Xiaomi Mi4i: 40,000 units sold out in just 15 seconds

Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi’s Mi4i, a handset it tailored for the Indian market and launched last week, went on sale on e-commerce platform Flipkart on Thursday. And, 40,000 units of the phone were sold out in 15 second flat.

There surely was some frenzy among buyers for this device. The product seems to have an edge over peers in some of the key features — be it display, battery, software or camera. Overall, the mobile is one of the best available in its price range. In what could be the only trouble, the Xiaomi Mi4i (pictured) doesn’t have a microSD card slot. Though companies in general are doing away with this, users in India still love the feature. Xiaomi has, instead, offered a USB facility: You can connect it with a pen drive for file transfers.

Business Standard looks at Xiaomi’s offerings in its latest product and deconstructs the reasons for the hype.

Touch: The front of the mobile has a fully laminated OGS Corning Concore protection. That means it has a full-sheet ion-exchanged glass that enables integrated touch. It enables smooth design and its high-touch sensitivity supports the most sophisticated electronic devices. There’s also an LED notification light on the front.

Battery: The Mi 4i has a battery (3,120 mAh) that is 7.8 mm thick and weighs only 130 g.

Display: A five-inch full-HD IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen display with a 1080 x 1920 pixel resolution that roughly translates into 441ppi.

Operating system: It runs Android 5.0.2 Lollipop with the company’s own MIUI 6. This gives the option to customise icons, ringtones, fonts, status bar, even dial pad and messaging panels. MIUI 6 supports some local languages, too — Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam.

Processor: The Xiaomi Mi4i is powered by a 1.7GHz quad-core Qualcomm MSM8939 Snapdragon 615 CPU, with Adreno 405 GPU and 2GB RAM. It supports 4G LTE on both SIMs.

Storage: It comes with 16GB of internal storage, of which about 12.90GB is available for use.

Camera: The Mi4i sports a 13-MP rear camera with autofocus, dual-LED (dual tone) flash and a capable HDR mode. There’s also a 5-MP front-facing camera. Both cameras can shoot 1080p at 30fps.

USB on-the-go: This feature means that you can connect a compatible pen drive to the Mi4i and transfer data from one device to another.