>p class=”dropcap”>Xiaomi has been riding waves of success in the Indian market, with very successful products like the Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 and other disruptors like the Mi 5.
We reviewed the Redmi Note 3 Snapdragon 650 variant recently, and the phone left us mightily impressed in a product segment that sees some of the heaviest, most competitive price wars in the market today. With the Mi Max, Xiaomi is pitching the innards of the Redmi Note 3 in a product segment that sees virtually no competition from all the major OEMs.
Can the Mi Max fill in a rare bracket with a value that none can top, if they dared to try at all?
In this review, we’ll take an in-depth dive into the Xiaomi Mi Max. Rather than listing specs and talking about how the experience felt, this feature attempts to provide a thorough look with contents relevant to our reader base. At XDA, our reviews are not meant to tell a user whether a phone is worth buying or not — instead, we try to lend you the phone through our words and help you come to the decision by yourself. Before getting started, let’s get the specification sheet out of the way:
Device Name:
Xiaomi Mi Max
Release Date/Price
Available Now, INR 14,999 ($225) | INR 19,999 ($300)
Android Version
6.0.1, MIUI 7 ROM
Display
6.44 inch 1080p LCD (342 ppi)
Chipset
Snapdragon 650: 4x 1.4GHz Cortex-A53 + 2x 1.8GHz Cortex-A72, Adreno 510 GPU |
Snapdragon 652: 4x 1.4GHz Cortex-A53 + 4x 1.8GHz Cortex-A72, Adreno 510 GPU
Battery
4,850mAh, Quick Charge 2.0
RAM
3GB | 4GB
Sensors
Fingerprint, Accelerometer, Gyroscope, Proximity, Ambient Light, Electronic Compass
Storage
32GB | 128GB; expandable upto 128GB via SIM1 slot
Connectivity
USB 2.0 Type C, Dual SIM (nano+micro) slot, 3.5mm audio jack
Dimensions
173.1 x 88.3 x 7.5 cm (~74.8% screen-to-body)
Rear Camera
16MP, PDAF, f/2.0, 4K / 720p slow-mo @ 120FPS video
Weight
203g
Front Camera
5MP, f/2.0
Our review unit is the base Snapdragon 650 variant with 3GB of RAM.
Index
Design
Software
Performance
CPU & System
GPU & Gaming
Memory & Storage
Real World Performance
Camera
Display
Battery Life
Audio
Development & Future Proofing
Final Thoughts & Conclusion
Design
The Mi Max is a device whose first impressions primarily revolve around one core aspect of the device: it’s physical dimensions. The device is huge, if you take the average smartphone size in the market as the point of comparison. Most of this hulking body is comprised by a 6.44″ display, as the device boasts of a very impressive 74.8% screen-to-body ratio. For comparison, the OnePlus 3 has a screen-to-body ratio of 73.1%, while the Nexus 6P goes down further to 71.4% and the Redmi Note 3 is up at 72.4%. The bezels on the device are quite reserved, and we’ll touch on this in a bit.
Once you do look past the size of the device, you’ll notice that the design language on the Mi Max is similar to the one found on Xiaomi’s Redmi Note 3, but there is a separate sense of personal identity to the Mi Max.
The Redmi Note 3 sported a single-piece metallic back and side frames, with plastic caps on the top and bottom, and the Mi Max is identical in that regard. But the Max has much more of a brick-like appearance to it, as there are more flat edges than rounded ones. The side frame of the device is flat with thin chamfers on both sides. Where the chamfer ends on the back, the device curves gently to meet the mostly-flat back. The end result is a device that honestly feels like a sheet of metal. The slight curves on the side edges do help a bit in holding, but you’d still be using up most of your hand in making sure you have a decent grip on the device, so the gains are marginal.
