We have been using Xiaomi phones for more than seven years. So, most of the information here is our first-hand experience. Over the years, we have recommended many of our family members and friends to buy Xiaomi phones. Before writing this article, we also have interviewed many of them. So, this article is the culmination of our own real-world user experience.
We always say that a newly purchased phone would always show super performance. So, the spec sheet should not be the only criterion for phone review. Hardware, software, and how everything holds up after several years should be critical factors for reviewing a phone. Yes, we do know that no one cares about a phone review that was released years ago. But we can always check old phones, measure their performance, and share those experiences with our readers and viewers while reviewing a newly released phone. That will give us an idea of how a new device will hold up after several months.
Pros of Xiaomi phones.
The biggest pros of Xiaomi phones is its price. Below we described a few pros of the Xiaomi phone.
Xiaomi phones are cheap with great hardware.
The first time the Xiaomi phone attracted our attention with its price. Xiaomi sells phones with excellent hardware at a low price. Previously we wrote an article describing why Xiaomi phones are so cheap. You can read that article here — Why Xiaomi phones are so cheap?
Nevertheless, we always encourage our readers to buy a phone that fits their budget. Moreover, buy a phone that has the best hardware within your price range. And as always, Xiaomi always wins. No other phone manufacture in the world that provides excellent phones at a low price like Xiaomi. It is their philosophy to make a great phone and sell them at an economical price.
Xiaomi provides good displays on their phone.
Many people criticize Xiaomi by saying that its phone display is not as good as Samsung. But we politely disagree with them. Xiaomi provides a better phone screen on their phone at any price point compared to Samsung and iPhone. If you compare two phones between Samsung and Xiaomi, which has almost the same price, you would see that Xiaomi packs far superior display and other parts compared to Samsung.
Frequent OS update.
Except for Apple, Xiaomi is the only phone manufacturer that provides updates for their OS. Even Samsung abandons its flagship phone after 18 months and does not give any OS update. But Xiaomi loves their user base and frequently provides OS update even if they are older than 24 months.
Xiaomi’s phone has good battery life.
We used and tested numerous Xiaomi devices and found that all Xiaomi phones have good battery life, at least when new.
However, we have experienced that Xiaomi phones battery degrades after several years. At that time, it takes a long time to charge the phone battery, and the battery struggles to hold a charge for a long time. But this issue is not uncommon in the phone world. Every phone in the world faces this problem, including Samsung’s phone and iPhone.
Cons of Xiaomi phones.
Before we list a few of the cons of Xiaomi phones, let us tell you this, worldwide Xiaomi has thousands of fan clubs. Those clubs do a regular fan meetup at various locations throughout the world. Moreover, Xiaomi does not do any advertisement for their products. They only rely on their user’s word-of-mouth advertisement. It speaks how popular Xiaomi is. We have never seen a fanbase around a company (except Apple) like Xiaomi. So, don’t be discouraged by the cons of Xiaomi phones describe below. But learn these to be an informed buyer. Here are the few cons of Xiaomi phones.
Xiaomi frequently releases buggy OS update.
Xiaomi releases its OS update without mass testing. As a result, each new OS update introduces new bugs. Just visit the Xiaomi subreddit page https://www.reddit.com/r/Xiaomi/ to get an idea of this issue’s extent.
Xiaomi shows ads on their phone.
Don’t be surprised to read this that Xiaomi show ads on their phones native apps. In reality, it’s true for all Chinese made phone manufacturer. Third-party app developers and advertisers subsidize Xiaomi phones. In return, those third-party advertisers show ads on Xiaomi phones. Though it is possible to turn off these ads from the settings menu, still Xiaomi will not stop collecting your usage data. Hence our next point.
Xiaomi collects and sells users’ data.
Though Xiaomi sells hardware, in the core, it is a software company. So, user data is essential for its business. It is their business strategy to sell cheap hardware. This low price attracts millions of users to their Xiaomi ecosystem. It allows them to collect a lot of user data, which they use for themselves and sells to the third party for profit.
