After announcing the new Red color variant of Mi 5X and Black color variant of Mi Max 2 in China, Xiaomi has now announced a price cut for its Mi Note 3 smartphone.

The company has announced that the Xiaomi Mi Note 3 will cost 300 Yuan lesser than its original prcing, making the effective price 2,199 Yuan. The new pricing will be applicable on November 1, the same day when the new color variants of Mi 5X and Mi Max 2 will go on sale.

The Xiaomi Mi Note 3 comes with a 5.5-inch display and is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 660 processor. It packs 6GB of RAM and is available in two storage options — 64GB and 128GB. It is powered by a 3,500mAh battery which also supports fast charging.

It features a 12-megapixel dual camera module at the back — same as the Mi 6, but the algorithms have been improved to provide better bokeh effect. While one is a telephoto lens, the other one is a wide-angle lens. It has 2x optical zoom and 4-axis OIS.

On the front, there is a 16-megapixel 2μm sensor for taking selfies. The front camera of the phone has AI-based beautification feature, and supports facial recognition unlocking.

Additional features of the Mi Note 3 include NFC, IR port, under-glass fingerprint, stereo speakers, and USB Type-C port.

Read More: Xiaomi Mi Note 3 Review – Premium Midrange Flagship!

Apparently, the price cut is only for the 6GB RAM + 64GB storage variant. A couple of weeks ago, the 6GB RAM + 128GB storage model of Mi Note 3 started selling at a discounted price of 2,699 Yuan, which is 200 Yuan lower than its official pricing.

Xiaomi has usually faced a problem of shortage of stock. But it seems that the company has made some strategic changes, resulting in more units coming out of the production line. The company has announced that it aims to ship 90 million phones by the end of this year.

Apart from efficient supply chain, the company is also focusing on establishing its presence in the offline channels as well. Xiaomi recently launched 20 new Mi Stores in China, reaching its goal of opening over 200 Mi Stores in China this year.

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The Mi Note 3, the latest offering by Xiaomi that has made a lot of phones this year. Same as last years model, this device is beautiful and well made but it has midrange level specs along with its compelling dual camera setup. We have spent quite a bit of time with the device and here is our full Xiaomi Mi Note 3 review.

Buy Xiaomi Mi Note 3

VIDEO REVIEW

UNBOXING

Just before we start, the phone costs about $450 but I I will leave a generous discount code in the video description down below.

DESIGN and DISPLAY

If you are familiar with Xiaomi’s phones, you will probably see that the Mi Note 3 looks almost identical to the Mi 6. In fact, it is really hard to tell the difference except for the fact that the Mi Note 3 is a bit larger and it now uses a matt metal frame instead of the glossy one found in the Mi 6.

The device just looks beautiful and the build quality is nothing short of a true flagship. However, I found the Mi Note 3 to be very slippery and I’m not going to talk about those fingerprints as they are very easy to clean, right?

The 5.5” display is now covered with the Gorilla Glass 4 for scratch resistance and I found it to be very sharp and vibrant both indoors and outdoors.

Same as the Mi 6, this phone has a dual camera setup that consists of one 12MP shooter with a wide-angle lens and another 12MP sensor with the telephoto lens that gives 2x optical zoom and the ability to take beautiful portrait photos with that bokeh effect.

On the front, there is a beefy 16MP selfie camera.

Now a few features in a nutshell: the fingerprint is super fast and accurate, there is no headset jack but you can use a supplied adapter to connect your favorite headphones and the sound quality is great. There is also stereo speakers setup that produces rich and balanced sound.

A few extra features include nicely backlit capacitive keys, a notification LED light, the IR blaster and a face recognition feature that works quite well but I always prefer using a fingerprint scanner. It’s just a faster way to unlock the phone.

HARDWARE and PERFORMANCE

When it comes to hardware, the Mi Note 3 is not the most powerful phone out there but it still has great specs.

The phone ships with the Snapdragon 660 chipset, 6GB of RAM and either 64 or 128GB of storage, which is, however, not expandable. The gaming performance is excellent. No stutter, no skipped frames on the highest graphics in the 3D games I played and the phone does not overheat.

BENCHMARKS

USER INTERFACE

Speaking of that software, the MIUI 8.5 is built on top of Android 7.1 and the Mi Note 3 is one of the fastest Xiaomi phones. I have a Chinese model, meaning that there are no Google Services pre-installed but it takes just a minute to do that.

The device just flies despite all the apps I installed and extra features that all Xiaomi phones have. You can customize the phone by changing themes, wallpapers, reassigning buttons or using other little tweaks and change a lot of different settings.