The curves do give the device an illusion of being thinner that it actually is. At 7.5mm in thickness, the Mi Max is just 0.1 mm thicker than the OnePlus 3. The numeric figure and the perceived thinness of the phone is astounding when you consider that there is a healthy 4,850 mAh battery inside. The weight of the device, at a good 203 g courtesy of the aforementioned battery, felt a bit disconcerting at first because of how thin the device looks. I am used to holding heavy devices, with the Elephone P8000 that I reviewed coming in at the same 203 g for a 5.5″ display device. But the weight distribution on this one threw me off and took a bit of time to grow acclimatized to. The device does not feel unevenly chunky, but evenly-weighted across the entire physical dimension which in turn is pretty expansive. So if you have the device rested on your palm, you may get the sensation that the phone would topple over (but it didn’t thankfully).
The Mi Max has curved sides and is quite thin. Notice the 3.5mm jack for an estimate on thickness
Moving on to the individual elements of design on the phone, the front of the phone is rightfully dominated by the display. The earpiece is up at the top, flanked by the identical holes on either side — one houses the proximity sensor and the ambient sensor, the other the front camera. On my white color variant, there’s a good sense of symmetry on the front of the device that Xiaomi obviously intended, which becomes apparent when the notification LED lights up from below the colored pane, instead of having its own uncolored circle. The bottom of the device sports the capacitive buttons (with backlight support) for UI navigation. Curiously, the buttons on the sides are closer to the central axis instead of being towards their respective corners. This is presumably to help in reachability in case you could use the device one-handed.
The back of the Mi Max is largely barren. There’s the Xiaomi logo towards the bottom. The fingerprint sensor is towards the top, while the rear camera and the dual-tone flash occupy the upper-left corner. The placement of the fingerprint sensor is a minus point for the device — the sensor itself works wonderfully, but it is placed poorly for a device that wasn’t ever going to be easy to use with one hand. It would have worked much, much more painlessly had it been placed a tad bit lower at points where it would be easier to access for people with medium sized hands. Better, a front fingerprint sensor like on the Xiaomi Mi 5 would have worked a lot better than a rear fingerprint sensor. If on the front, you wouldn’t need to pick up this behemoth and wiggle it around on your palm in order to unlock it. The placement spoils the convenience aspect of the fingerprint sensor, and I was left wondering if I really needed a fingerprint sensor with such hassles. This particular experience is in stark contrast to the Redmi Note 3 and other phones that I have reviewed, where the sensor was placed perfectly for their use cases.
The left side of the device is devoid of any buttons, but houses the hybrid SIM tray. The top of the device sports the 3.5mm earphone jack on the left, the IR blaster and the secondary microphone hole. The right of the device is home to the volume rocker and the power button. The power button was within thumb’s reach for me, but the same could not be said about the entire volume rocker. The response on the buttons was excellent however, and there is no room for any wiggle. The bottom of the device has symmetrical holes for the speaker grille, but only the right side houses the speaker. The primary microphone is likely hidden on the left hand side holes. The micro-USB port occupies the middle position between the two ends.
There isn’t too much to complain about the design aspect of the Mi Max which isn’t directly a consequence of the phone being large (including my complain on the fingerprint sensor within this). While the device feels like it could bend and snap, it did not when I gave it slight tugs. The thinness of the device and its height and width may give the impression that the phone might be malleable, but it retained its shape throughout my usage. Even when placed in my front thigh pockets in my jeans, the phone survived with no deformities to its shape or any sort of bends. Due to the sheer size of the phone, it does stick out from jeans and may cause you discomfort if you tried to bend at the waist. But the device itself was as strong as phones could be, and there was no bend-gate issues with me so far.
It’s not all flowers though, because I did have one complaint with the phone that wasn’t about its size: black bezel borders make an appearance on this phone too. There’s a thin back strip running all around the display, giving the screen a framed appearance when the screen is on; and an illusion of absolute minimal bezel when it isn’t. What’s most annoying about this is that the actual bezels (or more appropriately, the lack thereof) on this device are really damn impressive — we even praised the awesome 74.8% screen-to-body ratio of the device in the starting paragraphs! Considering that people who would buy this device would be heavy media consumers to appreciate such a large screen, the presence of the black bezel border is befuddling since it does nothing but distract. I even wished there was more bezel on the device to aid in gripping, but I sorely wished that it wasn’t a different color than the rest of the front. The Xiaomi Redmi Pro has bezels on its marketing materials so far, so this trend might be on its way out.
