Xiaomi may be a serious contender in the smartphone market soon. At least, that’s according to the reviews of some U.S. tech critics who were lucky enough to get their hands on the company’s Mi Note to try it out.
While on a February media tour, the Chinese tech giant gave its Mi Note to a few reporters to give it a whirl. Featuring an incredibly simple, sleek and clean design, The Verge raved about the Mi Note, “It’s solidly built; there’s no creaking…if Samsung or LG had released this phone, I wouldn’t bat an eye — it’s that good. It looks and feels like a device from a company that’s been doing this for a long time.”
Gizmodo and Tech Times, among others, also loved it.
The Mi Note features a 5.7-inch LCD display with 1080 pixels. It’s laminated screen offers viewing angles up to 180 degrees and also features “glove mode” — that’s right, you can work with the screen with gloves — so it’s got that going for it, too.
A couple small downsides: The Verge found the camera with a Sony-sourced 13-megapixel sensor all right, but a little blurrier than the iPhone 6. They also reported that it was a bit slow and “stuttered and lagged” through some sites with its 2.5GHz Snapdragon 801 and 3GB of RAM, but performed better with Google Chrome.
Xiaomi was also here to promote its headphones and fitness bands due out in an online U.S. store to be launched later this year. No word on when the Mi Note will be available to Americans, but in China the 16GB version sells for about $367.
Watch The Verge video review below:
