www.chinaphonearena.com

I wasn't in the market for a new phone until my recent travails and disappointment with the Blackview bv5000. I love my Zenfone 2 so that's definitely staying.

All phones are compromises, there's always something you're missing. In my case battery, price, performance, frequencies, sd slot, memory, size and looks are important. The Xiaomi almost ticks all those boxes. It's got a nice big battery, excellent price, seemingly great performance from the Snapdragon 650, relatively small for a 5.5" phone and looks very nice (I ordered Gold btw).

The compromises are no US LTE bands but since I use 3 Mobile unlimited data roaming in the US and it's 3G, I can live with that especially since T-Mobile 3G is superb. I would have preferred a dedicated SD slot or a 64gb option and I can't understand why few manufacturers provide dedicated sd slots these days. Hybrid seems to be in fashion but I'm certain that will change the same way the stupid thin, thinner, thinnest has over the last couple of years. So I think the Xiaomi will work for me. I chose it over the HTC One X9 (better battery, price, size, soc and looks) and the Honor 5X (better soc, size and battery) and ordered it before I even read Gizbeat's review. Oops!

I'll update this thread once I get my hands on it.

P.S. It's my first Xiaomi and also one of the first that doesn't look like a damned iPhone! Lol

Excellent choice, man. Mine survived getting run over by several cars. Front glass cracked, but the phone is in 100% working condition, including touch...LCD still perfect. Nice perk for Xiaomi is that LCD+touch/glass is generally only $20-40. Touch/glass alone $10-20.

(2016-03-20, 17:13)Gizbeat Wrote: [ -> ]Excellent choice, man. Mine survived getting run over by several cars. Front glass cracked, but the phone is in 100% working condition, including touch...LCD still perfect. Nice perk for Xiaomi is that LCD+touch/glass is generally only $20-40. Touch/glass alone $10-20.

Thanks. That's good to hear. I'm eager to get my hands on it.

(2016-03-20, 17:31)Twotems Wrote: [ -> ]Thanks. That's good to hear. I'm eager to get my hands on it.

I have it for about 19th days so I can say my opinion on this:
Excellent choice, fast, beautiful, great for the money, great build quality, can withstand hard usage (have seen a test that they dived it in water for a minute to see it survive). Even more it has great support and a huge community behind. Antutu (for those that care) average: 76500 (with 7.1.20 latest China Rom). Also I like signal reception (calls, Wi-Fi, gps) which is very good (instant gps, in a second!). The sound is also good from the speaker (mono speaker though) and earphones. The call quality is superb with excellent hearing/speaking.
Didnt like the locked boot loader policy but have since unlocked that bootloader (got permissions and installed dev Rom first, at stable Rom the unlock would suck at 50%). Have installed twrp, a Greek community Rom (which is great, I needed Greek and the global Rom that's out does not have it).
Anyway in free words: excellent choice, sure you ll fall in love with it...

I haven't bothered with the bootloader unlock process. Curious, how long did it take you to get approved @coolgreek ?

(2016-03-21, 03:47)Gizbeat Wrote: [ -> ]I haven't bothered with the bootloader unlock process. Curious, how long did it take you to get approved @coolgreek ?

It took 15 days in my case (it was 2 weeks ago that i got approval, before i got the phone that is). Nowadays it takes about 10 to 14 days. Having an active account at Miui community is said to count (however even new accounts take approval).
About the unlock: unlocked it on Friday, because Friday was the day they released a Developer rom for the RN3 pro with which we would unlock the bootloader (and so it was in my case)! Flashed twrp and then Greek community stable rom in Saturday and been with it since (nice rom btw, based on China stable but without all that chinese bloatware).

PS/EDIT: correction in my first post: Have it for 10 days (not 19)!