Xiaomi Mi 4i turned out quite an interesting smartphone, a worthy alternate of the original Mi 4. The new Mi 4i model changes the design, keeps the 5″ screen and 13MP great camera, but comes running on the Snapdragon 615 chip. There is a beefy 3,120 mAh battery, which should keep the Mi 4i up for days.
The MIUI v.6, just like before, offers Performance and Balanced power modes. The Performance mode allows the phone to use all processor cores, while the Balanced limits the CPU usage in order to save battery. Throughout our tests – call, video, browser and standby we used the Balanced mode, as any MIUI users will do most of the time. We tried switching to Performance and re-test the device, but we noticed just minor differences in the results.
The Xiaomi Mi 4i did very impressive on the 3G talk time test, where it outed an admirable 21 hours endurance.
The MIUI web browser has been improved and not it didn’t crash once during our battery test, plus we saw noticeable performance boost. Xiaomi Mi 4i lasted almost 8 and a half hours on our web script, far from impressive, but good nevertheless.
Xiaomi Mi 4i offered very capable integrated video player and its playback endurance turned out equally good. The phone’s battery dropped down to 10% a few minutes after the 10 hour mark.
Finally, we’ve tested the single-SIM and dual-SIM stand-by performance of the Mi 4i. If using one SIM card, the Mi 4i ran out of juice in 9 days and few hours. When packed with two active SIM cards the Mi 4i’s battery went dead in 7 and a half days.
So, in our battery test the Xiaomi Mi 4i scored a 64h rating, which means you can count on a little over two and a half days if you do an hour each of calling, browsing and video playback a day. Opting for using the device with just one SIM card active, you can squeeze a little more out of the battery. The single-SIM endurance rating is 67 hours.
Our proprietary test also measures the battery draw in standby, which is not featured in the scorecard but is calculated in the overall rating.
The battery testing procedure is described in detail in case you’re interested in the nitty-gritties.
The MIUI v.6, just like before, offers Performance and Balanced power modes. The Performance mode allows the phone to use all processor cores, while the Balanced limits the CPU usage in order to save battery. Throughout our tests – call, video, browser and standby we used the Balanced mode, as any MIUI users will do most of the time. We tried switching to Performance and re-test the device, but we noticed just minor differences in the results.
The Xiaomi Mi 4i did very impressive on the 3G talk time test, where it outed an admirable 21 hours endurance.
Talk time
- Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro 10.1 LTE 46:44h
- Yota YotaPhone 2 22:09h
- Samsung ATIV SE 22:05h
- Xiaomi Redmi Note 21:41h
- Samsung Galaxy Note Edge 21:39h
- Motorola RAZR MAXX 21:18h
- Xiaomi Mi 4i 21:02h
- LG Optimus G Pro E985 20:45h
- HTC One M9 20:44h
- Sony Xperia Z1 Compact 20:42h
- Motorola DROID RAZR MAXX 20:24h
- Motorola RAZR i XT890 20:07h
- Pantech Burst 4:46h
Web browsing
- Huawei Ascend Mate2 4G 16:41h
- Samsung Galaxy Note II N7100 8:48h
- BlackBerry Q10 8:42h
- Motorola Moto E Dual SIM 8:42h
- Motorola Moto E 8:42h
- Sony Xperia M2 Aqua 8:38h
- Xiaomi Mi 4i 8:27h
- Samsung Galaxy Alpha 8:25h
- Asus PadFone 2 8:20h
- Nokia Lumia 735 8:20h
- Nokia Lumia 810 8:20h
- Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3 I9200 8:17h
- Samsung Galaxy Nexus I9250 3:01h
Video playback
- LG G Flex 19:57h
- Apple iPhone 5s 10:31h
- HTC Butterfly 2 10:26h
- LG G2 mini 10:23h
- Nokia Lumia 735 10:20h
- Apple iPhone 5 10:12h
- Xiaomi Mi 4i 10:11h
- HTC One (M8) 10:11h
- Samsung Galaxy K zoom 10:08h
- Samsung ATIV SE 10:07h
- Sony Xperia M2 10:04h
- HTC First 10:03h
- Nokia Lumia 710 3:27h
So, in our battery test the Xiaomi Mi 4i scored a 64h rating, which means you can count on a little over two and a half days if you do an hour each of calling, browsing and video playback a day. Opting for using the device with just one SIM card active, you can squeeze a little more out of the battery. The single-SIM endurance rating is 67 hours.
Our proprietary test also measures the battery draw in standby, which is not featured in the scorecard but is calculated in the overall rating.
The battery testing procedure is described in detail in case you’re interested in the nitty-gritties.