Xiaomi Mi Max 2 OTG Support Test Review Ideas for audience

Mi Max was Xiaomi's first attempt at a phone with a screen size over 6 inches. The phone wasn't the company's first phablet, however, with the 5.7-inch Mi Note making its debut back in 2015. While the Mi Note was a flagship device, the Mi Max was targeted at the budget segment and primarily catered to those looking to consume multimedia on the go.Show more

Widespread rollout of 4G with the launch of Jio — which gave away unlimited data to hundreds of millions of customers for free — boosted the country's cellular data consumption, and healthy competition in the budget segment made smartphones affordable. Easy availability of 4G combined with the rollout of video streaming services like Netflix and Prime Video made it possible for consumers to stream videos on the go for the first time, and that ultimately led to more interest in large-screened devices.

Whoever first said size doesn’t matter clearly didn’t try replacing their normal-sized phone with a phablet. I tried, folks, I really did. For the past couple of weeks, I tried to live with Xiaomi’s oversized Mi Max 2 phablet. I don’t care if you think that word is no longer in use; that’s simply the most accurate way to describe a 6.44-inch handset.

It’d be easy to just bash the device in this piece if it weren’t half-decent. And that’s where things get complicated. At Rs. 17,000 ($265), the Max 2 offers tremendous bang for your buck with powerful hardware and seriously impressive build quality. It’s just awfully hard to get around that massive screen.

If you’re wondering how large that is, consider the fact that the Max 2 is taller and wider than the iPhone 7 Plus; for the older readers in our audience, this takes up about 80 percent of the surface area of a VHS cassette. Yes, I’m ancient.

With its perfectly rounded sides and wide profile, the phone is rather hard to grip with one hand, and I’ve got fairly large mitts. I imagine that this would be an even bigger issue for more petite folks. Plus, attempting to counter this problem with a grippy case means adding more width.

It’s also not great for pockets. The Max 2 jutted out of every pair of trousers and jeans I own, and easily slipped out of a couple of pairs of my shorts’ and joggers’ pockets. As such, I was forced to either keep my phone in my lap (while at a movie theater) or taking up most of my table at a cocktail bar – all while being interrogated by my companions about what I was doing with such a large phone.

The 2GHz Snapdragon 625 octa-core processor paired with 4GB RAM and an Adreno 506 GPU are well up to the task of handling graphics-intensive games and several apps at once, including Chrome loaded with upwards of 20 tabs.

I was curious to try running two apps at once with the splitscreen feature engaged, but the feature wasn’t available on the version of MIUI8 that was layered atop Android Nougat. Xiaomi says that should arrive sometime this month.

For me, it definitely is. While I liked a lot of things about the Mi Max 2, its size was a constant annoyance that I simply couldn’t get used to.

When I spoke to Xiaomi India’s lead product Jai Mani about the device at its launch event, he explained that larger phones find fans among mothers, who find the extended battery life useful, particularly when they need to keep their children entertained by letting them game on their phones.

That’s well and good for parents, and for folks who are constantly running of battery power. But for me, that benefit was far outweighed by how cumbersome the Max 2 felt both in my pocket and in my hands.