Tuesday, July 18, 2017

Xiaomi Launches the new Mi Max 2 In India for ₹16,999 ($265)

At its launch event in Delhi, Chinese smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi has launched its latest phablet device, the Mi Max 2, in the Indian market. The Mi Max 2 is the follow up to the surprisingly-successful Mi Max, which Xiaomi claims sold upwards of 3 million units worldwide. With the Mi Max 2, the company is hoping to sell even more units of its monstrous device to reach its bold goal of shipping 100 million smartphones in 2017.

The Mi Max 2 sports an all-metal design with a curved edge back and rounded corners that do not dig into the palm. Unlike its predecessor, which featured plastic caps on the top and bottom to facilitate signal transmission, there are no plastic bits anywhere on the Mi Max 2. The device features discrete antenna lines running on the top and bottom to allow for a more seamless look. On the front, the Mi Max 2 looks almost identical to its predecessor. We're still looking at a 6.44-inch Full HD IPS display, coated in 2.5D glass with Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection. The ambient light and proximity sensors, the earpiece, and the front camera sensor are lined up up-top, while capacitive buttons are located below the display.

On the back, there is a rear camera sensor in the top-left corner along with a dual-tone LED flash module, while a recessed fingerprint scanner sits towards the top. The device also houses a dual speaker setup, comprising of one bottom-firing speaker and one front-facing speaker, to offer users a "stereo" sound experience when using the device in the landscape mode.

The Xiaomi Mi Max 2 is powered by the Snapdragon 625 octa-core SoC, featuring eight ARM Cortex-A53 cores clocked at 2.0GHz coupled with an Adreno 505 GPU. Theoretically speaking, this is a step back in terms of raw performance since there are no Cortex-A72/73 cores to give a performance boost in CPU intensive tasks. The original Mi Max came with a comparatively more powerful Snapdragon 650/652 SoC that, through its use of Cortex-A72 and Cortex-A53 cores, provided a great balance between performance and battery life. However, the Snapdragon 625 is still a very capable SoC that provides a decent level of performance that should be more than enough for most users, especially given it'll likely be quite power efficient. The Mi Max 2 will be also available in only one storage variant (4GB RAM + 64GB) in India.

Unlike other mid range offerings from competing OEMs, there is no fancy dual-camera setup on the back of the Mi Max 2. The device packs a 12MP Sony IMX386 sensor with f/2.2 aperture, PDAF, and a dual-tone LED flash on the rear. Xiaomi claims the new sensor with its large pixel size captures 56% more light to offer an improved camera experience even in low-light conditions.

One of the main highlights of the Mi Max 2 is its gigantic 5,300 mAh non-removable battery, a step up from the Mi Max's 4,850 mAh battery. Xiaomi is touting up to 18 hours of video playback, 57 hours of talk-time, 31-days of standby time or two full days of usage on a single charge. The device also fixes one of the complaints we had with the last year's Mi Max — its slow charging speed. Thankfully, that shouldn't be an issue anymore on the Mi Max 2 as the device comes with a USB Type-C port that supports Quick Charge 3.0 which, the company claims, can charge the battery from zero to 68% in just an hour.

On the software side of things, the Mi Max 2 comes running Android 7.1.1 Nougat out-of-the-box with Xiaomi's own MIUI 8 running on top. Even though the device is running on Android Nougat, there is no split-screen mode available on the stable build of MIUI 8; the feature is currently limited to the beta version of MIUI 8 only.

During the event, Xiaomi also announced that they will be partnering up with Reliance Jio to offer Mi Max 2 owners additional data bundle of up to 100 GB. Users will receive 10GB of additional data on every recharge of RS.309 and above.

As a part of Xiaomi's new retail strategy that focuses more on the offline retail, the Mi Max 2 will be available from both online and offline stores at the same time. Online retailers such as Amazon.in, Flipkart, Tata Cliq and Paytm Mall will be stocking the device, while  offline partners include Poorvika, Sangeetha, BigC, Lot Mobiles, Ezone, Hotspot and Vijay Sales.

The Mi Max 2 will be exclusively available from Mi.com and Mi Home via a special sale on July 20 and 21 followed by a wider release on July 27th. The device comes in Matte Black color option, and will cost ₹16,999 ($265) in India.


What are your thoughts on the Xiaomi Mi Max 2? Has Xiaomi achieved the right pricing for the device? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!



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