The Xiaomi Mi 3 Is Really Affordable. Should I Be Getting One Too?

The Xiaomi Mi 3 had their second round of flash sales today at a discounted of RM769 and it was reportedly sold out in 5 minutes.

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It comes clad in an aluminum-magnesium chassis and has a beautiful face with a 5-inch full-HD display covered in Corning Gorilla Glass 3.

Without 4G LTE support, however, the Mi 3 isn't meant to go head-to-head with this year's flagship smartphones from Chinese brands such as OnePlus or Oppo -- instead it is a great alternative if you only need 3G and don't want to renew your contract or pay through the roof for a powerful new phone. Bear in mind, though, the Mi 3 is almost a year old, and a new, refreshed model is likely around the corner.

Compared with other devices from China that tend to have plastic builds, the Xiaomi Mi 3 stands out. It looks like an expensive phone -- and it feels like one. The designers paid attention to the details of the construction, which you can see easily from the machined speaker holes to the seamless joining of the metal body and glass front.

There has been much talk of how Xiaomi is trying to copy Apple's approach to industrial design, but the result speaks for itself. Weighing just 145g (5.2 ounces), you'd expect the phone to be heavier given its metal body. The Mi 3 is light in your hand, however, and comfortable to grip.

As for the screen, the Mi 3′s 1080p IPS display produces a fantastic resolution — so visuals and text are extremely clear, while the colors are brilliant and consistent from any angle. What’s more, the screen is very sensitive to touch, which makes it much easier to play games that require you to tap on the display (think Flappy Bird-style).

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Indeed, one of the nifty features touted by Xiaomi is that even when you are wearing gloves during the harshest of winters and struggling to use your phone, the Mi 3 screen still responds to your touch, just like the Nokia Lumia 1020.

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Xiaomi's attention to detail is also present here: you'll find that instead of making the camera hole a circle like most other smartphones, the company took time to make it square -- just a cool piece of design.

One of the biggest draws of Xiaomi's Mi 3 is that it runs the company's own version of Android, called MIUI. You can actually download this and install it on your own phone, but Xiaomi's devices all come running this out of the box. It comes with all Google's mobile software, including the Play Store.

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MIUI has a powerful theming function capable of changing the look of the UI as well as add custom effects. Its Ferrari theme plays a loud engine roar when you unlock the phone, for example, as well as changing the colors of the UI to a bright metallic red.

MIUI also makes it easy for you to move apps around, you can do a pinch-out action to show the home screens, flick an app downward to collect them, swipe over to a new screen and move all the collected apps there. If you're just moving one app, you can hold on the app with your finger, but instead of dragging it to the edge of the display as you would do in iOS or most versions of Android, you can use another finger to swipe the screen. It's a simple but great tweak.

The Mi 3 released in Malaysia is the 16GB version equipped with a quad-core 2.3GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor. According to the AnTuTu benchmark, the Mi 3 is ranked number one in terms of speed currently, outperforming key competing handsets including range-toppers like the Samsung Galaxy S4 and HTC One.

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The result of equipping it with such a high-performance chipset shows: the phone responds beautifully when watching videos, playing games or just browsing the Web. While playing games such as graphic-heavy Badland and Angry Birds Go!, they were speedy and extremely responsive without any lag at all.

For its price, the Mi 3 is more than well worth it, and it could give current Android smartphones out there a good run for their money indeed.

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Whether you are a long time iPhone user looking for an easy entry point into the Android ecosystem, or one of those who are now still on any of our local telecom’s legacy 12GB data plans who don’t want to renew their plans, the Xiaomi Mi3 that is an embodiment of fast, cheap and good that should sit comfortably on top of your consideration set.

It comes with Adreno 330 graphics plus 2GB of RAM. Unfortunately, just like the current Nexus handset, which costs RM1158, Mi 3 lacks microSD expansion, so you'll have to be prudent when it comes to apps and content.

There's also no 4G LTE support, which is perhaps our biggest complaint about the Mi flagship, though you do get a full array of sensors, in addition to a garden variety of connectivity options: WiFi Direct; GPS; Glonass; NFC; and Bluetooth 4.0. At 3,050mAh, the non-removable battery is the same as that of bigger devices; thus, it sails through a day and a half of reasonably constant use.

If you need a huge amount of storage for songs and videos, however, 16GB with no microSD slot likely won't be enough for you. That said, it's hard to deny how much value Xiaomi has packed into this phone.