Xiaomi Hongmi Note 4G

[drewski]

After 2+ months of hmming and hawing, and speaking with a few of the fine folks here, I decided to get the Xiaomi Hongmi Note 2 4G for my friend. In the process, have learned a lot about all the different models out there, specifically those that work with North American bands. The phone itself will be used in Canada.

I'd checked out well over 30 phones, the main contenders being:
THL T11
Asus Zenfone 5, Zenfone 6
Doogee DG310, DG580
Kingzone K1
Nubia Z7 Mini, Z7 Max
Xiaomi Mi3, Mi4
Huawei Ascend Mate 2

Oneplus One wasn't in the list because getting an invite was near impossible.

The main criteria in this case were:
- 3G 850/1900 bands is a must
- removable battery preferred
- expandable storage preferred
- notification lights preferred
- half-decent back camera
- larger battery capacity preferred
- good bang for the buck, aka cheap :-)

In trying to avoid the huge duty ding with DHL, I chose the Singapore shipping option instead of the free China/HongKong shipping from Merimobiles. Will report back on how it went, i.e. shipping time, etc.

[WuddaWaste]

Thanks for posting up, @drewski . I bet that list of phones might also help other fellow North American / Canadian Googlers!

It was a shame about the OnePlus release process. So much hype, such huge delays.

That Xiaomi phone is serious business! Way to go! Do you know if the 4G will work with you friend's carrier?

Is it this one? http://www.merimobiles.com/xiaomi-red-ri...i10445.htm

[drewski]

Yes, I'm hoping I can help others as well. At this point, I think I can go up on a stage and give an hour long talk about phone specs and bands and features, without looking at notes haha.

As for the Oneplus One, it's a nice phone, but to get one, I'd have to "buy" one of those invites, usually about $20 , pay for the phone, pay for shipping, pay for duty, pay for US to CAD exchange. Guess what, that $299 phone now costs more than a brand new Nexus 5. So yeah, kinda disappointed in that.

As for the Redmi Note 4G, it's apparently quite new, and didn't even exist when i started looking. There's apparently a model that works only with China's 4G bands the TD-LTE 1900 / 2300 / 2600.

I've been assured that it works on 4 of the 5 WCDMA 3G bands, so it Should work on Bell/Telus/Rogers in Canada and AT&T in the US. As for 4G, the one from Merimobiles supposedly uses 4G FDD- LTE 1800/2100MHz, so it won't work in North America. My friend's carrier uses 1700/2100 for 4G (it's Koodo/Telus), which is the same as the ones used by Rogers/Bell in Canada, and AT&T, T-Mobile in the US.

From what I can see, it should work on 4G in Malaysia and Singapore, which uses 1800. I only mention those two countries as I looked it up for someone else as well, but it does work in others (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_LTE_networks).

If I were getting one myself, I would probably gravitate more towards the Zenfone 6 (love the idea of an Intel Atom CPU, and ZenUI looks neat). So many choices.. so little money :-)

Edit : forgot to answer your one question. Yes, that is the model I ordered from merimobiles

[drewski]

Okay, as promised here's a short writeup on how the order went. I chose Singapore shipping from Merimobiles as I said earlier, but not really sure if the item was sent directly from Singapore (does Merimobiles have an office there?) or if it was sent there from China first. Overall, not sure if it was any faster than using China Post (which is free), but I think it's probably more secure?. Here's the timing of the whole shipment :

October 23, 2014 : Ordered from Merimobiles
October 28, 2014 : Item marked as shipped by Merimobiles, but tracking # was not valid
November 2, 2014 : Contacted Merimobiles to enquire about the tracking #, and was told to give it a week
November 4, 2014 : Tracking number works now. Package has left Singapore, and update on tracking # says :  INTERNATIONAL ITEM HAS LEFT ORIGINATING COUNTRY AND IS EN ROUTE TO CANADA
November 10,2014 : Package reached Vancouver, BC. From tracking # : ITEM HAS ARRIVED IN CANADA AND WAS SENT FOR FURTHER PROCESSING
November 14, 2014 : From tracking # : ITEM PROCESSED AT MISSISSAUGA, Ontario
November 20, 2014 : From tracking # : ITEM AVAILABLE FOR PICKUP AT POST OFFICE

Now for the interesting part. The phone itself was Very well packaged in bubble wrap. It's marked as a gift, with a $25 value (thank you Merimobiles!), and I didn't get dinged with Duty. I opened the box, and what can I say, but Wow! This is a very nice phone, totally reeks of quality. I tried to power on the phone and it wouldn't turn on. After a frantic five minutes, which included plugging in the charger, and seeing a red flashing light, I decided to pop open the cover. Facepalm moment there - there was tape over the battery contacts. Removed it, and phone turned on right away.

Boot time was very quick, under 15 seconds. The phone itself was running Kitkat 4.4.2 with MIUI 6.0. I spent the last day configuring it for my friend and playing with the menus. I've used plenty of Android phones, and really, the only bad thing I can say about it is that MIUI doesn't have an app tray, which I quickly fixed with loading Nova launcher. Everything on the phone worked very smoothly. I popped in a Koodo Mobile SIM card and I didn't even have to type in the APN - it picked it up on first try, and I see the H+ light up on the notification bar. The phone was in English, but this being a Chinese phone, some windows have some pages have Chinese content, but these are the exception and not the norm. For instance, the Music and Video app defaults to screens that show Chinese content on the first three tabs, with the last tab marked "Local" showing what you actually have on your own phone. No biggie. The hidden engineering menu is All chinese, so I just clicked into it to see what it was, and was able to figure out some of it. There's a set of help pages right inside a shortcut called ReadMe, which explains how the phone's features work. It even tells you how to root the phone, etc. Like, wow! Both cameras work great, and is pretty snappy. LED notification works great too, and you can choose one of eight colours, for three different kind of notifications. Inside, the huge removable battery and microSD slot was a sight for sore Nexus-eyes. Some comments online talk about how the camera was not able to store pictures into the SD card. This was not true on my ROM. There was an option to save pictures right to the SD card. The phone itself came with 8GB. I think about half that is reserved for the OS, so there's about 4GB left for your apps. Neither my friend nor I are gamers, so this is a non-issue. Phone cover is a very nice glossy plastic which does not look cheap at all, but it is quite slippery, so I highly recommend getting a case. Merimobiles shipped the phone with a generic but functional TPU type case. I've already ordered an additional cover for the phone, and will touch on that when I receive it.

