Xiaomi's latest smartphone Mi4i priced at Rs 12,999; launches wearable gadget Mi Band at Rs 999

Chinese smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi has unveiled its latest smartphone Mi 4i smartphone in the country, pricing it aggressively at Rs 12,999, as also its wearable gadget water-resistant fitness band Mi Band at an even more competitively priced bracket of Rs 999.

The smartphone, the first to be developed outside China and launched globally in India (but will be available in other markets eventually), comes strapped with the latest version of Android- Lollipop.

Xiaomi, counted as one of the two most valued startups around the globe, is looking at a bigger chunk of the market in India with a global launch of the new gadget in the country. In the past, its smartphones were rolled out in India months after they started selling in China and other markets.

Mi 4i will be initially available for purchase exclusively on Flipkart.com on April 30, 2015 and later on all the others sites including its own website. The registrations for buying the handset started on Thursday.

The firm had generated a lot of buzz with its previous handsets sold through a flash sales model made through Flipkart last year. It had recently started selling some handsets offline too.

Xiaomi made its debut in the Indian smartphone market in July last year with the launch of the Mi3 smartphone. Over the last few months it rolled out new devices including Mi4 and RedMi 2.

Here is a look at the specifications of the new devices.

Mi4i

The smartphone features a 5 inch full HD Sharp/JDI display, saturated with up to 95 per cent of colours from the NTSC palette with 441 ppi pixel density. It runs on the Android's latest Lollipop customised with its own MIUI 6.

Powered by a 2.5 GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon with 615 octa-core processor, the smartphone has 2GB RAM and comes with 16GB on-board storage.

Mi 4i has a 13 MP rear camera with f/2.0 aperture dual tone flash and also includes torch feature for low light focusing and supports 1080p video recordings. It also has a 5 MP front camera and a built-in tool that applies one of 36 smart profiles for an all-natural glow.

The dimensions of the device are 138.1 mm x 69.6mm x 7.8 mm and the company has provided a 3120mAh battery in the device. The smartphone comes with GPS (with GLONASS) support.

It supports video formats like H.264–Baseline/Main/High, MPEG4–simple/ASP, H.264–0, VC-1/WMV9–Simple/Main, VC-1–Advanced and audio formats including PCM, AAC/AAC+/eAAC+ , MP3, WMA – V9 and V10, AMR – NB and WB, FLAC, APE.

Mi Band

The band analyses fitness and sleep activities and features a Bluetooth chip and accelerometer. The Mi Band can be powered for 30 days on one charge, the company claims.

It is synced with the Mi Band app in real-time via Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) to view user's fitness and sleep records. It also works as an incoming call alert.

The dimensions of the device are 36 mm x 14 mm x 9 mm and has a IP67 water/dust resistant. Its weight is 5.0 gm and Xiaomi has provided a 41mAh battery in the device.

It is compatible with iPhone models 4s and above that run on iOS 7.0 and above and requires Mi 3, Redmi Note 4G or any device with Android 4.4 or updated version. It also requires bluetooth 4.0.

The length of the device can be adjusted between 157 mm and 205 mm and it is available in six colours.

The Chinese company will also undertake a promotional activity on its website mi.com through which Indian customers can register to buy the Mi Band for Re 1.

It will compete with a bunch of wearable gadgets launched over the last one year. These include names like Indiagames' founder Vishal Gondal's GOQii, which is priced much higher but comes with a personal trainer.