Users of the iPhone have accused Xiaomi of being ‘inspired’ by the iPhone design for the Xiaomi Mi 4. Regardless, the phone continues to do well in China, and is on the verge of launching in other countries. It turns out a large section of the people don’t really mind the Mi 4 looking a bit like another phone; No. 1 decided to take this opportunity to build its own clone. Not of the iPhone, but of the Mi 4. Many of you might already know about the up and coming company from China, they’re already quite popular for making a lot of clones. But the No.1 Mi4 is perhaps their best shot at clone making yet.
The phone retails for around the US$150 mark via resellers. It comes with a mind-blowingly similar design; mind blowing not because of the degree of similarity, but because of the fact that it sells for such a low price. It has a solid metal frame around the edges, which although doesn’t feel as polished as the original thing, gives the phone a rather US$300+ look and feel. To top off the cloning, the No.1 Mi4 also gets the much talked about IR blaster feature.
Most other US$150 Chinese phones of today would probably give you 2GB of RAM and perhaps even an octa-core processor. However, the No.1 Mi4 comes with the quad-core MediaTek MT6582 and 1GB of RAM. Perhaps a trade-off many would be happy to make! And, in my books, the MT6582 is a much better SoC in general than the MT6592; I’m sure many of our readers would agree too.
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No.1 Mi4
Xiaomi Mi 4 vs. No.1 Mi4
So, besides the quad-core processor and 1GB RAM, the No.1 Mi4 has a 5-inch display; it’s however knocked down from the Xiaomi Mi 4’s 1080p resolution to 720p. To No.1’s credit, the difference is hardly noticeable. Now, the Mi 4 comes with a really nice display panel, and No.1 would’ve had a hard time sourcing the 5-inch 720p panel that they eventually ship the No.1 Mi4 with.
The rest of the design is literally 1:1, save for the logo (of course). No.1 have gone for the shiny plastic logo on the back as Xiaomi, and in real life it doesn’t look as bad as you think to have ‘No.1’ in place of ‘Mi’. However, not everything in the garden is rosy. There’s a few things that do differentiate the No1. Mi4 from the original thing, and if not on the outset, these are noticeable up close.
For one, there’s quite a lot of light leak on the capacitive buttons below. So much so that it gives you the impression that the notification LED is lit as well! Also, No.1 certainly haven’t used a diffuser to distribute the amount of light that glows from the button cut-outs, making certain sections look brighter than other ones. Light leak isn’t limited to the capacitive buttons; there’s a little leak from the display’s backlight panel as well, which appears to come through from the right edge of the phone.
In a nutshell, there are always some trade-offs that need to be made to build a phone. In this case, No.1 have gone for some high-grade material; however, the high grade doesn’t reflect on the precision in which the materials are put together.
You can find more info about No.1 and the No.1 Mi4 on their official website.
The only downside is 1800mAh battery, I could consider a Doogee Hitman, a inspired Mi4, over this one.
All 3 of these phones (including Elephone P4000) are made in the same factory they just offer different specs. Even so I doubt there will be that much of a noticeable difference with the batteries, even with the Doogee sounding much better on paper.