The giant phone trend may have left as quickly as it arrived a few years ago, but that doesn’t mean we don’t still see some semblance of that trend crop up here and there. In a surprise move Xiaomi announced the Mi Max, a massive device with a giant 6.44-inch 1080p screen running MIUI 8, the latest version of the company’s Android skin. This skin sits atop Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow and features some significant design changes, all seemingly for the better, as well as some new and interesting functionality. Some of this new functionality includes bug fixes and feature enhancements for every device running MIUI 8, while some of them are specifically designed to make your experience with a phone as large as the Mi Max even better.
For around $300 the Mi Max carries inside of it a 4,850mAh battery, which is at least 50% larger than most smartphone batteries, as well as a hexa-core Snapdragon 650 processor and Adreno 510 GPU. 3GB of RAM powers the multi-tasking experience, and it’s this multi-tasking experience which has received one of the biggest overhauls for the MIUI 8 experience. Not only are we now seeing thumbnail representations of apps that were running, a significant improvement from the row of icons that MIUI used to use, but MIUI 8 also stacks multiple instances of an app vertically for quick access as well. This opens up a world of possibilities for multi-tasking, one in which browser tabs and other information like that can be easily accessed with a quick swipe and tap.
On the storage side of the house you’ll find either 32GB or 64GB waiting to be filled up, and in case you do there’s always the option to drop a microSD card in the dual SIM card tray to free up some space. Don’t forget that well built metal unibody design on the back, which houses a snappy and accurate fingerprint scanner, as well as a 16-megapixel camera for some pretty decent photos. The Mi Max is now available in China and most recently India, and those willing to shell out some extra cash will find themselves with 128GB of internal storage, 4GB of RAM and a more powerful octa-core Snapdragon 652 SoC instead. Check out our video review of the Mi Max below, and don’t forget to stop by our written review for the nitty gritty details that didn’t fit in this 7 minute video!