OnePlus, for the longest time, talked specifications and raw grunt. For the first time yesterday, OnePlus gave up the ‘flagship killer’ motto and dished out a device that seems to concentrate on design instead of benchmark capability, in the new OnePlus X. Sure, it doesn’t have the newest CPU around, but 5-inch phone users don’t have much to choose from anyway.
The Xiaomi Mi 4c, on the other hand, has been around for a while now. The Mi 4c is what Xiaomi wanted the Mi 4i to be, and what the Mi 4i could not be.
A newer processor (plus some new-gen tech) added to the stellar build and form that was the Mi 4i make the Mi 4c a device that commands a position on every probable list of sub-$300 phones.
OnePlus X vs Xiaomi Mi 4c
We’re yet to get our hands on the OnePlus X, but from what we can tell, the phone is a beauty to behold. The glass plus metal/ceramic combo seems to work as advertised… while on the other hand, the Mi 4c keep chipping away with its smooth yet grippy polycarbonate back that everyone seems to love.
Let’s see how the phones fare against each other with a very objective view of the specs on offer versus the price.
OnePlus X
We’ve kind of grown used to OnePlus’ hype that has been accompanying each of its launches, right from the OnePlus One to the Silver Bullet earphones. The OnePlus X, however, told a different story. The phone is about subtlety and about doing what you do best, instead of trying to do all things at once.
The OnePlus X is a phone that power users will want to own… power users that care for design. One might argue that the OnePlus X is a 2015 version of the OnePlus One; in that case, I’d like you to know that the OnePlus X has a very specific market which most likely doesn’t include you. It’s for people who are looking for an affordable alternative to some phone that are usually sold with a contract.
In all, the OnePlus X is a device that targets a very niche market which makes it interesting to see how it fares.
Xiaomi Mi 4c
READ: Xiaomi Mi 4c review
Xiaomi seemed to have lost their way around the middle of this year. The Mi 4i was a disappointment for most, and the Redmi Note 2 promised a tad more than it delivered. Nonetheless, the Mi 4c showed that Xiaomi still had it in them to dish out a phone that isn’t just good looking, but also worth every penny its sold for.
The Mi 4c isn’t the most powerful phone on the planet (which actually makes it a very close competitor to the OnePlus X), and it also has only a 5-inch screen… which again means that the Xiaomi Mi 4c, like the OnePlus X, isn’t a phone that is for the masses but rather, a specific section of the market.
The time that Xiaomi bought between the Mi 4i launch and the Mi 4c announcement meant that a few goodies like a new processor, SideTouch, etc., could be added to the Mi 4c while maintaining an affordable price tag.
OnePlus X vs Xiaomi Mi 4c: Specifications
[table id=213 /]OnePlus X vs Xiaomi Mi 4c: Conclusion
It’s actually very difficult to choose among the two phones; while we started this comparison as an objective one, the choice made will have to be highly subjective.
The Snapdragon 801 is one of the best SoCs to have come out in the recent past, but the Snapdragon 808 is slightly more adventurous, in the sense that newer tech has been put into it, which means you get more out of less.
The Mi 4c will, in most cases, outshine the OnePlus X with its battery, and probably even the camera; but the OnePlus X is a newer device which will run a near-stock version of Android, which will give it the speed the Mi 4c probably won’t ever offer. Xiaomi listen to their users, but that also means that the user is a beta tester. On the other hand, OnePlus ROMs are usually more polished when they do come out.
It comes down to features (Mi 4c) vs robustness (OnePlus X). The choice is yours to make!
that’s the real competition and it’s no easy to say which one is better: they both have their pros and cons.
it’s up to personal taste.
personally i don’t know which one i would pick.
i like the variety of LTE bands of the OPX but i hate the small battery (even the 3000 mha is getting tight to me)
i don’t mind the policarbonate of the MI4c:
true that metal finish makes the phone look better but it also add some weight and you can notice the usage a lot (scratches and denting)
tough decision.
Ohhhhh!!!! Very interesting, I smell fingerprint reader and big camera and double led for it…
Xiaomi might started to implement lte band 20 because redmi 2 pro seen passed on fcc with that lte band for usa market
If you lived in Europe, you would not get the Xiaomi anyway because it doesn’t support LTE band 20 (800MHz) which is probably the most popular frequency in EU.
not true, band 3 and band 7 are more popular than band 20.
i know that there are few carriers that use band 20 only, but that’s not Xiaomi problem since the 3 international bands are 1/3/7.
plus, band20 is not supported by almost the majority of the Chinese manufacturers and not just Xiaomi.
