Apple Music. However, this is a limitation at the end of each erring app, and something that developers can enable through an app update rolled out on the Google Play Store.

Also read: Review: Xiaomi Mi 5 can be the genuine flagship killer

Software: New Android with a MIUI

The smartphone runs Android 6.0 (Marshmallow) out of the box with its proprietary MIUI 7.5 UI. The phone is scheduled to get the MIUI 8 soon, which packs in some really cool features. As of now, it allows users to apply new themes, hide photos and documents in a hidden folder, segregate apps for children under a separate child mode and reduce the interface to a smaller screen for one-handed use. Interestingly, the recent Android feature called Now On Tap did not work at present.

Performance: Smooth and long lasting

Xiaomi has used the same Qualcomm Snapdragon 650 hexa-core processor and 3GB RAM, which we saw in the Redmi Note 3. Though the phone doesn’t feel buttery smooth when running multiple apps, we didn’t notice any lags or heating up while using it. The interface is a bit heavy, and uses a lot of resources. Even with no apps running, it uses up at least 1.3GB of RAM. Playing games and watching HD movies was without any stutters or pauses. The phone offers 32GB of storage which is a bonus and allows users to add another 128GB via micro SD card. The micro SD card slot also doubles up as a SIM card slot, in case you don’t want to use a memory card but another SIM on the phone. One of the SIM slots supports micro SIMs which means you have to get a new SIM again. Both SIM slots support all 4G networks.

The phone’s biggest highlight is the 4,850mAH battery, but at present, it delivers a day and half of backup on modest use. For a phone with such a big battery, the backup is far from impressive, and we expect this to improve with the upcoming MIUI 8. The Lenovo Zuk Z1 and the Yu Yunicorn, which pack in smaller sized batteries, offer similar backup times.

Camera: Average snapper

Verdict

The Mi Max is a rare phone which caters entirely to users who love big-screen smartphones. And it really doesn’t have a rival at present, at this price. Meant for users with really big hands.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Abhijit Ahaskar
Abhijit writes on tech policy, gaming, security, AI, robotics, electronics and startups. He has been in the media industry for over 12 years.
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Published: 04 Jul 2016, 02:27 PM IST
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