Xiaomi's CEO Lei Jun recently announced through his Weibo page that the black version of Mi4 4G will be available by October 28, while the 64GB variant of the same device will be released by mid-November. However, the device's 4G bands are only compatible with China Mobile, as the version only supports China's 4G TD-LTE network at least for now.
The black Mi4 4G specifications remain the same which features a 5-inch 1080p (1920 x 1080) display along with 3GB of RAM and 16 or 64GB of non-expandable internal storage. The device is powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 801 quad-core processor clocked at 2.5GHz which also comes with an Adreno 330 GPU. On the back of the device is a 13-megapixel camera surrounded by a dual-LED flash while there's an 8-megapixel shooter located on the front. This device ships with a 3080mAh non-removable battery and Android 4.4.3 KitKat with Xiaomi's MIUI OS on top of it.
Meanwhile, Apple's Product Design Chief Jonathan Ive doesn't seem to be pleased with the design of Xiaomi's Mi4 as he thinks the over-all look of the Mi4 has been patterned after the newly released iPhone 6. " I'll stand a little bit harsh, I don't see it as flattery. When you're doing something for the first time, you don't know it's going to work. You spend seven or eight years working on something, and then it's copied. I have to be honest, the first thing I can think, all those weekends that I could have at home with my family but didn't. I think it's theft, and it's lazy," Ive remarked at a recent Vanity Fair event.
In response, Xiaomi's Vice President for International Operations Hugo Barra has replied to the above statement in an interview with The Economic Times. "I need to see the context of the comment to reply, but I think that there is an unnecessarily strong spotlight on us. If you make a comment about the chamfer on the Mi 4 on [sic] which is where all the controversy comes from, it's the same. If you look at the iPhone 6, iPhone 6 has been using the design language that has been around for a while. The iPhone 6 is using design language that HTC has had for 5 years. You cannot claim full ownership of any kind of design languages in our industry," Barra said.
The Chinese tech giant claimed that sales of their Mi4 flagship are on a skyrocket high, and has in fact increased to 20% in the 3rd quarter of this year. Moreover, CEO Lei Jun revealed that the company is looking into selling a total of 60 million units of their smartphones by the end of 2014.
