During one of its recent major events held in Beijing, China, Xiaomi introduced two new smartphones, plus a TV streaming box and a pair of high-end headphones.
Xiaomi cements its status as the third biggest smartphone manufacturer in the world by launching not one but two flagship mobile devices to start the year 2015. The two devices are the Mi Note and the Mi Note Pro. Both mobile devices use the phone maker's high-end Mi brand, which should not be mistaken for the company's other low-end smartphone offering, the Redmi Note.
The Mi Note is a dual-SIM handset that comes with a rather large 5.7-inch display screen (with 1080p resolution). As a flagship device, the Mi Note packs some impressive specifications. It has a Snapdragon 801 processor that is supported with 3 gigabytes of random access memory (RAM). The device has two options for internal storage -- customers can either go for a 16 gigabytes edition or one that can hold 64 gigabytes. On the software side, the mobile device runs on Xiaomi's tweaked edition of the Android mobile operating system and the MIUI interface.
The other flagship offering is the Mi Note Pro, which basically is an enhanced (and therefore more pricey) version of the Mi Note. Like its brother, the Mi Note Pro features a 5.7-inch display screen, but this time with 2560 by 1440 resolution. It sports a Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 chip set (so far, a rarity in most flagship phones) and has 4 gigabytes of random access memory (RAM) and 64 gigabytes of internal storage.
Both these two new Xiaomi flagship devices feature a Sony 13-megapixel camera module on the rear that comes with optical image stabilization. On the front, the devices are equipped with a 4-megapixel camera with bigger 2-micron pixels.
Because they are high-end smartphones, they do not come cheap. The Mi Note starts at $370, while the Mi Note Pro is priced at $530.
Apart from the Mi Note and the Mi Note Pro, Xiaomi also unveiled a pair of premium headphones and a TV streaming box.
Perhaps in an effort to directly compete with Apple and Samsung, both of which also offer premium headphone products, Xiaomi is introducing the Mi Headphones (which can work with the Mi Note and the Mi Note Pro devices). The headphones sport a semi-open design and can be purchased for $80. They are a bit expensive for Asian standards, but not as much as Beats.
As for the TV streaming box, Xiaomi is calling it the Mi Box Mini. It comes with a quad-core central processing unit (CPU) that has Cortex A7 ARM cores, 4 gigabytes of internal storage, and HDMI 1.4.
It does not run on Android TV, but it does run on Android 4.4 KitKat. According to Xiaomi, they will be offering the Mi Box Mini for $30.
