The Xiaomi Mi 3 is a high-end, premium

Android Android may refer to: Science and technology * Android (robot), a humanoid robot or synthetic organism designed to imitate a human * Android (operating system), Google's mobile operating system ** Bugdroid, a Google mascot sometimes referred to ...

smartphone A smartphone is a portable computer device that combines mobile telephone and computing functions into one unit. They are distinguished from feature phones by their stronger hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems, whic ...

produced by

Xiaomi Corporation (; ), commonly known as Xiaomi and registered as Xiaomi Inc., is a Chinese designer and manufacturer of consumer electronics and related software, home appliances, and household items. Behind Samsung, it is the second largest ma ...

made in the Philippines. The Xiaomi Mi 3 was unveiled during the Xiaomi New Product Launch Event 2013 on 5 September 2013, and was released in

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

in October 2013. It features either a 2.3 GHz quad-core

Qualcomm Qualcomm () is an American multinational corporation headquartered in San Diego, California, and incorporated in Delaware. It creates semiconductors, software, and services related to wireless technology. It owns patents critical to the 5G, 4 ...

Snapdragon 800 processor or a 1.8 GHz quad plus one core

Nvidia Nvidia CorporationOfficially written as NVIDIA and stylized in its logo as VIDIA with the lowercase "n" the same height as the uppercase "VIDIA"; formerly stylized as VIDIA with a large italicized lowercase "n" on products from the mid 1990s to ...

Tegra 4 Tegra is a system on a chip (SoC) series developed by Nvidia for mobile devices such as smartphones, personal digital assistants, and mobile Internet devices. The Tegra integrates an ARM architecture central processing unit (CPU), graphics p ...

processor, which support WCDMA and TDCDMA respectively. The device was made available in late November 2013 in

Manila, Philippines Manila ( , ; fil, Maynila, ), officially the City of Manila ( fil, Lungsod ng Maynila, ), is the capital of the Philippines, and its second-most populous city. It is highly urbanized and, as of 2019, was the world's most densely populated ...

and was later available in

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...

and

Malaysia Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federation, federal constitutional monarchy consists of States and federal territories of Malaysia, thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two r ...

. Upon its release, it became the fastest selling smartphone in Xiaomi's history; the company sold 200,000 Mi3 units in

Philippines The Philippines (; fil, Pilipinas, links=no), officially the Republic of the Philippines ( fil, Republika ng Pilipinas, links=no), * bik, Republika kan Filipinas * ceb, Republika sa Pilipinas * cbk, República de Filipinas * hil, Republ ...

within 3 minutes of launch.

Specifications

Hardware

The Xiaomi Mi 3 contains an internal frame of aluminium-magnesium alloy, though the body is made of a polycarbonate. The speakers and

microUSB The initial versions of the USB standard specified connectors that were easy to use and that would have acceptable life spans; revisions of the standard added smaller connectors useful for compact portable devices. Higher-speed development of t ...

port are located at the bottom of the device with the standard-sized SIM card tray and audio jack are located at the top of the device. The power and volume keys are located on the right hand side. Near the top of the device are the front-facing camera, proximity sensors, and

notification LED A Notification LED is a small RGB or monochrome LED light usually present on the front-facing screen bezel (display side) of smartphones and feature phones whose purpose is to blink or pulse to notify the phone user of missed calls, incoming SMS ...

. The MI3 is available in a number of colours, including black, white, pink, blue and silver. The device's display is larger than its predecessor, with a 5-inch, 1080p IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen with an anti-glare coating. The device comes with 16 GB or 64 GB of internal storage and has a 3050 mAh battery.

Software

The Xiaomi Mi 3 ships with

and Xiaomi's

MIUI MIUI (pronunciation: ''Me You I'') is an Android (operating system), AndroidFork (software development), -based mobile operating system developed and maintained by Xiaomi independently of Google exclusively for its smartphones. MIUI includes var ...

user interface. Initially running Android 4.3 & 4.4 it has continuously received updates, with MIUI 5 – a customised version of Android. Later, it received MIUI 6, 7, 8 and finally 9. In January 2016, it was the first Xiaomi device to get official Marshmallow 6.0.1 update, together with Mi 4 and Mi Note. The third-party development is also strong for Mi3 on XDA Developers, there are numerous custom ROMs available from 5.0 Lollipop to 9.0 Pie. Those, who want a unique experience and try something else than Android, can try

Sailfish OS Sailfish OS is a Linux-based operating system based on free software, and open source projects such as Mer as well as including a closed source UI. The project is being developed by the Finnish company Jolla. The OS first shipped with the o ...

, an operating system based on

Nokia Nokia Corporation (natively Nokia Oyj, referred to as Nokia) is a Finnish multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications industry, telecommunications, technology company, information technology, and consumer electronics corporatio ...

's MeeGo, exclusively available on the N9.

Popularity

The phone has enjoyed demand in India, with it going out of stock on

e-commerce E-commerce (electronic commerce) is the activity of electronically buying or selling of products on online services or over the Internet. E-commerce draws on technologies such as mobile commerce, electronic funds transfer, supply chain manageme ...

retailer Flipkart, after just 39 minutes of going on sale at midday on 22 July 2014. In the next batch of sales, the Mi 3 went out of stock in less than 5 seconds and it is believed that the stock consisted of 10,000 phones. On 5 August 2014, Mi 3 was again sold out on Flipkart in just 2 seconds due to unprecedented demand. On 12 August 2014, 20,000 units went out of stock in 2.4 seconds on Flipkart. On 19 August 2014, Another 20,000 units went out of stock in 2.3 seconds on Flipkart. On 4 October 2014, Xiaomi announced on their official Facebook page that Mi 3 would be going for sale one last time. However, there was no flash sale, and only customers who had entered to buy the handset five times or more would be automatically selected by Xiaomi and Flipkart. The handset would be added to their cart automatically on 6 October, and all they had to do was just click on the "Buy Now" button. There was no time limit, but if the customer didn't want to buy it, it would be allocated for a second batch of buyers.

Successor

The

Xiaomi Mi 4 The Xiaomi Mi 4 (Chinese: 小米手机4) is a smartphone developed by the Chinese electronics manufacturer Xiaomi for its high-end smartphone line, and was released in August 2014. Xiaomi held an event to formally introduce the high-end phone, ...

is a smartphone developed and produced by Xiaomi Inc, that was released in August 2014. It is the successor to the Xiaomi Mi 3.

References