After a decent stint with a few budget offerings namely the M2,M350,M530 USA based OEM Infocus in a bid to step up the ante have launched their flagship model- M810. Priced at Rs 14,999 with Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 inside does the Infocus M810 have enough in it to dethrone the segment king Xiaomi Mi4. Rather a more straightforward question in your mind would be - Is it the best I can get for the money I pay? Let find that out in the detailed comparison below..
Build and the Design
The Xiaomi Mi4 comes with a dual glass design and a metal chassis. This makes the look feel premium and appear class apart from the other devices of its class. Hearing this some Apple fans boys out there might be shouting out loud now saying - ‘Hey Xiaomi copied our iPhone?' But let's not delve in this controversy. The design comes with its fair share of cons though, as the glass back makes it slippery to hold. Personally I liked the grip of the Mi3 better. There is a option of removable wooden back covers though which improves the grip as well as give it a premium feel.
Infocus M810 is well built too with a metal frame and a dual glass design.With a momentary glance at the back though you may reckon that the back cover is made out of metal. But unfortunately it isn't. It is a made of plastic possessing textures reminiscent of the one seen on the chin of the Asus Zenfone series and has a sheet of glass on top.
This would never be a deal breaker to me, as I believe taking inspiration from others is great as long as you don't copy and paste their product design. Do note that the Infocus is markedly narrow than the Mi4 at 7.9mm in contrast to the 8.9 mm of the later. Let's now move on to the performance part.
Under the Hood:
We don't have much of a difference here as both the devices come with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 SoC with four Cortex cores clocked at 2.5GHz each. The GPU department is handled by the Adreno 330 clocking at 478 MHz. There a difference in the RAM though. The Mi4 comes with a 3GB of RAM in contrary to the 2GB seen on the Infocus M810.
This is again no deal breaker as we must bear in mind that the Mi4 runs on MIUI v6 which despite giving a lot of customisability option is pretty RAM hungry. On the first boot one can easily see that the UI eats about 1GB of the 3GB of RAM. Infocus M810 on the contrary runs on a much lighter InLife UI which takes up about 600-650MB.
Display:
Despite the fact that both devices sport a Full HD (1920x1080p) IPS OGS display there's a difference in the screen size. The Infocus M810 and the Mi4 have 5.5 inch and 5 inch displays respectively. The color and contrast are great on both. But placing them side by side one can easily see that the Mi4 with its JDI/AOC sourced display wins out in the saturation level - colors appear punchier.
The UI of both devices though give the users enough customisability to tweak with the color and saturation options.
Camera:
Both devices come with a 13MP back cameras using Sony's IMX214 sensors. But there a difference in the aperture - f2.2 (M810) and a f1.8 (Mi4). Larger aperture means better low light image capture, so if you are planning to take a large no of night shots I would recommend you to go with the Mi4.
4K (2160p) video recording is supported on both devices. The Mi4 can also capture slomos i.e 1080p at 60fps, 720p at 120fps. Infocus haven't given any official word on the slow motion recording capabilities of the M810. Add to that Xiaomi's impressive track record of getting their camera algorithms right on the money. On the other hand Infocus hasn't done great in the recent past with their other devices. Hence I feel Xiaomi Mi4 would any day be a better choice if camera is your priority.
The front cameras on M810 and the Mi4 are 5MP and 8MP respectively. So selfies won't be an issue from either of them.
OS:
Here Infocus edges out it's competition as it runs on Android Lollipop (5.0) unlike the Mi4 which is still on Kitkat (4.4.4).
Like every Xiaomi device the Mi4 runs on their own custom ROM called MIUI which offer much more customisability and utility to stock android via nifty features like Permissions manager. InLife UI on the other hand is plain and simple. It's basically stock Android with a custom skin on it.
Battery:
This an area where Xiaomi is leagues away from M810. Inspite of packing in a reasonably power hungry processor the M810 uses a ‘tiny' 2600 mah battery. This below standards for the year 2015, as even budget devices now are coming with 3000+ mah batteries. Mi4 has 3080 mah Li-Poly battery.
Both devices support Quick charge 2.0 though which results in a 0-60 percent charging time of 30 mins.
Verdict:
To say in one line -‘Infocus is a decent device but not at par with the likes of the Xiaomi Mi4'. We started the comparison with a lot of expectations but unfortunately the M810 disappoints in a few to many sections i.e. in the battery, UI and the camera department. But for phablet lovers who want high end performance and don't went to spend an extra Rs 4000 ($65) on the One Plus One, Infocus is definitely a good choice - if not the best.
Do let us know in the comments section below, which one would you go for?
