Their newest smartphone, the Xiaomi Mi-3, delivers fast performance and high-end specs with a low-cost price, similar to many Xiaomi smartphones. Xiaomi released the smartphone in Beijing early today and will start selling the phone in China soon.
This is a quick move by Xiaomi to bring a new flagship to the table, with the Xiaomi Red Rice just getting on the market after almost 10 million pre-orders before the official release. Xiaomi started selling the Red Rice for $139 with top-end specs and it hit like wildfire, similar to the Nexus 4.
Xiaomi Mi-3 Specs
Xiaomi Mi-3 comes with a 5-inch IPS full HD display, 1.8GHz Tegra 4 or 2.3GHz Snapdragon 800 CPU, 2GB of RAM, 16GB or 64GB of internal storage, 13MP Sony Exmore RCMOS rear camera, 2MP front camera and 3050mAh battery. It is nice that Xiaomi has given the option between Snapdragon and Tegra.
Xiaomi’s MIUI ROM will come pre-loaded on the smartphone – unlike other skins and manufacturer ROMs, Xiaomi’s actually works incredibly well and has been praised for its excellent, easy to use UI.
The Xiaomi Mi-3 starts at $327 for the 16GB version and $408 for the 64GB version. It is currently only available in China, but with Hugo Barra, we may see an early push to Europe and possibly the US, to get some brand awareness.
China’s Hardware Growth
China is starting to get more and more impressive smartphone manufacturers, Xiaomi, Oppo, Meizu, Huawei, ZTE and Lenovo are all based in China and the first three are just starting to come to different countries.
Even though the competition in the US and Europe for smartphones is huge, we are starting to see more smartphone companies come from China and Asia, instead of rooted in the US. The only big smartphone company at the moment in the US is Apple.