This is my quick mini-review / first impressions. If anyone has questions, do let me know and I'll try to answer it for you. I've only covered the areas that were important to me, but there is so much more that this phone offers. Bottom line, if you are in the market for a 5.5" phone, this is a Steal of a phone for the price they are asking. I took it to my office to show some of my colleagues, none of whom had heard of Xiaomi before, and you could literally hear jaws drop when they see it and find out that it costs about 80 dollars less than the Nexus 4 which I got last year on sale.

[DirKNirK]

Just a quick note about shipping. Sometimes what happens is its somehow transported to Singapore from China. Not sure if this usually done via standard post or DHL. Just a guess that its by standard post to Singapore. This is nothing out of the ordinary or any different than some other shops do it.

Looking forward to the rest of your review.

[drewski]

Just a quick note about shipping. Sometimes what happens is its somehow transported to Singapore from China. Not sure if this usually done via standard post or DHL. Just a guess that its by standard post to Singapore. This is nothing out of the ordinary or any different than some other shops do it.

Interesting - I suspected that may be what's happening, but still not entirely sure why it's done, other than the fact that Singapore Post is more 'reliable' somehow for long distance shipping? Good to know nevertheless - thanks for the clarification.

[mather]

I am thinking of picking up a XIaomi RedMi Note 4G LTE to be use in Montreal. However, matching frequency bands of phone with network operators is not easy to say the least. For 3G it seems that 850/1900 is a possibility, I am ok with LTE not working. As you have done quite a bit of research on a similar phone, could you confirm whether that is in fact correct? Thanks.

[drewski]

I am thinking of picking up a XIaomi RedMi Note 4G LTE to be use in Montreal. However, matching frequency bands of phone with network operators is not easy to say the least. For 3G it seems that 850/1900 is a possibility, I am ok with LTE not working. As you have done quite a bit of research on a similar phone, could you confirm whether that is in fact correct? Thanks.

Hi Mather,
I had referred to the phone I helped my friend pick up as the "Hongmi Note 4G". Not sure if that was the point you were referring to when you said I was researching a similar phone, but HongMi = RedMi (literally, means Red Rice), so it's the same device. There is a RedMi/HongMi Note, which is a 3G only phone, but the 3G is incompatible with Canadian bands. Then we have the RedMi/HongMi Note 4G LTE, which IS compatible with Canadian 3G bands (not all though), but the 4G is not compatible. To make matters worse, I just realized that there is now a variant of this Note 4G LTE being released in Singapore/HongKong/Taiwan that DOES have the 4G LTE support for Canada/US! Still trying to find more information about that one myself.

Coming back to your original question, which provider in Montreal were you thinking of using the phone with? If you're thinking of going with one of the Evil 3 :-) (Rogers/Bell/Telus), it will work just fine on 3G. Videotron will not work on 3G on this phone. The China version of the Note 4G phone I ordered does support 850/1900. Hope this helps, but do let me know if you have other questions, and I'll be happy to answer it (if I know it!)

[mather]

Hi Drewski,

Thank you for your reply. I am actually thinking of picking up the RedMi Note 4G LTE from Singapore. On their Singapore website, the frequency bands are given as:

Cellular and wirelessSupports 4G (FDD-LTE), 3G (WCDMA) and 2G (GSM) networks:
4G FDD-LTE
Band 1 (2100 MHz)
Band 2 (1900 MHz)
Band 3 (1800 MHz)
Band 4 (AWS)
Band 7 (2600 MHz)
3G WCDMA (850/900/1900/2100MHz)
2G GSM (850/900/1800/1900MHz)

Beside the 3G 850/1900, do you know if these LTE bands are compatible in Canada? I.e. is this the variant you mentioned?. If the above spec works in Canada, it would be great.

Thank for your help.

mather

[drewski]

Cellular and wirelessSupports 4G (FDD-LTE), 3G (WCDMA) and 2G (GSM) networks:
4G FDD-LTE
Band 1 (2100 MHz)
Band 2 (1900 MHz)
Band 3 (1800 MHz)
Band 4 (AWS)
Band 7 (2600 MHz)
3G WCDMA (850/900/1900/2100MHz)
2G GSM (850/900/1800/1900MHz)

Yes, that's the variant I was talking about. You lucky devil you, getting to go to Singapore to pick one up! I'm hoping I can beg someone in Singapore/Malaysia or Hong Kong to pick one up for me at some point in the future as no online stores seem to carry this variant.

Now, since I've not used this particular phone in Canada, I can't say 100% that it works, BUT, based on the specs given and what I know about Canadian networks, I'm 99% sure it will. Here's the breakdown for LTE networks:

- Band 4: (AWS, 1700 MHz)
Telus, Rogers, Bell, Videotron, Eastlink, MTS, SaskTel
- Band 7: (2600 MHz)
Rogers, Bell
- Band 17: (700 MHz)
Rogers

Band 4 seems to be the most important band to have in Canada. I got the bands from googling LTE networks on the net, and most other sites do confirm its validity.