Xiaomi's affordable Android goes on sale tomorrow

CHINESE smartphone maker Xiaomi has entered the Malaysian market with its flagship smartphone, the Mi3.

Priced at just RM889, the Mi3 is a compact smartphone packed with advanced features. It has a slender frame that’s just 8.1mm thick and tips the weighing scale at 145g.

The Android smartphone has a 5in full HD IPS display with a pixel density of 441ppi (pixels per inch) and is powered by a 2.3GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon quad-core processor.

It has a 13-megapixel rear-facing autofocus camera with a wide f/2.2 aperture and a front-facing 2-megapixel camera.

The phone also has NFC (near nield nommunication) built-in for easily pairing it with other compatible devices.

It packs a large 3,050mAh battery which is rated to have a standby time of up to 500 hours.

The Mi3 runs on Android 4.3 JellyBean but an update is on the way to get it up to the latest version — 4.4 KitKat.

Xiaomi has included its own interface, called MIUI, which the company claims has plenty of unique features and themes.

Users can save their data on the Cloud using Xiaomi’s MiCloud service. It will keep all their important data such as contacts, calls, text messages and photos backed up on the Cloud.

Xiaomi said it’s still working with three local telcos — Celcom, Maxis and DiGi — to sell its smartphone at subsidised rates. The 16GB variant of the Mi3 will go on sale tomorrow (May 20) at 12pm on its site at  www.mi.com.

Xiaomi’s president and co-founder Bin Lin and vice-president Hugo Barra were present at the official launch of the Mi3 in Kuala Lumpur.