CAMERAS

We have a familiar Xiaomi camera app that allows you to take pictures very fast. You can also play with some basic shooting modes and settings. E.g. you can adjust some image properties using the manual mode or shoot slow-motion videos at 720p.

There is also 2x lossless zoom mode that allows you to utilize that secondary camera sensor and this feature comes really handy. The results are pretty good, definitely a lot better than using digital zoom.

The portrait mode takes good-looking pictures with bokeh effect but sometimes you may get a picture with a bit unnatural looking blurred background.

When it comes to the image quality using auto-mode, the Mi Note 3 can take great pictures in good lighting. There is plenty of detail, the colors look nice and noise reduction is pretty good. However, I found that the dynamic range adjustment is not always accurate. The indoor and macro shots are great too. Again, there is lots of detail and you get that nice bokeh effect thanks to the bright lens.

The low-light camera performance is decent but I would still love to see more detail and less noise as I’m always picky when it comes to camera performance.

The 4k video quality is great. The footage is detailed and the continuous auto-focus feature works well. The colors look nice too but they seem to be slightly oversaturated. Also, there are some video artifacts going but in general, the video looks great.

The 1080p video looks good too. Obviously, there is less detail but the OIS seems to do a better job than in 4k video mode.

The selfies look great as there is a lot of detail and the colors are accurate. However, the quality decreases quite dramatically in lower-lit situations.

The 1080p selfie video looks quite good and the sound recording quality is decent yet not the best I’ve heard.

CONNECTIVITY

When it comes to connectivity, the Xiaomi Mi Note 3 is flawless. The call quality and signal reception have been excellent, the Wifi range and speed are good, the Bluetooth works fine and finally, the GPS is very accurate, thanks to a reliable Snapdragon processor.

The phone has NFC and a lot of sensors including a gyroscope, so you are all set in this department.

BATTERY LIFE

The Xiaomi Mi Note 3 ships with a 3500 mAh battery that performs great. I used my phone very intensively for taking a lot of pictures and shooting 4k videos, running benchmarks, installing a lot of apps and so on and I still managed to get over 8 hours of screen-on time.

If you use the device just for the basic stuff, you should be able to get 9 or even 10 hours of SOT. Keep in mind, that SOT is always very subjective.

Finally, the Mi Note 3 ships with the fast charger. It takes about 1:30 h to fully charge the phone, thanks to the Quick Charge 3.0.

Conclusions

The Xiaomi Mi Note 3 is a solid phone overall. Yes, it does not ship with the most powerful chip out there but I found it to be very fast and powerful enough to even handle 3D games. Also, the phone simply looks beautiful, the display is sharp, the cameras are pretty good and the battery life is great.

Even though there is plenty of storage space, some users will be disappointed by the lack of the microSD card slot. Also, there is no headset jack and the phone is very slippery, so you may want to keep it in the case.

If you can live with these shortcomings, the Xiaomi Mi Note 3 is a solid phone that offers a lot of flagship qualities for a lower price.

Gizmochina readers get a special discount with the COUPON CODE: note364gb that let you buy the phone for just $389.99 ($60 off the retail price). 

Buy Xiaomi Mi Note 3

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Xiaomi had a busy event today, releasing not one but three new products at the Mi Mix 2 launch in Beijing, China. The third product announced at the event was none other than the Xiaomi Mi Note 3 (after Mi Notebook Pro and Mi Mix 2). The company seems to have a taken a different strategy for the Mi Note series this year as it ditches the dual curved display design and markets the phone as a larger version of the Xiaomi Mi 6. So, instead of the Mi 6 Plus, you get the Mi Note 3.

The Xiaomi Mi Note 3 comes with 7 series aluminum frame with matte texture and four glass body with curved edges. The phone is nearly identical to the Mi 6 in terms of its basic design, including the rear camera placement. Plus, you get the phone in a beautiful blue color as well.

Coming to the specs, the Xiaomi Mi Note 3 comes with the upper mid-range Snapdragon 660 chipset with 6GB + 64GB /128GB memory options. There’s a 5.5-inch 1080p display on board. The 12MP camera module is the same as the Mi 6, but the algorithms have been improved to provide better bokeh tracking. Mi 6’s portrait focus wasn’t very accurate, so it would be interesting to see how the new algorithms improve the tracking. On the front, the phone features a large 16 million 2μm sensor for noise free selfies. You can check out a few bokeh samples down below. There’s a large 3500mAh battery as well.

Other features of the Mi Note 3 include NFC, IR port, under-glass fingerprint, stereo speakers, USB Type-C, improved face unlock, and AI beautify algorithm.