When OEMs insist on two different colors on the front, giving us the Black Bezel Border
Overall, the theme of the design on the Mi Max is that you need to know firsthand that a large screen is your first priority. Users who buy this device based on the internal specs and assume that they can get used to the 6.44″ screen will have a steep learning curve as they figure out how to handle the phone without dropping it. The phone is big, unapologetically and unabashedly. It’s the main selling point, and there’s no way to get around it. To appreciate the phone properly, you need to have big hands and physically big pockets (or a purse) because the phone is certainly not for everybody. I am 6′ in height, and can consider my hands to be medium sized and I certainly had issues while handling this Hulk of a phone. Using it one handed was an impossibility, and having it in my pocket and running was a difficulty. But, if you like it big, then the Mi Max is the way to go with no regrets. It’s a top notch Xiaomi device with excellent build quality and a premium feel that scores above its price level.
Software
The Xiaomi Mi Max runs on Xiaomi’s proprietary and closed-source skin, MIUI. On its Chinese launch, the device was promised to be running on MIUI 8 based on Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow. But considering that MIUI 8 continued to remain in Beta for a long time after the release of the device, we can’t 100% stand by this claim. The Indian variant of the device was released with MIUI 7, but based on Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow. Our device did go into a random bootloop for reasons still unknown, but we were able to fix it with the necessary files from Xiaomi. As a result, our review unit runs on MIUI 7.5.6.0 (MBCMIDE) on Android 6.0.1.
Wait, both MIUI 7 and MIUI 8 run on Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow?
Yes and no. It’s complicated. You see, the version of Android remains unaffected by the version of MIUI. So you can have any number of combinations with Android versions and MIUI versions, since updates for MIUI run independent of the Android version.
So there are Xiaomi devices that received the MIUI 7 update, but still continue to remain stuck on Android 4.4 Kitkat (Redmi 2 Prime), while some like this Mi Max are on Android 6.0.1 on the same MIUI 7. And then, MIUI 8 will arrive on Android 6.0.1 for the Mi Max. [A “trick” to recognize the Android version in the Stable MIUI ROMs with a simple glance is to see the starting alphabet for the builds — Kxxxxxx is Kitkat, Lxxxxxx is Lollipop, Mxxxxxx is Marshmallow].
So how disparate are features then? One would assume that the same MIUI version (MIUI 7) on Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow (Mi Max) would have a lot of difference than on Android 5.1 Lollipop (Redmi Note 3). But that is not the case. So similar is the experience of MIUI 7 on the Mi Max with the Redmi Note 3, that my previous indepth review of MIUI 7 stands applicable to the experience on the Mi Max as well. I will note down any differences or additional features in this review, along with some of my qualms with MIUI not covered in the previous review. But for the most part, it’s the same experience.
One of the biggest negatives that I found with my MIUI 7 experience was how Permission Management is made unnecessarily complex to access. Permission management was not a very accessible feature in Android 5.1, so Xiaomi’s implementation could be excused in that instance since they practically made available to every user a feature that wasn’t intended to exist in that Android version. But with Android 6.0.1 embracing Permission Management with open arms, Xiaomi’s stagnation with the same way of accessing these permissions make things confusing, difficult and unnecessary.
Let me explain. In AOSP Android 6.0.1, a user needs to navigate to Settings > Apps and then click on any app to see the permissions it has. A click on the permissions options will then reveal a switch to deny permissions if the user deems necessary. This is management on individual app basis. AOSP also had you covered in case you wanted to control permissions on individual permission basis. All you need to do is to go to Settings > Apps, and then tap the gear icon on the right corner. This opens up a page where you select App Permissions, and then be treated to a list of different categories of permissions along with number of apps installed that have access to that permission. Both these approaches have a common origin in Settings > Apps, and feel familiar to anyone used to AOSP.
