Xiaomi sends this beastly phone in a clean looking white box, and includes a USB C connected fast charger with Fast Charge 3.0, some paperwork, and a sim tray ejector. Nothing else needed really, although including a protective ca many of their higher end phones would have been a nice addition. Since this phone has a 3.5mm audio jack no dongle is needed… YEAH!
DISPLAY (With ON-SCREEN Graphics)
This is certainly one way to go NOTCHLESS! Xiaomi must spend quite a bit of time trying to buck that trend with their Mi Max series, and this massive device. It’s a true mid-grade type model with an all aluminum body with glass up front. The black aluminum on this model is a bit of a fingerprint magnet, but thankfully it’s not all that visible due to the matte finish. I DO like how this phone looks with it’s sleek design all the way around and clean back. Placing the dual camera in the upper left corner and the modest fingerprint reader in the upper center, with only the smallish Xiaomi logo (and some tiny “designed by” text) towards the bottom makes the large phone seem even larger. Well done.
The Mi Max 3, at 176.2mm tall, 87.4mm wide, and surprisingly thin at slightly more than 8mm deep, feels more comfortable to hold than I expected, due to the well-rounded back edges. THIS is definitely NOT a one-handed device, but there’s plenty of room to hold on while gaming or watching videos.
Those videos will be viewed on a humongous 6.9 inch IPS LCD screen with an 18:9 ratio 2160×1080 screen making for a somewhat smooth 350ppi. Pixels will likely be visible, but shouldn’t heavily affect the visual experience. Color seems fine, and Xiaomi adds in a ton of options for tweaking the color to your preference, which is something I know we are seeing more in phones these day. Xiaomi does color right! The device isn’t the brightest in sunlight, and in fact, felt more like a mirror at times, so you’ll have to keep the sun in front of you for optimal outside use.
The Mi Max 3 has a familiar button layout for most Xiaomi users with the Power and volume rocker on the right side, and the hybrid dual SIM card tray on the left. Where things get a little funky is the top, which is where Xiaomi placed the 3.5mm audio jack, along side an noise reduction assist mic and an IR blaster, and instead used both sides of the USB-C port on the bottom for a Speaker and amplifier system.
About the speaker setup, the earphone doubles as a second stereo speaker, but only just so but adding only a slight bump in the highs. It does seem to add to the dimension of the sound, but only a small boost. I DO like the stereo speaker usage, but would’ve preferred more from the earphone speaker. This speaker layout seems to be decent, but far from groundbreaking… Check out the sound quality here…
Not bad at all. I feel the sound is a bit more muffled than other midrange devices, which is a surprise given the real estate offered on the bottom and use of the earphone speaker.
Internal Hardware Specs
Starting with the MIUI 9.5 skin on top of Android 8.1 Oreo, powered by a Snapdragon 636 chipset the Mi Max 3 mostly gets the job done on a budget. Paired with an octa-core 1.8GHz Kyro 260 CPU and an Adreno 509 GPU allows for decent gaming, but as you can see, not at the highest of resolutions, and with some lag and stuttering at higher quality settings. There are 2 options for the Xiaomi Mi Max 3 with a 4gb RAM/64gb storage option, like I have here, and a 6gb RAM with 128GB storage upgraded version. Also, you can add up to 256gb additional storage in the hybrid-sim tray… Video playback on the 4gb ram Max 3 is a bit choppy with 4K footage, however, I feel the 6gb version shouldn’t have many issues. Scrolling through menus and the UI is speedy enough with either setup.
With pretty much the same software as the sweet Xiaomi Mix 2S and Mi 8, the Mi Max 3 is in great shape to offer a smooth user experience. Xiaomi designers paid attention to some well know fruit company and included a brilliant, and easy to use gesture system that makes me want this style of interface on my daily driver. Swiping up to get to home, holding for a moment to get to multitasking… it’s just so smooth and natural! I really like some of the in-built animations, such as when swiping back and forth, you can see the page bending with your touch.
If you aren’t a big fan of the gestures, you can still use the standard Android navigation system at the bottom of the phone but I feel you’d have to be a real android prude to not use the gestures. They made my experience better then without. No question.
Setting up the Fingerprint scanner is simple as all you do is press your finger and lift it a few times and it’s set.
Setting up the facial recognition is quite similar. Simply place your phone in front of your face and it’ll take a quick scan. Then, next time when you want to unlock your phone, you don’t have to pick it up to access the fingerprint scanner on the back. I found the facial unlocking was pretty good, and I absolutely love the option to double tap the screen to wake, then the facial recognition takes over and near instantly unlocks the phone.
Aaaand then there’s the battery… All 5500 mAh of it! That’ll certainly power you through the day. This device will, in fact, also act as a power bank for your lesser batteries friends and/or other devices. That’s pretty sweet! When/If you run out of battery charge, Xiaomi has you covered with a speedy 18w fast charger that’ll get you un to 70+% in an hour.
Camera
The cameras on the Xiaomi Mi Max 3 are as mid grade as the device. A main 12mp f/1.9 shooter, paired with a 5mp camera that I guess it’s there to help with the AI options, that has good detail, decent color, and fair dynamic range, however, it is slightly slow compared with similar mid-range camera phones. The Max 3 comes with quite a few of the standard-type modes, and includes a few groovy ones like the AI mode and night shots with less noise in the HHT option (The phone will take multiple images which will use the differing information to remove the noise electronically. In my experience, it definitely gave slightly better detail and a less “muddy” image in low light.). I DO like the ability to change the contrast, saturation, and sharpness for those that want to edit their shots after the fact.
In general use, I found the images to be ok, but mostly just a bit of a mixed bag, with some shots slightly blown out in the highlights, with others close to spot on. For still images, owners of this behemoth will have a decent value camera in their (large) pockets… or likely their bags as I’d not recommend sitting with this phone in your pocket.
When it comes to videos, I find the footage not all that great, with only Electronic stabilization at 720p/1080p, but none at 4k… which is unfortunately quite standard from most mobile phones these days. I found the videos to look just good enough for general social media use, however, so most people should be just fine with the results.
SPECIAL FEATURES
Let’s give Xiaomi some credit here. They’ve created a budget-friendly phablet that is pretty user friendly, with it’s fantastic MIUI 9.5 (And I’m sure to get MIUI 10 soon.), looks great, can take decent photos, and gaming/videos/answering emails is all done without too much sacrifice for general users and mid-target buyers. If you wish to buy the Xiaomi Mi Max 3, the 4gb RAM/64gb storage option is ¥1699 (about $250usd) and the 6gb RAM/128gb storage option is ¥1999 (about $300usd.).
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