It has been 24 hours since the Xiaomi Mi Max arrived. It is an absolute beast. Currently, I am running the Chinese rom as the official global rom is not available. This meant side loading Google Play Services which was a fairly simple affair once I used the correct apk installer. I have now installed around 100 apps/games from the Google Play Store.

One of the drawbacks of using the Chinese rom is despite selecting English in the language settings, Chinese text does appear in certain apps and menus. This hasn’t stop me setting up the FM Radio channels, the Mi Remote (infra red blaster) for my TV and a lot more. The loudspeaker is mono, goes fairly loud and sounds quite good. Headphone audio is excellent. My Sennheiser HD598se were powered with relative ease.

Battery life is wonderful. Full brightness. Everything on. And still loads of juice left at the end of the day. Every phone should have a 4,850mAh battery! Viewing media on the 6.44 inch screen is fantastic too.

So what about the camera? Well below are some samples I snapped yesterday. Click on each photo if you want to pixel peep at the original.

Whilst perfect conditions for taking photos. I felt the shots were good. Just look how vivid the colours are on the telephone box, yet the sky is the correct shade of blue.

Shot of my village centre.

Now this is my local church. HDR was off.

But with HDR on, the shot is vastly improved.

The Mi Max has tap to focus. So I tried focusing on the graveyard in the distance and it worked.

So now I focused on one of the bars. And it worked again. So far I have been impressed by the camera.

More soon on the Xiaomi Mi Max.