Example behavior in AOSP ROMs:
But on MIUI 7 (irrespective of Android 5.1 or 6.0), going through Settings > Installed Apps brings up an app list. Once you select an app, you can scroll down to the Permission Manager and click on it… and a blank page opens. This is where App specific permission management should exist, but for some reason, it doesn’t. Similarly, the gear icon in Settings > Installed Apps does nothing in relation to Permission Management.
So if you do need to access the Permission Manager, you need to find the Security app and click on the Permissions option and then again on Permissions to see the different categories of Permissions. It’s the same menu you’d find on AOSP, and it works about the same way. But it isn’t present where you’d expect it to ordinarily be. The total permissions needed by an app can be found nowhere in the menu — so if you wanted to check if any app was trying to reach up too high unnecessarily, you can’t.
Example of the behavior on MIUI 7:
Outside of this, I did not find anything that felt off to me and that wasn’t noted previously. The MIUI 7 build on the Mi Max improved and added a few features too. For example, the multitasking screen now defaults to open previews instead of just simple screens. There’s also Double-Tap-to-Wake functionality on the Max, and I really appreciated this addition as it meant that I could go without trying to reach the power button when waking up the device.
There’s also some features that although may have had good intentions, did not really work out for me in terms of convenience but your personal mileage may vary. First up is the Quick Ball functionality, which is very similar to the Assistive Touch functionality found in iOS devices and achieves similar purpose as PIE Launcher found in custom ROMs. You can move the “ball” around to any part of the screen as a floating button, and you can reconfigure the options within for commonly used actions, settings and even apps.
Another feature to re-iterate here owing to the large screen is the One-Handed functionality. You can resize the contents of the display to fit within smaller display diagonals anchored at either corner. If you have marginal difficulties in reaching parts of the screen, this feature can help you out in those pinchy moments. But if the phone felt too large for you and you have difficulty handling the physical dimensions eitherways (as was my case), this would do nothing for you.
To wrap things up, MIUI 7 on the Xiaomi Mi Max runs wonderfully overall. MIUI always has been a very different experience when compared to AOSP, and it continues to be so. There definitely is a learning curve to it, and combined with the learning curve that is the Mi Max itself (in terms of handling), the experience might be overwhelming to the average Android user if they did not know what they signed up for. But there’s nothing in MIUI that would denote a sluggish or a sub-par Android experience. A lot of the credit for this goes to the Snapdragon 650 SoC and the 3GB of RAM, but MIUI does keep things in check for an Android skin that does deep modifications.
Performance
If the Redmi Note 3 (Snapdragon variant) set any precedent for performance, it’s that you don’t need to be a flagship to deliver some stellar results. The phone went on to beat several known names in the low end right up to the mid end, and was even deemed to be better in performance than a few yesteryear flagships. The Snapdragon 650 SoC is no joke, and the combination of the Quad-core Cortex-A53 cluster clocked at 1.4GHz with the Dual-core Cortex-A72 cluster at 1.8GHz accommodates a wide variety of use cases with no compromises. The Snapdragon 652 ups the ante by adding in another two Cortex-A72 cores in the performance cluster. The Mi Max starts off the basic variant with the Snapdragon 650 SoC and moves on to the reportedly-better Snapdragon 652 in the higher variants, so the device should be on course to follow along in the footsteps of the Redmi Note 3 and even kick things up a notch.
CPU & System
The Mi Max is a niche product in the >6″ space, so there’s virtually no competition to the device around its own screen size. We can find other phones if we expand our search to include 6″ devices, but all of these devices belong to the upper end of the market, such as the Huawei Mate 8, ASUS ZenFone 3 Ultra (6.8″), Sony Xperia XA Ultra and the Samsung Galaxy A9 Pro. The closest in pricing is the 6″ ZTE Max Pro which was just released a while ago. Because of all of these, it is difficult to compare the Mi Max with similar devices, and so, most of its comparison would have to be SoC-centric rather than competition-centric.
