Smartphone shootout in India: Xiaomi Mi4 goes head-to-head with OnePlus One

Today is a red letter day in India for Chinese smartphone-makers: Xiaomi has flash sales for both 16GB and 64GB variants of its flagship killer Mi4 at 5pm India time. And OnePlus has a 24-hours open sale, where you don’t need an invite to buy 16 GB and 64 GB variants of OnePlus One, temptingly priced lesser than their Mi4 counterparts.

Mi4 16GB is priced at INR 19,999 (US$321), while the OnePlus One 16GB, launched yesterday in India, costs INR 18,999 (US$305). Mi4 64GB is priced at INR 23,999 (US$385), while 64GB One is at INR 21,999 (US$353).

It’s for the first time today in India that Xiaomi is selling its 64GB version of Mi4; earlier it only had a 16GB Mi4 in India. For OnePlus, it’s the opposite. It had launched its 64GB One in December, and now the Silk White OnePlus One has a 16GB version.

The fight between the Chinese phone-makers is also a proxy battle between the two leading ecommerce sites in India: Mi4 is sold on Flipkart and One on Amazon.

Both the phone-makers have also got tangled in legal disputes with rivals in India.

Xiaomi faced a ban on sales in India after Ericsson took it to court two months ago for alleged patent infringements. The court later allowed Qualcomm-powered devices to be sold, while the injunction still stands for devices with MediaTek chipsets. Xiaomi is currently trying to avoid further trouble as “unauthorized retailers” continue to sell its banned devices.

OnePlus One too ran into a legal tangle soon after arriving in India in December. Its Indian rival Micromax had sealed a deal just two months earlier to be the exclusive partner in India for Cyanogen, whose Android-based operating system powered both the OnePlus One and the Micromax YU. After initially facing a ban, this Chinese phonemaker too was allowed to resume sales. OnePlus has developed its own Android Lollipop fork called OxygenOS, which is expected to be out in March.