You get all this for a starting price tag of 2499 Yuan (~$384) (6+64), with other variants costing 2899 ($445) (6+128 — BLACK) and 2999 ($460) (6+128 — BLUE). The phone will go on sale tomorrow.

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Barely 24 hours after we covered the leaked specification details of the Mi Note 3, live images of its retail box have been posted online. The pictures posted on Twitter by @mmddj_china confirm some of the specs revealed yesterday, key being the choice of processor.

The retail box is black and is sealed, so this is probably a unit shipped out to licensed retailers ahead of the launch or a unit from Xiaomi’s own store. The design isn’t fancy like that of previous Mi phones. It doesn’t even have an image of the phone on it. The only other phone we have seen with a similar retail box is the Redmi Note 5A.

pic.twitter.com/9rSZ4rEHni

— 萌萌的电教 (@MMDDJ_) September 9, 2017

The second image which shows the back of of the box is where the action is. The most important detail is the processor which is listed as Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 660 mobile platform. Other key details mentioned include the RAM and storage which are 6GB and 128GB respectively.

The retail box also confirms that the Mi Note 3 will have a 16MP front facing camera, dual rear cameras and a glass body. It will also ditch the 3.5 mm audio jack as there is a Type-C to audio jack adapter in the box.

READ MORE: Xiaomi Mi MIX 2 Wallpapers Leak Ahead Of Launch [Download]

The only specification details from yesterday not listed are the display size, battery capacity, rear camera configuration, and presence of NFC.

The Mi Note 3 launches on Monday September 11, alongside the bezel-less Mi MIX 2.

Now that you know that the Mi Note 3 is a less powerful albeit larger variant of the Mi 6, would you still buy it?

(Source)

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Earlier today it was revealed that the Xiaomi Mi Note 3 will be announced alongside the Mi MIX 2, in a fashion similar to last year. Although there is still a few days from the launch date (September 11), we won’t have to wait till then before knowing the specification details of the Mi Note 3, as they have been leaked online.

The teaser poster for the Mi Note 3 launch shows Xiaomi’s brand ambassador for the Mi 5X, Wu Yifan, holding a dual camera phone that looks like the Mi 6. So

According to the leaked specs, the Mi Note 3 will have a 5.5-inch display. Not only is it smaller than the 5.7-inch display of the Mi Note 2, there is no mention of it being curved.

Since there is no Snapdragon 836, most folks will expect the Mi Note 3 to come with the Snapdragon 835. Sorry, to disappoint but that won’t be happening if these specifications are true. Instead, Xiaomi has settled for the next chip in line, the Snapdragon 660 mobile platform. As consolation, it will keep the 6GB of RAM.

The Mi Note 3 will be available in either 64GB or 128GB variants, though, there is no mention of a MicroSD card slot. Since the display has been cut down, Xiaomi has also decided to shave off the battery capacity to 3500mAh but have added Quick Charge 4.0 support. We hope it comes with a supported charger.

The Mi Note 3 will also come with dual rear cameras. The cameras will be the same configuration as that of the Mi 6. So you get two 12MP cameras in the wide-angle lens + telephoto lens configuration. The front camera is said to be a 16MP sensor.

READ MORE: Xiaomi Redmi 5A Seems to Have Surfaced on TENAA as Xiaomi MCT3B

The Mi Note 3 will have a four-curved glass body and an aerospace grade aluminium frame. It will have a special face unlock feature that uses a smart identification system with a sort of RGB sensor to identify the face of the owner. The Mi Note 3 will also have NFC support.

Pricing details were not provided. One feature we hope Xiaomi keeps from the Mi Note 2 is global LTE support.

(Source)

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Xiaomi launched the Mi Note 2 at the same time as the Mi Mix last year and since the Mi Mix 2 is expected soon, it is just apt that Mi  Note 3 would be launched soon as well. The Note 3 had made the rounds severally on leaks which hint at the possible specifications the device will launch with. The Mi note 3 was also rumored as launching in the third quarter of the year and recently, the rumor mill went agog with talks of the device being launched in August or September. A sure thing is the Mi Note 3 is coming and pretty soon. Ahead of that, we just have spotted the first camera sample from the device.

Xiaomi’s CEO Lei Jun recently shared a photo of a newly opened Mi Store opened in Hong Kong and the picture was noticed to have been posted on Weibo from an unnamed Xiaomi phone. That caught the attention of an eagle-eyed tech blogger who checked up the EXIF data of the picture and luckily it was still intact. It was later removed but not before the blogger had grabbed a screenshot (See below). Interestingly, the EXIF data showed that the picture was shot using the Mi Note 3. Apart from that, the photo even revealed some details of the Note 3’s camera like an f1.8 aperture, 12MP resolution, and a few others.

