Buying Xiaomi cell phone is it worth it? Is it a good brand?

Xiaomi is a brand that offers very good prices with respect to the competition. As far as their mobiles are concerned, they are generally teams of good quality and with excellent specs.

However, many versions of Xiaomi cell phones are designed to work in China, but are still distributed around the world, so you may have problems if you are not in that country.

Additionally, there are technical aspects of this brand that I have personally found very inconvenient and that I clarify in the paragraphs below.

Xiaomi is worth it

Mainly for its price. It is one of the most convenient brands in relation to cost benefit (if not the most convenient).

Just check the specifications of the cell phone you are thinking of buying and find out the same or similar characteristics in the Xiaomi brand and you will surely see that the latter is better for your pocket.

Its low cost is NOT due to its lower quality, but to a lower profit margin compared to other companies such as Apple or Samsung. In fact, for its devices, Xiaomi uses some of the same internal components as other “top” companies (for example the processor).

Before buying a Xiaomi

4G LTE compatibility

Possibly Xiaomi cell phones are marketed in your country. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they work properly there. You may find versions whose 4G bands are not compatible with those of your country.

Find out the 4G bands that the device you want to buy works on. Preferably look for this information on the official Xiaomi page. If you can’t find it there, there are third-party pages that can help you with that.

Xiaomi devices are generally compatible with operators of Asia and Europe. It will be possible to navigate in 4G LTE in China and Spain without problems, since typically many of these devices work in the bands 1, 3 and 7, which are the same used in common by some operators in these regions.

On America It is not like this. There the operators usually use the band 2 and 4 for 4G LTE technology. They are bands that Xiaomi devices often do not incorporate. That means that you will not be able to navigate 4G with a Xiaomi in many countries in this region. You can make calls and send SMS, but in terms of mobile data you can only connect using 3G technology.

Xiaomi also sells «global versions » of its devices, whose 4G LTE technology should work in at least the most important regions, including America. However, there are not many such devices. And you have to be careful with certain “global” versions that do not really work with the 4G of America, despite its name (it happened to me with the Xiaomi Mi 5). The “global” only means that they offer spanish support and they also have the Play Store, as I explain below.

Google Play Store and Spanish language

The Xiaomi versions for China (which are also distributed in other parts of the world) do not come with the Play Store pre-installed. They also do not allow to put the telephone in Spanish (at most I could put it in English).

When buying a Xiaomi it is important to make sure you buy the Global version of the team. This way you will NOT have to manually install this store or deal with a different language.

Bootloader Unlock

This can be a headache for those enthusiastic users who want to modify their Xiaomi. For example, changing the operating system using a ROM or even root it. Generally, in the first case it is always necessary to unlock the «bootloader” Of the device. If this software component, which is something other than the Android system, is not unlocked, it is impossible to manipulate the device in that way.

To unlock the bootloader, you must first request “authorization” from the Xiaomi company, something that can take several weeks to be obtained. Only once authorization is obtained can unlocking proceed. In certain cases, this request may not be possible due to failures on the Xiaomi website or it may never receive a response, as it happened to me.

This could be more important than it seems, because unlocking the bootloader is not only necessary to make modifications to the system. It is also required for reset device from recovery mode, or re-flashing the system when it has suffered a serious software failure. It is unacceptable that you have to wait weeks for Xiaomi so you can solve something like that and be able to use your cell phone again.

Unfortunately, this disadvantage is present in all Xiaomi devices. However, if you are going to give your computer a normal use and you are not going to do “strange things” like root, magisk, flashing, etc., you should not have problems.

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