OnePlus One Vs. Xiaomi Mi4 Vs. Asus ZenFone 2- Hardware Comparison

The present day Indian smartphone market is full of various offerings from Korean, Japanese, Indian, Taiwanese, Chinese and other manufacturers. But not every manufacturer offers phone with great value for money. Very few international manufacturers have tried to enter these uncharted waters, but those who had, have reaped great results.

So, if you are looking forward to buying a VFM phone with great hardware and don’t want to spend more than Rs.25,000 then you’ll have to make a choice between OnePlus One, Xiaomi Mi4, and the Asus ZenFone 2.

 

OPO (OnePlus One) and Mi4 are almost same in every aspect but the ZenFone 2 differs in a lot of ways.

 

 

Now, let’s see how they fare against each other in an actual hardware comparison:

[table id=zenfone2vsoneplusonevsmi4 /]

 

Processing Power

OPO and Mi4 both pack Snapdragon 801 quad-core chip having 4 CPU cores ticking at 2.5 GHz each whereas the ZenFone 2 is based on an Intel quad-core chip running at 2.3 GHz. OPO and Mi4 have 3 GB RAM whereas the ZenFone 2 ZE551ML supports 4 GB of RAM.

This makes it pretty clear that all these phones are performance power houses and you won’t notice any difference in their performance in real life. Benchmarks scores are a different story altogether and you shouldn’t be worried about them.

Display

OPO and Zenfone 2 have their 5.5” IPS LCD full HD displays protected by Gorilla Glass3 whereas the Mi4 has a smaller but slightly sharper 5” IPS FHD display. The display on the Mi4 produces somewhat over-satured colors while the display on the OPO is calibrated towards color accuracy. So, if you’re a Samsung user, then you would like the display of the Mi4.

In the end it all comes down to personal preference. But if you stay outside for most of the times and don’t like matte finish screen protectors then you should go for the Mi4 as its display has better sunlight legibility than OPO.

Camera

All of these phones have a 13 MP rear facing camera accompanied by a dual-LED flash in OPO and ZenFone2 and a single LED flash for the Mi4. Also note that both OPO and Mi4 are capable of recording Ultra-HD videos whereas with the ZenFone2 you’ll only be able to shoot 1080p videos.

The imaging quality of the primary cam of the OPO is almost similar to that of Mi4. However, Mi4 has an 8 MP front as compared to 5 MP selfie units on both- OPO and ZenFone 2. While this gives the selfie-lovers a slight edge over the others, it doesn’t make much of a difference.

OS and UI

Both OPO and Mi4 run Android KitKat out-of-the-box with CM11S OS for the OPO and MIUI on the Mi4. ZenFone 2 on the other hand, comes with Android Lollipop pre-installed and is customized with Asus’s own ZenUI.

It needn’t be mentioned how fast and smooth these phones run as I’ve already mentioned how powerful their CPUs and GPUs are.

If you are a Nexus fan and love vanilla flavour of Android OS, then OPO is your best choice.

Note: Both OPO and Xiaomi Mi4 will receive Android Lollipop upgrade in near future.

Battery Life

As these phones have similar screen size and resolution and also have similar features their battery life shouldn’t differ much from each other. They would all last you at least a single day on medium to heavy usage with 3G browsing.

All of these phones pack non-removable batteries for slim form-factor. OPO packs a 3100 mAh battery, whereas Mi4 and ZenFone 2 pack 3080 mAh and 3000 mAh batteries respectively.

Memory and Connectivity

Both OPO and Mi4 come with 16/64 GB storage options with no expandable memory. Whereas the ZenFone 2 not only comes with 16/32/64 GB storage options but also supports microSD cards up to 64 GB.

Each of these phones supports micro USB with USB Host functionality while also supporting the latest WLAN 802.11 n/ac standards. They also support LTE Band #40 (2300 MHz) meaning that you’ll be able to enjoy 4G data on them in India.

Both OPO and ZenFone2 lack support for FM Radio and IR blaster, but support NFC. The Xiaomi Mi4 on the other hand, supports FM Radio and IR blaster, but doesn’t support NFC.

Summing Up

If you prioritize your requirements then the above parameters will certainly help you in making an informed decision as all of these phones cost almost same and have a variation of only 3,000 to 4,000 Rs.

OnePlus One 16 GB- Rs. 18,999

OnePlus One 64 GB- Rs. 21,999

Xiaomi Mi4 16 GB- Rs. 19,999

Xiaomi Mi4 64 GB- Rs. 23,999

If you have anything else to add to this comparison then please share your thoughts in the comments below.