Xiaomi unveils Mi Note and Mi Note Pro: 5.7-inch high-end goodness

Xiaomi’s latest flagships are here. At the company’s Beijing event today, CEO Lei Jun revealed his latest weapons against Samsung and Apple: the Mi Note and Mi Note Pro.

Xiaomi Mi Note

The Xiaomi Note is not the successor to the affordable Redmi Note. The device is a high-end offering, with a 5.7-inch Full HD display made by Japan Display, 2.5D Gorilla Glass 3 , a Snapdragon 801 processor, 3GB of RAM, a 13MP rear camera with OIS, a 4MP front camera with large 2-micron pixels (just like HTC’s UltraPixels), a 3,000-mAh battery, and LTE dual-SIM.

Speaking of design, the Mi Note sports beautiful glass on both the front and the back. The protective screen glass is 2.5D, meaning that its edges are slightly curved, just like on the Note 4 or iPhone 6 Plus. The glass on the back is positively curved however, gently hugging the phone’s sloping side. We’ve seen glass-backed devices before, but this is the first design with a curved glass back – it sure looks interesting, but durability may take a hit, even with the sleek metallic frame of the device.

On stage, Xiaomi’s Lei Jun took potshots at Apple, which seemed to be his primary target, and not Samsung and their Note 4 as one would expect. One of the jabs referred to the iPhone 6’s notorious protruding camera. There is no such thing on the Mi Note, which is a svelte 6.95 millimeters. The camera itself is sourced from Sony (IMX214), with a 6-lens f 2.0 aperture, OIS, and a two-tone flash. Thanks to the large size of the pixels, the 4MP front shooter should do great in low-light selfie situations.

Other features highlighted by Xiaomi include Hi-Fi audio thanks to a ESS audio decoder and fast charging.

With Xiaomi devices, the price is always a big part of the story. The Mi Note will be available for 2299 yuan ($370) for the 16GB storage, and 2799 yuan ($450) for the more spacious 64GB model. This isn’t the rock bottom pricing Xiaomi used its customers with, but then again, the Mi Note isn’t a budget affair, and that is visible in everything from specs to design.

Xiaomi Mi Note Pro

Xiaomi is kicking things up a notch with the 3299 yuan ($530) Mi Note Pro, which features similar design and specifications with the following improvements: a 64-bit Snapdragon 810 processor,  a Quad HD display, 4GB of RAM, and LTE-Cat 9 support for download speeds of up t 450Mbps. The Mi Note Pro will be available with 64GB of storage.

The Mi Note will become available from Q2 (at least in Singapore), while the Mi Note Pro’s availability will be announced at a later point.

What do you think of the new Mi Pro and Mi Pro Note? Are they what you were expecting? What about the price?