Xiaomi Mi Max 2 gives you good reasons to buy the budget phablet
Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi which has made quite a name for itself with its light on the pocket but heavy on specs phones, on Thursday, unveiled its latest offering to consumers – the Mi Max 2. The company took the lid of this much-awaited phone at a launch event in Beijing and announced that the phablet will, for now, go on sale in China from June 1 at price upwards of RMB 1699 (roughly Rs 16,000).
The successor to the Mi Max which Xiaomi claims to have sold 3 million units of, will try to bring some more cheer to the increasingly shrinking phablets segment of the market.
The Mi Max 2 expectedly borrows heavily from the first gen device when it comes to design and size, and a quick look at the official spec sheet reveals that it falls very much in line with what many of the leaks that surfaced prior to its launch.
Price, variants, and specifications
Xiaomi has decided to launch the Mi Max 2 in two variants. Though the majority of the specs will be shared by the both variants, the two will differ when it comes to storage which will also serve as the factor that defines their price. The entry-level 64GB variant has been priced at CNY 1,699 (roughly Rs 16,000) while the 128GB storage variant will set customers back by CNY 1,999 (roughly Rs. 19,000).
Both the variants will be adorned by a massive 6.44-inch 1080p display, which will be powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 SoC paired with 4GB of RAM hidden neatly under the hood. A 12-megapixel Sony IMX386 sensor sitting next to a dual-tone flash at the back, and a 5-megapixel selfie camera in the front also finds space on the metal unibody design of the phone.
The two variants also come equipped with a fingerprint sensor placed at the back, as well as an IR Blaster placed on the top of the device and run MIUI 8 – Xiaomi's take on Android Nougat – out of the box.
The package gets its juice from a massive 5300 mAh battery that Xiaomi promises is good enough for watching videos for up to 18 hours, 10 days of music playback, nine hours of gaming, and up to 57 hours of talk time.
Is it a good deal?
The Mi Max 2, much like its predecessor, stays true to the Xiaomi way of offering above par specs at a competitive price. It improves on the previous offering on multiple fronts by adding dual power amplifier stereo speakers for example which the company says is a big improvement over the single speaker unit found on the original Mi Max.
With interesting upgrades under the hood, a larger battery pack that promises 2 days of runtime on a single charge, and nifty additions in terms of features such as Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 3.0 support and reverse charging to help consumers with their arsenal of power hungry devices, the Mi Max 2 looks to be winner from the stables of the Chinese manufacturer.
Though the Xiaomi Mi Max 2 has only been announced for the Chinese market, expect it to find its way across to India soon. And for when it finally does come, the phone with its premium looks, decent specs and above par battery should make a meaningful splash in the Indian market.
(Editor’s note: The phone was launched in India on July 18 at Rs 16,999.)