I can't believe I'm writing this but I'm impressed enough by this phone that I thought I'll pen down my first impression. First thing first, Xiaomi is the company and Redmi is the model of the phone. This is the first phone to be sold officially by Xiaomi in Singapore. If you follow the mobile space, I'm sure you would have heard of the China-based company called Xiaomi (literally means small rice, and Redmi literally means red rice).
So on 21st Feb 2014, Xiaomi launched the very first online sale for this phone in Singapore at 12 noon. According to news, the phone was sold out within 8 minutes. I'm not so sure about that since I actually placed my order on the 22nd Feb, exactly 1 day later. And the phone arrives at my doorstep today. I must applaud the UPS guy who made this possible.
It came in a nice little brown box. On the left is the box containing the phone itself, and the stuff on the right is the 'bundle' which I bought together at the same time. The bundle consists an extra battery, a desktop charger, screen protectors and a silicone case. Xiaomi also bundled 2 pieces of SIM adapters in the whole package. All these for the unbelievable price of $197 Singapore Dollars. That is approximately USD $156.
Here you are with all the stuff taken out from the box. The biggest box in the center is the phone itself and it comes with just the battery and a standard micro-USB cable.
Notice the little silver foil covering the camera lens? I think that's a nice little touch. Despite the name of the phone, the color is grey, not red. However, you can buy additional back covers easily, including the red color one. Next, I need to insert the battery and SIM card. The instructions says I have to pry from the lower left corner of the phone (yes, I read the quick start guide!). There's a little groove on the back case where you can pull the cover off. It came off pretty easily and it does feel a little flimsy. You know, the kind of feeling that everything will fall apart.
A good buddy help me cut my data SIM from the standard form factor down to the nano SIM form factor. And now I have to use the adapter to put it back into this phone. What irony. Due to the way the orientation and the position of the SIM slot, you do require a little effort to get the SIM+adapter securely fitted into it. And then the moment of truth. You press the power button on the right side and waited for the phone to power up for the first time.
It took quite a while and that actually scares me a little. But the result is the setup screen greeting you
It's very straight forward. Pick your language, choose your Wifi (oh it doesn't do 5Ghz 802.11n by the way) and you're almost done. As part of the setup, you have the option of synchronizing the phone to Mi Cloud, as well as the standard Google account. Yes, Google services are available on this one! I setup both. Lastly, I notice my Starhub data SIM is not working. So I have to figure out where the APN settings are and change the APN name to match. And when all's said and done, here's the final home screen.
Not bad for a $169 phone. The bundle cost $28. Total damage $197. I played with it for a while. The build quality is exceptional for a budget phone. It feels... hefty and solid in the hand. The screen looks good and the UI is responsive for what is considered a budget processor from MediaTek. It runs MIUI v5, which is based on Android 4.2. At least I don't have to worry about the WebView bug.
Enough of fiddling. I have to apply the screen protector. It stated on the packaging that there are 2 pieces. Pleasant surprise there, I was only expecting one. When I open up the package, even more surprises.
There are 3 in fact. However, the 3rd piece is termed as 'practice'. You can see it in the picture. For those who don't understand Chinese, I'm sorry. The one on the left is the 'practice' piece while the one on the right is the 'real' piece. I've been buying screen protectors from China all my life and this is the first time I've seen this. Nothing much to say about the protectors, they... just work. I got the clear type, which I don't really like but when I ordered, they ran out of the anti-glare type. I guess something has to give...
I said that prying open the back cover feels a little flimsy. You have to do this if you're going to swap batteries unfortunately. From that single experience, I'm not sure if I really want to swap the batteries now, or just use those portable chargers which are literally everywhere.
Lastly, there's the silicone case. I picked the black color and it looks like this
It fits snugly and barely covers the sides when fitted. So that's it. I have yet to try out the camera and the various multimedia functions. So far, it has performed well surfing the net over Starhub 3G and wifi.
It's amazing Xiaomi can packed so much into this $169 phone. I think this is going to dominate the budget smartphone segment for at least the next couple of months. For those comparing this with the Samsung S5, don't be silly. And those comparing this to the Moto G, you may have a tough choice there.
. It is essentially a beefed up Roku 3 and Apple TV. The unique feature I can see is probably the Amazon Fire Game Controller
. They will set you back $99 and $39.99 respectively.
- $114.99
- $229.99
is attractive because of their strong 5-year international warranty. However, if you consider the price differential today, I will probably just go for the Crucial ones. Also, recently Intel introduced the 730 series
as a brand new in-house designed enterprise-classed SSD. Now, before you rush out and buy this spanking new drive, do note that it draws power from the 12V rail, making it unsuitable for mobile use. Don't ever think of putting this drive in a USB-powered case. It will not work. In any case, I'm sure you'll be put-off by the initial pricing as well.
is now at it's lowest price point of $169.99. It's a pretty good deal at this price point. My guess is that it's priced similarly to the standard 5900RPM 4TB locally.
had a price drop. As of today, the price is $44.96 for the one sold by Amazon. However, it is temporarily out of stock so you have to wait.
going for $3.99. I happen to have this and it's good value at this price. It contains most of the more well-known pieces and it's performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra. For casual classical listeners like me, you should add this to your collection.
, for the literally next to nothing price of $0.99. Then again, most of their compilations are being offered at this price. I have personally bought quite a number of their releases. For $0.99, you can't really fault it for anything.
) and Seagate NAS ( Seagate NAS HDD 4TB SATA 6GB NCQ 64 MB Cache Bare Drive ST4000VN000
). One of the feature most advertised is that it has a shorter error timeout. The technical intricacies of this is quite complex and I won't go into the details. Suffice to say that if your normal consumer drives developed a problem, say a bad sector, and the OS attempts to read this sector, it will take a very long time (sometimes forever) for the drive to come back and say 'Sorry, I tried but I couldn't read the data.' This cause mayhem in RAID controllers and sensitive OS. I have had Windows Server totally crashed when it attempts to read a flaky consumer class drive.
