Choosing my next phone : The successor to the Mi3

My Mi3 had just celebrated its 3rd birthday, and I finally began to realise that it was time for a change.

There is no doubt about the fact that the Mi3 was a very effective product, especially for its price. It even came with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 chipset which was top-line for its time.

 

Why the change?

I may not even have thought about changing my phone since the Mi3 was serving me well enough. However, the following were the most compelling reasons for a change.

1) 4G Connectivity
One of the biggest drawback of the Mi3 was that it didn't have 4G connectivity. And I sadly missed the entire Jio bonanza because of this. What was worse is that Airtel's 3G network is pathetic when the same location has great 4G connectivity.

2) Storage
The 16GB storage just wasn't enough. And with the variety and size of apps going up day-by-day, I kept running out of space.

3) RAM
The Mi3 came with 2GB of RAM. And though it was more than enough, when you hear that even comparatively low-end phones, these days, come with 3GB of RAM, you end up feeling inadequate.

So after a lot of thought, I finally decided that the Mi3 needs to make way. Which also brought me to the question, who'll be a worthy successor to the Mi3?

What was I looking for?

One thing I knew for sure was that I needed the 4GB RAM / 64GB Storage combination for sure. And the other thing was that the phone shouldn't cost more than 15K.
That's one rule I guess I'll stick to for life, because I believe that anything more than 15K for a phone is a waste of hard-earned money. OK not so hard-earned, but you get the drift! (Another post on my past phone purchases some time soon)

What followed was a lot of YouTube videos (the number of tech channels out there is mind-boggling) and Google searches.

The Redmi Note 4 also came up for consideration, but it really is an old model, and I decided to check out some young blood. And the three recently launched phones that I ended up shortlisting were as follows.

The Contenders

        

        

Lenovo K8 Note
INR 13,999/-

        

Xiaomi MiA1 
INR 14,999/-

        

Moto G5 S Plus
INR 15,999/-

Comparison Time : The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

As you can see, the price difference between these 3 was a thousand each. However, Lenovo's K8 Note had a MediaTek processor (a deca processor, no less) and the other 2 sported the now famous SnapDragon 625. The Lenovo K8 Note was going to be my pick, but reports of a chip set, that got hot under the collar, had started coming in and that was disturbing. Also, though the Lenovo had a bigger 4000 mAh battery, the charge ran out much earlier than the others.

The Software

All three had stock Android (v7 Nougat) out of the box. But the MiA1 was part of Google's Android One, which meant that it would update fast. (as fast as the Pixel series, they say). And Motorola and Lenovo (brothers from another mother, anybody) have had issues with updates in the past. So though they promise updates, they are not going to be as fast as the MiA1, if at all. The MiA1 has already got 3 monthly security updates from Android.

The Hardware

That was on the software front. On the hardware front, the Lenovo had a decidedly cheaper chipset, whereas the Moto and the Xiaomi were almost twins. For a detailed comparison, I always use gsmarena.com. You can find the three compared side by side at the link below.

https://www.gsmarena.com/compare.php3?idPhone1=8776&idPhone2=8699&idPhone3=8794


All three have a dual camera setup and that was a definite draw. However, the MiA1 is the only phone to have a wide-angle and tele-photo combo. This is the same setup used by the One Plus 5 and the iPhone. The other 2 use the not-as-cool RGB and mono-chrome combo. And the results, as seen in the review videos, were generally in the favour of the MiA1. Low light conditions brought out the worst in all of them, but the Moto was slightly better than the MiA1. But in good light, the MiA1, with ots tele-photo lens, definitely had an advantage. Plus, the Moto was noticeably laggy when clicking in the potrait mode.

The Decision

And I guess all said and done, the Xiaomi fan-boy in me just couldn't give up a chance to get another Xiaomi. So after a lot of deliberation, the decision was made and the Xiaomi MiA1 it was.

How did the pure-bred fare? Catch my next blog! (Hint : I am loving it 😍 )


Back Cover for the MiA1