The problem is that band 20 is used in the country. It has wider range. In cities there is 3G so people usually don’t need LTE there. LTE is important where otherwise you would only have EDGE. At these locations the band 20 is usually used. Not in the whole Europe but in a lot of countries.
yes, i’m aware of that.
But Xiaomi and all those Chinese companies that have absolutely no business in Europe can’t justify the addition of that band.
The rule is that you should only count on those companies that have business there like Huawei or Oneplus.
the surprise are phones like ZuK which is sold internationally and lacks of band20 or Meizu that sells internationally through Meizumart
@disqus_0lJZ8Bi7SK:disqus even though the battery is at 2525 mAH, it would still be their with Mi4c, due to the fact that Oxygen OS is very light almost stock android and AMOLED display, better battery consumption than IPS display.
But lets see how the review goes. Lets have our fingers crossed….
agree about the amoled display, i don’t think the OS will benefit significantly, especially with the new release of MIUI 7.
the parameter to consider is the better efficiency of SD808 clocked @ 1.80GHZ over the SD801 clocked @ 2.33GHZ.
either way, even if the OPX will get a better battery life, it won’t be that good to compensate 500mha.
obviously this is only my opinion, I’ll be glad to be proven wrong.
but MIUI 7 is for mi4c.
and yes lets get this baby on some benchmarking
it will be 10-14 days before we get anything
And on top of that, Sd801 is 32bit stuff so most likely opx have done some work to optimize it but won’t be as much as…
Mi 4c for me.
SD801 is so much chraper these days, the OnePlus X should have been priced at 189$, at 259$ I’ll take the Mi4c any day of the week.
you speak my language 😀
I would buy it but it has two critical flaws I can not accept:
1) No SD slot
2) No LTE 800MHz
Each of them is a deal-breaker for me.
For me it comes down to two things: camera and software. I haven’t been impressed with a OnePlus camera yet and I prefer MIUI to stock Android.
Not cheap they have invested a lot of money into cloud services, SD card is a competing product.
What balco means (IMO) by competing product/service is any product that is an alternate to an existing product. functionally SD card and cloud do the same thing – give the user space to store. however sd card is physical, under users’ control, costs less and doesn’t need an internet to move apps and files.
correct me if i am wrong, in a hypothetical situation, lets say if you have to choose between SD card that gives you 32/64/128 GB space and cloud that gives you 10 GB space which keeps increasing as you use it up – what will you choose? Assume that internet is fast, free, there is no network loss etc. in this hypothetical scenario, i would choose cloud coz if i lose my device, i still have everything on the cloud. and cloud doesn’t get damaged like an sd card does on prolonged us. plus sd card has fixed storage capacity.
you might want to look up nextbit.com and their Robin phone. conceptually i like it, it is a “cloud” first phone. 🙂
SD cards are designed to be a solution for you to store things you don’t want on your phones hard Drive. So is Cloud Storage.
It’s like Google Drive, Xiaomi gives you space in the cloud to store all your stuff and when you need it you can download it to your phone or access it over WiFi LTE. I use Google Drive for all my pictures. Whenever I have a good signal it automatically uploads everything. Once it’s done I delete the pictures and don’t have to worry about space issues or a hard drive failure, losing my phone etc.
Enough storage is subjective because my storage needs and yours might be completely different. But this is one area of phone development that has seen little growth. We got to 16 as the industry standard and never really evolved from there. 32 or 64gb should be the base level now.
there are way too many reasons why they use internal storage over SD cards.
Balco listed a few of them, mostly related to marketing, but there are few related to technology which are:
– SD is slower than EMMC
– SD has a more limited read/write cycles than EMMC
– SD are more subject to corruption of the partition table than EMMC
– SD doesn’t support encryption (Marshmellow)
-SD are going to be discontinued in the next couple of years.
plus there are other issues like the ones related to DRM:
in fact DRM doesn’t support storing files over SD cards.
I agree! In my personal opinion, even if a smartphone were to offer 128 GB of internal storage, I would still prefer having a simple microSD card for the ease it allows for transferring data. Also useful when not having a internet connection to access cloud storage.
Point cleared. If one has the sd-card reader then you have both options if not you better hope not to be out of network.
I would’ve considered the OPX because of the MicroSD feature it has, but my vote still goes to the Mi4c of course. Newer 64-bit architecture, newer tech, larger battery, 6 cores vs 4 cores, etc.