We don’t mind this data collection practice by Xiaomi. Look, every company collects our usage data — Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Tiktok, you name it. But, all these companies collect our data, use them to make billions of dollars but shares nothing with us. On the other hand, Xiaomi makes money off our data and share the profit with us by lowering their device price.
Xiaomi copies design from other companies.
Most of the Xiaomi phone design is not unique. They blatantly copy phone design from another company, especially the iPhone. Moreover, they copy the software UI too. Xiaomi’s MIUI is eerily, similar to iOS. It is why Xiaomi is called the iPhone of china. In the design category, Xiaomi shows no innovation.
Xiaomi phones get overheated frequently.
Previously we wrote an article where we explained why Samsung phones get hot. You can read that article here — Why Samsung phones get hot?
Xiaomi phones get overheated too. In Xiaomi’s phone, if you do some process-intensive work such as play video games or edit videos, the phone gets very hot. There are several reported cases where Xiaomi’s phone burst into flames. But those stories did not get much attention. So, from our experience, we found that Xiaomi has not fixed these overheating issues.
This issue arises from the fact that Xiaomi’s MIUI is optimized poorly. Poorly optimized software always uses a lot of resources, which in turn makes a phone very hot.
Xiaomi has poor customer service.
Xiaomi lacks in customer service. If your device has any problem and you take it to Xiaomi customer service, you would get an awful service from them. Most of the time, the service staff don’t know much about the phone. Even if they agree to fix the phone, sometimes it could take months to resolve the issue.
Poor performing camera.
Xiaomi is known to stuff very high megapixel (MP) cameras on their phone. But we all need to remember that a high MP camera does not mean a superb camera.
We know for a fact that the Xiaomi phone camera performs poorly in low light. In fact, a 12MP iPhone camera takes a better picture than the 48MP Xiaomi camera. It’s because not only the camera sensor but also the camera software plays a vital role for a perfect photo. Though Xiaomi is a software company, its software is not as good as the iPhone. That’s why the picture taken by Xiaomi is not that great.
Moreover, we take photos and videos to share on social media such as Facebook, Twitter, or Tiktok. These social media always compresses the images and videos we share. It reduces the quality of these shared videos and pictures. Moreover, phone display plays a vital role in how beautiful an image would seem to us. A photo on a bright saturated AMOLED display would look more attractive compared to a LED display. In short, there’s no point in taking a picture in higher megapixel phone cameras. So, don’t buy a Xiaomi phone by only looking at the camera megapixel.
Xiaomi phones RAM utilization is very poor.
If you buy a Xiaomi phone on the high end, you may not notice this problem. But we used several Xiaomi phone where it has lower than 4GB RAM. All of these phone sufferers severely in performance because the MIUI takes up a lot of RAM space. Even on higher-end devices, you would find that MIUI OS uses almost 50% of RAM.
Conclusion.
Don’t get us wrong. We love Xiaomi phones. We use them and will buy more Xiaomi phones in the future for our personal use. Everything in this world has pros and cons. Xiaomi phones also have advantages and disadvantages. But we believe the Xiaomi phone provides more benefit at the price point than any other phone in the market. That’s why we always encourage others to buy a Xiaomi phone if budget is an issue and don’t mind Chinese phones’ tradeoffs.
Before we go, these are a few frequently asked questions (FAQ) about Xiaomi —
Why Xiaomi phone have ads?
Xiaomi makes very little profit when they sell their phones. According to the CEO of Xiaomi, they cap their profit to 5% per phone. But a company can’t survive with this profit margin. They need another source of income. It is why they collect user data, preloads third-party apps, and shows ads in their OS.
Why Xiaomi battery drain fast?
A newly purchased Xiaomi phone would not drain its battery fast. However, after some years, the battery drainage issue would become noteworthy when the battery becomes old. It’s a culmination of few things — Poor software optimization, bloatware in the OS, old hardware, and low battery performance. All these play a vital role in draining the Xiaomi battery fast.