As demonstrated on the Redmi Note 3, daily average tasks are just a breeze for the Snapdragon 650 and its Quad Core Cortex-A53 setups, and the same holds true for the Mi Max as well. Heavier tasks, such as intense gaming, also get done well with the Dual Core Cortex-A72’s . Most consumers would find no difference between the performance on the Mi Max and a flagship, because the Snapdragon 650 leaves very little room for doubt to creep in. On the value front, due to the higher cost of the device, it isn’t as performace-per-buck as the Redmi Note 3, but Xiaomi’s pricing ensures that the phone still trumps ahead in the competition on that end as well. My complaints with multitasking on MIUI were largely offset in this case by the additional 1GB of RAM over the Redmi Note 3 unit I reviewed, and I find that I have virtually nothing to complain about in the performance department. It works and it works well, what can I say.
Is it flagship grade performance based on the benchmark numbers? No. The benchmarks can only be destroyed by true flagships, like the OnePlus 3. The Mi Max is not a flagship, and it never pretends to be one. Scoring and comparison on the basis of pure numbers will put the device behind several Snapdragon 820-totting devices of 2016 which is no surprise. But Qualcomm has seriously upped the game for itself in 2016 after a disappointing 2015, so the Snapdragon 650 is still one of the best bets in the mid-end, upped only by the Snapdragon 652. It performs higher theoretically than most yesteryear’s flagships and comes up above current competition from mid-ends from Mediatek.
For the price tag of the phone, this is the best SoC you can get, hands-down. If you want to do heavy lifting with your device, it might be a better idea in the long run to opt for the Snapdragon 652 with its two additional Cortex-A72 cores in the performance cluster, providing that extra oomph when you need to stretch the limits. For most practical purposes though, the Snapdragon 650 works as good as the Snapdragon 652 and might be a better deal based on its lower price value (since the GPU is also the same on both).
GPU & Gaming
With regard to thermals, the Mi Max does come out behind the Redmi Note 3 (which was a thermal pleasure). Running the extensive GFXBench benchmark made the device get a bit warm, and that is the extent till which the device heats up. The device never gets beyond slightly warm even with other gaming scenarios such as NFS No Limits or FIFA 16 or Pokemon GO for that matter. Repeated benchmarking under these slightly above-ordinary temperatures reveals no signs whatsoever for aggressive thermal throttling, so this slight increase in temperatures is likely just accelerated heat dissipation. I even tried to “heat” the device by running these tests under heavy insulation, but the scores showed only a marginal variance with the device returning to its normal temperatures fairly quickly.
For the GPU, the Mi Max bears the Adreno 510 on both the Snapdragon 650 and the Snapdragon 652 variants. For the mid end where most screens still opt in for 1080p resolutions or lower, the GPU works very well. Since GPU performance is tied closely with the resolution of the display rather than its size, the 6.44″ Mi Max works just as well with the Adreno 510 as the 5.5″ Redmi Note 3 did; both being FHD displays.
Once again, the Snapdragon 650 continues its winning streak with the Mi Max, as it demonstrates that gaming is certainly not even near its weak point. Games work remarkably well, whether they are casual titles like Clash Royale or whether they involve heavy-lifting like Modern Combat 5. Again, it’s deja-vu, as the Max remains well within comfortable heat limits even under intense and prolonged sessions and poses no threat of interrupting your gaming fun with high temperatures of any sort. Once (or more probably, “if”) you get used to handling the dimensions and weight of the device, you will easily get lost within the gaming experience for hours at end — it’s smooth, cool to touch, jank-free and generally impressive.
On titles with softer graphics like NFS: No Limits and FIFA 16, the Mi Max maintained a steady 30fps during gameplay. With Asphalt 8 as well, the game stuck around on the 30fps cap despite being run on highest settings. With heavy graphics game like Dead Trigger 2, the Mi Max did fall behind as it failed to maintain a steady 60fps. While our benchmark app could not properly get an average, the fps hovered within the 50-60 range during gameplay.
