Xiaomi takes it to the Max with its biggest ever phone

Photo credit for all: Xiaomi.

“You can hold it in one hand in a very relaxed way,” said Xiaomi boss Lei Jun as he introduced the brand’s biggest ever phone, the 6.44-inch-screened Xiaomi Max at an event this afternoon in Beijing.

The Xiaomi Max is designed to keep increasingly picky consumers from trading up to larger, premium-styled phones from the likes of Huawei, Oppo, and Vivo – three brands that are growing fast while Xiaomi faces its first major challenge in its five-year history of selling phones. The new Xiaomi Max could also lure shoppers away from the Apple iPhone.

While Xiaomi has upped the screen real estate, it’s keeping the price low for the Max – it’ll start at US$230 and go to US$307 when it goes on sale in China on May 17. No word on other countries yet.

Here are the Xiaomi Max specs:

• 6.44-inch 1080p HD display
• 16MP rear camera and a 5MP selfie camera
• 4,850mAh battery
• 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage for cheapest version…
• …going up to 4GB RAM and 128GB storage for top model
• Fingerprint scanner on rear
• 7.5mm thick, weighing 203g
• Three colors: silver, gold, and dark grey

The sizeable battery means that the Xiaomi Max can do 14 hours of streaming video over wifi on a single charge, the company claims.

The company also showed off MIUI 8, an update to its Android skin. That’ll roll out to Xiaomi phone owners later this summer.