If you’re curious of what goes into the Xiaomi Mi 4, a couple of folks at the MIUI Forum had managed to give it a proper tear down treatment. The new flagship comes with a solid metallic frame and while the previous Mi 3 is still slimmer by 0.8mm, the curved back promises to offer a more comfortable grip that feels natural in the hands.
The Mi 4 back cover is removable and it is customisable with a range of wood, bamboo, textile, marble and leather textures but its battery isn’t user replaceable. From the tear down process, the 3,080mAh capacity unit is found to be sourced from Sony and its micro-USB port is seen to have 6 pins, which is a one extra than the standard 5-pin design. The 6-pin design is likely to support its rapid charging that claims to do 60% charger within 1 hour with its 9V 1.2A charger. As comparison, the Oppo Find 7 with VOOC Charging technology comes with a 7-pin micro-USB design. Since this isn’t from iFixit, there’s no repairability score for this one. From the photos, it looks easily dismantled with precision screw drivers and they have reported that each screws are labelled with tiny MI stickers which upon tampering would void its official warranty.
Check out the rest of the step by step tear down images after the break.