RAM Management and Storage
The biggest complaint I had with the Redmi Note 3 that stopped from making it my daily driver was the paltry amount of RAM on the device. The 2GB of RAM on the base variant made multi-tasking a nightmare — apps closed if you exited them and opened anything else. One simply could not have any scope of decent multi tasking — games and the music player did not go together well, nor did YouTube and IM apps. After a while, you thank your stars that Notes and Calculator can at least co-exist. MIUI being a heavy and intensive OS also was as much to blame as the lack of physical capacity.
With the Mi Max, things are off to a much better start. The base variant of the Mi Max starts off with a 3GB LPDDR3 RAM variant while the top guy goes for 4GB RAM. The difference that an additional GB of RAM makes on MIUI can be felt as soon as you start playing around with the device. It now becomes practical to lock popular apps like IM into memory, and you can leave apps and return back to the last position a day later. It’s a whole different experience, which makes the Mi Max work towards providing a superior multitasking functionality than its closest brother. With the 4GB variant, I reckon things would be much more future proof seeing that our needs are evolving, not to mention the eventual multi-window updates to Android and MIUI.
But, the 3GB of RAM inside the Mi Max is still not neck-to-neck with the 3GB of RAM in my other AOSP-based devices. Granted, it is a very noticeable improvement from the 2GB of the Redmi Note 3 base variant, but pure numbers paint a rosy picture of the ground reality. If one goes by the number of apps that can be held in memory, the Mi Max lags out behind the pack mostly because of MIUI and its stock functionality. Most consumers will not notice it, but if you are someone who pushes your phone to its limits often, you will find that the device is not future-proof. For everyday tasks, the Mi Max works just as well as other phones. Also, there are settings inside MIUI that alter multitasking behavior, but we have stuck to the defaults assuming that most normal consumers would not know about these.
When it comes to storage, the Mi Max is back on track to doing things right. The internal storage is good in terms of speed and for its price range, with the Mi Max improving on the scores of the Redmi Note 3. It does not compete with the quick storage solutions seen in flagships that employ UFS 2.0, but I wouldn’t hold that against this device since it never meant to compete in that space. Storage space starts off at a healthy 32GB on the base variant, and kicks it out of the park with 128GB on the higher variant, so most of its target audience wouldn’t likely need an external card. But if they do, the Mi Max does come with microSD support, but you have to choose between using the card or the SIM card as the phone uses a hybrid slot for the same.
Real World Performance
Real world performance of the Mi Max is top notch, despite the existence of MIUI which can be considered both, a feature and a limitation in the same vein. Yes, the skin is heavy, but its is heavily optimized for the hardware. Because of this, there are no lags or stutters within MIUI or while using the phone. Credit also goes to the hardware itself, as the Snapdragon 650 are some trusty shoulders to lean on for an experience that is indistinguishable from phones twice the price.
App opening speeds on the Mi Max are impressive considering that this is a device that is barely a mid-ranger. Again, this is no flagship, but the difference between this and a flagship does no justice to the price gap between the two. For example, Discomark clocked in an impressive 2.368s for opening through Chrome, Gmail, Play Store and Hangouts from cold boot states. This is behind the super-impressive 1.89s of the OnePlus 3 and the 2.057s of the HTC 10, but isn’t too far away either. Most users would not be able to tell the difference in the speeds unless they try to accurately monitor the timings since we are talking differences in fractions of seconds for cold-booting four apps. The difference between the current top dog of Android with 6GB of RAM and Snapdragon 820 with a clean AOSP ROM and a mid ranged phone with 3GB of RAM, Snapdragon 650 and a relatively-heavy MIUI skin is 0.478 seconds for four apps combined. So my incessant harping on about the Snapdragon 650 being legit has some fair basis to it.
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