Clearly, this is another indication that the Mi Note 3 is coming soon. Recall that Lei Jun had shared a photo some time ago with an aspect ratio which suggested it was captured using the Mi Mix 2. Perhaps, Lei Jun has a knack for using all the Xiami models before they become official.

Read More: Xiaomi Mi Note 3 Leaked Renders Reveal Bezel-less Design

The Xiaomi Mi Note 3 is said to sport a 5.7-inch display and will be powered by a Snapdragon 835 processor backed by 6GB of RAM. It is also expected to feature a 12MP dual camera setup among other features. The Mi Note 3 may likely be unveiled along with the Mi Mix 2 just the same way the Note 2 was launched with the Mi Mix last year.

(source, via)

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There are two Xiaomi flagship devices expected to launch later this year. One is the bezel-less Mi Mix 2 and the other is the Mi Note 3. While the Mi MIX 2 has sort of been confirmed by Xiaomi, there has been no official word on the Mi Note 3.

Rumor has it that the Mi Note 3 will be launched by the end of August or early September. If that is true, it means Xiaomi has changed the release schedule for the Mi Note series. If you recollect, the Mi Note 2 came nearly two years after the original Mi Note.

The Mi Note 2 was released alongside the Mi MIX in November 2016. Though the former stole the show, the Mi Note 2 was praised for having a global LTE variant and also got people talking about its nearly identical design to the ill-fated Samsung Galaxy Note 7.

If the Mi Note 3 is launching so soon, it may mean that we will be getting a separate event for the Mi MIX 2 later. It may also be a strategy to grab some of the market share Samsung and LG are aiming for with the Galaxy Note 8 and LG V30.

Leaked details of the Mi Note 3 say the smartphone will have a 2K display that is curved on both sides. The display is reported to be supplied by LG, since Samsung and Apple need all the AMOLED they can get. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 will power it, paired with 6GB of RAM. Expect the Mi Note 3 to come with MIUI 9 out of the box and also have a global variant.

READ MORE: Xiaomi Releases New Infrared Camera With Motion Detector

The Mi Note 3 may keep the screen size at 5.7-inches like its predecessor or make it bigger. It wouldn’t really matter. What fans of the series would like to see is a better rear camera, as there were complaints about the 22.5MP sensor on the Mi Note 2.

(Source, via)

The post Rumor Mill: Xiaomi Mi Note 3 May Arrive This Month Or Next appeared first on Gizmochina.

Xiaomi’s flagship device of the year, the Xiaomi Mi5 has now been overtaken by the likes of OnePlus 3, ZUK Z2 Pro and even Le Max 2 with much more powerful specifications. However, Xiaomi isn’t a company that likes to be behind for long and looks like the company will soon release a new flagship phone, the Xiaomi Mi Note 2, which will take on some of the best phones in the market right now. The Mi Note series have always been the top-end flagship from the company and it seems that the new update will make sure that Xiaomi has a couple of models in the top-end segment. So, what can we expect to see on the new Mi Note 2?

zAccording to the latest information, the Mi Note 2 will come in three variants — standard version, high version and top-end version. While the Weibo source didn’t reveal the exact specifications of the three models, it mentioned some features that differentiate each of the three variants.

The Mi Note 2 Standard version is said to come with a single camera sensor at the back, Hi-Fi chip, and a regular quick charge feature.

The Mi Note 2 High version will come with dual cameras at the back (will be first for the company) with Hi-Fi as well as a super quick charging feature. We have no idea what kind of charging is meant by this super quick charge, but it’s probably faster and more efficient than the regular version.

Finally, there will be a Mi Note 2 top-end version which, for now, let’s call it the Mi Note Edge model. It will come with a curved screen display with a top-end Hi-Fi chip as well as the super quick charge tech found on the high version.

While the source hasn’t revealed any specs, considering the above information, we can expect the standard version to feature 4GB RAM while the other two variants to come with 6GB of RAM. After all, Xiaomi wouldn’t want Mi Note 2 to lose to other 6GB RAM phones. As for the display, it should be the same size as the first generation model, i.e. 5.7-inch with 1080p resolution on the standard and high version and 2K on the top-end curved screen model. Given that VR is turning out to be an important market for smartphone makers, the Mi Note 2 along with the Xiaomi Mi5S could be ideal phones for the company to focus its attention in this field.

While we don’t have a date yet, the Mi Note 2 is expected to be announced sometime in the next few months. Given its specifications, don’t expect it to be cheap. Hopefully, more details will emerge along with renders and pictures in the next few weeks.

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