Welcome to my review of the Xiaomi Mi Max.

Key Features

Yesterday my Xiaomi Mi Max arrived. It is a monster.

– Dimensions – 173.1 x 88.3 x 7.5 mm
– Weight – 203g
– SIM Dual SIM (Nano-SIM, dual stand-by / or combo with micro SD)
– Screen 6.44 inch , 342 ppi , 1080p IPS
– Gorilla Glass 4
– 3/4gb ram 32/64/128gb storage
– IR Blaster
– Gorilla Glass 4
– 16 MP, phase detection autofocus, dual-LED (dual tone) flash, 5mp front
– FM Radio
– 4,850 mAh battery

Phone Basics

I have the 3gb 32 storage, Snapdragon 650 Mi Max. There are larger storage options along with 4gb ram and also a Snapdragon 652. In day to day use the Mi Max has been fluid with no hickups. Screen viewing angles are excellent and sunlight visibilty reasonable too. I have no bluetooth, wifi or other issues either.

The Mi Max comes a Chinese rom. Hopefully, it won’t be long for a Global rom. With the Chinese firmware, despite selecting English in the language menu, 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.

To make this work with Google services, you will need to install Google Play Services APK. This is available from the Xiaomi forums within the Mi5 section. After installing this, you will need to go to the Download app and change WiFi limit size to unlimited, go to the security app and allow all permissions for all the Google apps and services, and allow all the Google apps and services to auto start. Then reboot. Obviously, once a global rom arrives, Google Play services will come preinstalled and minus a lot of the Chinese bloat.

MIUI v7.3 is installed and this will be upgraded to the new MIUI v8.

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.

Camera

Both the front and rear cameras take good photos. The front has several selfie options and I was pleased with the results. The rear camera took great photos in good light. The quality dropped in lower light. In its manual mode it only has a maximum shutter of 0.25 seconds. The camera has lots of different shooting modes shown in my video review further down. It is worth noting that optical image stabilisation is not present.

Camera Samples

Lovely colours with this shot above.

My local church above with HDR off.

Now with HDR on.

The camera is able to focus on specific areas with relative ease.

Video Review

Conclusion

At around £250 this is an amazing piece of hardware and once the global rom arrives will be even better. It also is a giant of a phone yet still manageable.