There has been a huge demand of this smartphone that weâre going to talk about today. Leaving the other big players like Apple, Samsung, Sony and HTC behind, Xiaomi has emerged out to be a very challenging player in less than a year. Nobody knew about the company a few months back but when they came out with this model, everyone went bonkers. I have personally suggested some of my very close friends to buy the phone. Xiaomi Mi3 is backed by powerful specs and a big screen but should you really be buying this phone?
Xiaomi is one of the biggest Chinese electronics company headquartered in Beijing that develops, designs and sells apps, smartphones and consumer electronics. The companyâs founder, Lei Jun is Chinaâs 23rd richest man. Founded on April 6, 2010, the company has over 3000 employees in mainland China, Malaysia and Singapore and is now planning to expand its reach in terms of market and building offices, providing support in India and Indonesia. In the tech world, Xiaomi is sometimes called âThe Apple of Chinaâ. It has now become the 5th Largest Smartphone Maker worldwide. Just for branding the smartphone name mi, the company has launched a new website mi.com which tells all about the products and more, for which it shelled out $3.6M.
The company received $41M in series A on Dec 1, 2010 by QiMing Venture Partners and Morningside Group. A year later on Dec 27, it received another $90 million in Series B and on June 26, 2012 it received $216M, the highest in its history. Almost an year ago the company received an undisclosed amount of funding on Aug 22, 2013, making a total of $347M roughly (excluding the undisclosed amount).
Xiaomi has launched a bunch of products in China including apps and devices. One of them is the MiPad which is similar to the iPad Mini. MiLauncher and Duokan Reader are some of the apps/websites the company has released/launched. MIUI an Android Firmware, MiWiFi a network router, MiTV a smart TV line, are some of the notable products. All of them have fared well in China and it now has a loyal fan base. Most of the products are manufactured by Foxconn, a Taiwanese company that manufactures iPad, iPhone, Kindle, PS4, XboX One & Wii U. Foxconnâs major customers are Acer, Amazon, Apple, Blackberry, Cisco, Google, Dell, HP, Microsoft, Nintendo, Nokia, Sony and Xiaomi.
Xiaomi is Chinaâs fastest growing Android Phone maker and it posted a 271% Sales bump in the first half of this year. With an earning of $2.16B in the first half of 2013, the company is in works to release a fitness tracker. In the first half of this year, the company sold 26 million smartphones. The companyâs Mi Band is wearable fitness tracker with upto 30 days of battery life and is very cheap at $13.
Xiaomiâs has a lot of competitors in China but the biggest threat to the company is Samsung. Till August 2013, Samsung was the top brand for smartphones in China, then came Xiaomi and it conquered that. However, Samsung is the biggest player in the world, Xiaomi is not far behind with 5th position. Apple, Huawei and Lenovo are on 2nd, 3rd and 4th respectively.
Xiaomi Mi 3 was initially released in December 2013 but has arrived in India in late July. The phone became popular and rose to high demands because of its specs at such a lower price.
Some of the notable specs of the phone are that it has a 2GB RAM, 13MP camera, Quadcore 2.3GHz Krait 400 CPU with Snapdragon 800 chipset, 5-inch screen, powered by Adreno 330 GPU and a non-removable 3050 mAh battery.
It is made of aluminium-magnesium alloy frame, coated with 3 layers of thermal graphite.
Speakers and microUSB are at the bottom
Camera used is that of Sony
Sim card tray and audio jack are on the top
Power and volume keys are made of aluminium and are on the right side
It has a retina display of 441 ppi and anti glare coating
In some regions it has a 1.8 GHz Quad plus One Core Nvidia Tegra processor, not in India
The battery is NFC enabled with 3050 mAh
It has the MIUI user interface designed by Xiaomi itself
As there are rumors, the phone is Not 4G (LTE)
No card slot for expandable storage
When launched in China, it sold 200,000 units in just 3 minutes. In India, the phone is only available via Flipkart as of now and the online shopping site said that it received 100,000 registrations for the phone. When first released in the last week of July on the 22nd, the  phone went out of stock in 30 minutes on the site but a week later on July 28/29, the record broke even further when the phone was completely wiped off the storage centers of Flipkart by online shoppers in just 5 seconds with more than 200,000 customers accessing the product page simultaneously. The next sale comes on 5th of August at the same price of 13,999 INR and this time also its just 15,000 phones. You need to register on Flipkart to buy the phone.
Engadget: Critics gave it a score of 8 while users posted a 9.2 score (6 users).
CNET gave the phone a positive review only pointing out the 4G and No expandable memory feature.
Digit.in pointed out that the phone gets heated up very easily but camera quality is very good and all in all, its worth buying.
On Flipkart, the phone has an average rating of 4.4/5 from 1050 users with 771 â 5 star ratings and only 84 giving it 1 star rating.
The Next Web & BGR also gave it a positive review praising its camera, price and specs.
 Other Phones in competition
OnePlus One (The best choice, though not available in India yet and is pricey but below 20K)
Though the phone has great features and good build quality it still lacks some things that should be provided. The Internal Memory is 16GB only (available in India) and youâll get approx 13.2 GB out of it to store your games and movies etc. The phoneâs successor, the Mi 4 will be releasing sometime around November in India.
Despite this, the phone is a great deal at such a price and it should be bought. It features all genuine parts just like placed in Samsung, Apple, HTC etc. and the phone has received some very favorable reviews. It is a better option right now than any of the Micromax, Gionee or Karbonn phones out there. It has almost the same specs as that of the Note 3, S5, Xperia Z2 but at a price of 14K only which is like 3 times less. So, if you donât want to shell out 35K out of your pocket, or donât want to go for Micromax, Karbonn etc., then Xiaomi is the right choice.
 Thanks to: Flipkart, TechCrunch, Wikipedia, Digit, CNET, Engadget, PCMag, Business Insider, First Post, Economic Times, Times of India, BGR, DeviceBar, The Next Web & Gizbot.Â
[Editorial] Should you buy the Xiaomi Mi3? A complete guide There has been a huge demand of this smartphone that we're going to talk about today. Leaving the other big players like Apple, Samsung, Sony and HTC behind, Xiaomi has emerged out to be a very challenging player in less than a year.
