As we’re finishing up our review of the Xiaomi Mi 4, we thought we’d give you a taste of how the Mi 4 is like.
One important point to note: the Xiaomi Mi 4 provided to us came shortly after we attended the official launch of Xiaomi’s latest flagship smartphone in Beijing. As part of the first batch of devices, this is naturally a unit built for the Chinese market. As such, the MIUI software is also heavily customised to suit Chinese users – though thankfully you can select English upon startup.
For instance, one of the features that does not appear in the international MIUI firmware is a localised phonebook, which contains a directory of useful phone numbers that are categories as you would find on a Yellow Pages. This feature plugs into your current location too, presumably for letting you know if you’re nearby a place of interest.
In this firmware, you’ll also find that there’s a voice assistant app that you can activate by long-pressing the capacitive button the right. The UI looks, er, inspired by one of the best-known virtual assistants around, Siri.
For this video we also took a much deeper look into the Mi 4’s camera. We really liked what the Mi 3’s 13MP sensor could do, and so far, we’re not disappointed with the Mi 4’s either. The camera UI is largely the same as on the Mi 3, but tap to focus and you’ll see something new: exposure controls right on the viewfinder. You can from EV-2 to EV+2, giving you plenty of control to take that perfectly exposed shot.
Given the updated hardware, the Mi 4’s camera is now also capable of more extensive tasks as well, such as real-time HDR and 4K video recording – which also supports HDR mode. Oh, and let’s not forget “Refocus” and tracking focus as well.
We’ll delve deeper into the other aspects of the Mi 4 in our full review. But for now, enjoy the video!
