Design, strategy and A Few Other Things
ME MI MAXING
Probably a phone review, possibly a story
How attached are we to our phone? How much do we feel for it?
"Dhwani 2017" - one of the most important time of my life. Undergrad final year, last few months as the cultural secretary and probably a student. I was 24x7 thinking, working on and breathing the event - a need to make it the best the college had seen. I had the best team to do this,
and I was good at convincing management of an engineering college to spend money on a cultural fest - we were almost unstoppable except that feeling of uncertainty about life that made me feel constantly too little.
Painfully beautiful times and my old phone ( a cutesy Nexus 5 - 3 years old ) added to the misery by stopping to respond and the screen ghosting me and the replacement cost 8K INR or 100+$. Is it even worth it?
The times were changing and the phones were getting crazy better and ridiculously cheaper - So I decided, "Fish it! I'll buy a new phone". So like every tech enthusiast who dwelled the tech reviews on youtube, I knew my options.
But who will give me the monies?
I was a student - an unemployed engineering student ( I don't want to bore you guys with the details of my sad engineering life, probably you already are living it). I didn't have enough money and the unnecessary adult ego stopped me from asking my parents.
As Buddha indirectly said, "self-respect is the root of all misery"! Duh!
I had some freelance money from all my photography and graphic design works but not enough - Luckily I got a video editing project which got me some money and pushed my budget to 20k INR
So it searched the internet far and wide to stumble upon my next life crutch that would make my life less miserable and i come across this!
14,999 INR - 3 GB | 32 GB | 19,999 INR - 4 GB | 128 GB
(In retrospect, I think bought this phone just to compensate for the feeling of being irrelevant and not important.)
Ps: Retrospect - Just knowing this word makes me feel like an adult
They knew how to get a nerd interested!
Those were the time where life was slow and the internet was slower - 128gb of internal? Where do I sign up for that?
and here it was <3
My own first phone - the one I earned for myself.
The phone was HUGE! I didn't expect it to be that huge and I dropped it the first-day thanks to the size and the super slippery metal finish. Ordered a case right away
6.44 inches | LCD | 342 PPI
203g | Slippery metal back
and from that day to now, life has changed. A lot. Sometimes unrecognisable.
Dhwani was a sucess!
So many spreadsheets and so much word documents, processed and corrected. Millions of voice notes and a million back, funny self memes and celebration of each other, those whatsapp groups maxing out the group limit - the phone delivered the power and we were celebrated..
Snapdragon 650 hexa-core 1.8GHz max | 652 octa-core 1.8GHz max
and the phone seemed to have a personality of its own with the custom MIUI with these tiny but very useful features like scroll screenshots for that extra conversation bubble when sending a screenshot to your friends' group, a reading mode that helped me push through the all-nighter without strain and customisable themes, etc
(Photos below are taken on Mi max.)
Played a lot of games to fill the void in my heart and the phone handled it well and there was no noticeable or persistent lags though there were issues of overheating at prolonged-time period playing heavy games like Vainglory.
Adreno 510 600MHz
Found a job, did some interesting projects, found my own company - sold merchs through instagram, edited posters, took a lot of pictures, created videos and a lot more. The performance was sufficient for even a hardcore power user like me for a medium level phone priced at 20k INR!
3GB RAM | 4GB RAM
Explored the world one trip at a time,
The battery would with conservative use lasts about a day though it has a massive 4850 mAh so yeah, survived the trips.
4850mAh | 5V/2A charger included
Quick charge enabled | Quick charger to be bought separately
Screen on time: 6-8 hrs on medium brightness, Day-to-day usage
Tripped a lot,
Moved to Bangalore, navigated life on google map direction to another and the phone was the companion through the unknown places and unknown faces - Watching movies, listening to podcasts, navigating on maps, booking cabs, etc
Storage: 32 GB | 128 GB ( You will probably never run out of storage)
Made art with kids,
Rear camera: 16MP | f/2.0 | Front camera: 5 MP | f/2.0
Collected stories in unexpected places,
Stood for a cause,
Created a home for myself,
I have not been kind to the phone, but it always was. It was extremely durable and survived my constant drops. The metal body was sturdy and there was very less flex. Though I couldn't save the screen, the phones pushed through my constant abuse.
The final few breaths
The phone is having its few last breaths - the battery is depleting, the charger port is screwed. I know it's time for me to move on and catch up with all the tech videos I have seen. It is just a matter of months before I get a job as a strategist and earn my paycheck.
Looking back, the phone never let me down ( when I had a power bank with me atleast ) even when I pushed it to the max like friends shouting at me, "why do you have 236 apps on your phone?" max.
I hope, I just hope I was worthy of all the love it gave me.
More details about the phone: https://www.mi.com/in/mimax/