The Xiaomi Mi 4s comes under the category of upper midrange, with more storage, more battery capacity, and yes, a premium look.

The company has once again gone with the dual-glass design, although when you compare Mi 4s with Mi 5, you will find that, in Mi 4s, there is a different type of metal frame, which offers you much better grip and touch.

Not much experimentation being done by Xiaomi, but the redesign does grab attention, and when you add this up with the hexacore chipset, you have got a very good phone in hand. The productivity of Mi 4s is in line with the Snapdragon 650.

Features

• To begin with, it has 5″ IPS LCD display with 1080p resolution
• Snapdragon 808 chipset
• 13MP f/2.0 main camera
• 5MP f/2.0 front-facing camera
• 4 4G LTE (150Mbps
• Presence of fingerprint scanner
• 64GB storage
• Android 5.1.1 Lollipop (MIUI 7)
• 3,260 mAh non-removable battery

Drawbacks

• Regional availability is quite restricted
• Sealed battery
• Absence of FM radio

Hardware

The Mi 4s has quite similar specifications to Mi 4c, but redesigning has given some extra impetus.

The phone has two sheets of glass front and rear, combined by a solid metal frame. The frame of Mi 4s has quite a circular shape alongside zirconia sand finish. Simply put, it’s grippy and very soft.

You would also like the brushed routine on the rear glass, in addition to the metal accents that are prevalent around the camera.

The phone is light and compact, giving you a ‘special’ feeling.

Above the screen of Mi 4s, there is a presence of earpiece surrounded by a number of sensors on the left portion.

Display, battery life & connectivity

It features a 5″ Full HD IPS display, with 441ppi for pleasantly sharp screen contents. The company has already announced in media that both glass sheets on the phone are scratch resistant without disclosing their brand.

There is a conventional RGB arrangement of the sub-pixels.

The display brightness is pretty low, tailor-made for reading at late night when there is darkness all around.

Xiaomi has included a 3,260mAh battery, quite good for a 5″ device.

With regard to connectivity, it supports 7 LTE bands. Furthermore, it also provides you with a quad-band GSM connectivity alongside tri-band 3G connectivity.

On top portion, there is the IR blaster. Then there is company’s very own MiRemote app, supporting a wide array of devices.

Software

Runs on MIUI 7, there is not much of a surprise that Xiaomi’s customizations offer you plenty and therefore as a user you are bound to be happy.

The lock screen is conventional, to say the least, featuring camera shortcut and click without any kind of widgets. You have an option of going for the Daily Lock Screens. With this, your lock screen wallpaper will be changed after every hour.

Fingerprint unlock is tremendously quick, and with sensor always-on, once you tap, your phone is going to be unlocked.

Apart from the lock screen, there is a presence of Android home screen offering you a choice of four customizable shortcuts. Whatever app or folder you are interested in, you can have it there. So just relax and do what you like.

Performance

Not so costly Xiaomi Mi 4s is powered by Snapdragon 808 chip, featuring six-core processor and Adreno 418 GPU.

The S808 chip processor has two very strong Cortex-A57 cores followed by four energy-efficient Cortex-A53.

The dual glass design may give you a very good feeling, but when it comes to heat management, it’s not ideal. It becomes warm quite quickly.

Verdict

The Xiaomi Mi 4s has pretty much gone the fundamental way, banking on the success of its predecessors. There is certainly improvement when you compare it with Xiaomi Mi 4 and Mi 4c.

The company has given their 100 percent to get the best out of a chipset and screen without going overboard on the budget front.

With an emphasis on the exterior, there is no doubt that it has clicked in a positive manner.

If the look is a parameter for you, there is a good chance that you would love Xiaomi Mi 4S. Another good thing about this latest offering from Xiaomi is that it is quite strong too. Although there is no improvement on the screen resolution yet the viewing quality is good enough.

The 13MP main camera should have given much more, but if you have no issues with steady 13MP shots, it’s a very pleasant experience.

The build quality of the phone is excellent with battery life also quite decent. Talking about the video player, it supports all the common video codec. With an external amplifier, audio quality is excellent.

The Xiaomi Mi 4S price in India is pegged at Rs17,990.