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Xiaomi Mi Pad One-Ups the iPad Mini with a Tegra K1 CPU

Everyonemipad and their cousin has made an Android toting iPad Mini clone and now Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi is joining the fun.

Earlier today Xiaomi unveiled a new 7.9″ tablet which runs Android 4.4 KitKat on an Nvidia K1 chip. With a retail of 1499 yuan (or about $240), the Mi Pad is going to be a powerful gaming platform when it ships in China later this year.

The Xiaomi Mi Pad is one of the first tablets to use the Tegra K1 chip, and it’s backed up by a Retina-quality display with a resolution of 2,048 x 1,536. It packs in 2GB RAM, 16GB internal storage, and a microSD card slot. According to Xiaomi this tablet has a 5MP front-facing camera, an 8MP rear camera, Wifi, Bluetooth, and stereo speakers.

It’s not clear when Xiaomi will release the Mi pad, but they have announced that they launch an “open beta” program in China in June.

I could be wrong, but it looks like the MiPad might be the first tablet to be built on what looks to be the Nvidia Mocha reference design.

According to the leaked benchmarks, the Mocha has a 7.9″ screen, a Tegra K1 chip, 2GB RAM, and a number of other details in common with the Mi Pad. While we don’t know that the Mi Pad is the Mocha there is a good chance they’re the same.

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Comments


jjj May 15, 2014 um 5:18 pm

4:3 AR is an outdated TV standard, Apple doesn’t own it and can you say it’s a clone if it’s better than the Mini? Faster GPU, more RAM, better cams , wifi ac 2×2 , microSD.
If anything it’s an upgrade from the Mini at almost half the price ( the Mini retails for 2888CNY).
That aside it’s disappointing that they went with 4:3 AR , they can’t take over the world if they aren’t smarter than this.

"This is a cutting edge tablet design, and that has lead some to wonder whether this tablet was designed by Xiaomi."

First it’s not a cutting edge anything , it’s not that compact, not very thin , no super thin bezels, nothing new in any way.
Second, Xiaomi claims that in Q1 they shipped 11 mil smartphones and according to Canalys they were the 6th smartphone maker in the world. They sold 18.7 million smartphones in 2013 and had 5.22B revenue . So they are getting quite big and their phones have fantastic prices even for China. They also hired Hugo Barra to handle the international expansion. So everybody should take them very seriously ,they are already more relevant than HTC, Nokia, Blackberry , Motorola and that by selling in very few markets so far.
A lot of phones are sold without heavy carrier subs and price matters. You think Moto G is cheap , Xiaomi’s Redmi is 112$ with slightly better specs http://www.mi.com/en/redmi#param
Their Redmi Note with 5.5 inch 720p , 8 cores Mediatek at 1.3GHz, 1GB of RAM ,13 MP and 5MP cam is 130$ and a version clocked higher and with 2GB of RAM is 160$.
Hell,their flagship device is some 272$.
Maybe i’ve said it here before but this is a new phase in the smartphone era, these guys and many other like them are starting to take over.Samsung and the likes will be in real pain if they don’t become far more aggressive.
So take them seriously ,they are not some "nobody cares" company, they could be a true giant soon and they certainly are capable of designing a pretty plain tablet.
Btw ,ever noticed that the only western phone maker still standing is Apple? Nokia too maybe but that remains to be seen. In the PC industry Dell and HP were supported by a big home market and Asia took over much slower.In phones with carriers killing the market , the US market can’t provide that kind of support and the migration was a lot faster. So Xiaomi, Lenovo , Meizu , Micromax , Karbonn and many others are the ones that will be fighting to become the next tech giants.

Then again, 4:3 is really disappointing and makes me wonder if they are smart enough to do more and innovate at some point soon. Being called ipad clone by the american press is something they should have anticipated and avoided, it’s not a good way to build their image.The price is also not Xiaomi wow, they usually shock with a very low price.

Nate Hoffelder May 15, 2014 um 5:33 pm

Okay, how many devices have K1 chips? Perhaps I am generalizing too much based on that detail.

jjj May 15, 2014 um 5:57 pm

No confirmed mobile devices yet besides this.
There is the Mocha similar to this and a rumored Tegra Note Shield at 8 inch.
But Nvidia said we’ll see products in the second half of the year so it’s early and a bunch of folks could have similar devices, after all they have a few size options and 2 AR options while big tablets get fewer designs and 7 inch is getting hurt by huge phones. Apple actually was smart enough to see that early on and they went above 7 inch so we are likely to see lots of 8 inch tabs this year and hopefully more 9 inch.
I do hope that the next Tegra Note (reference design) is not 4:3 , they will most likely go with a high res screen to show off the GPU but it better be 16:10. Same for the Nexus 8, would be so much nicer if it’s 8.8 inch 16:10 and as wide as the MIni- would be a really sad day if Google goes 8 inch 4:3.
In the end i don’t really know if Xiaomi might have based it’s tablet on a reference design but i guess the tone seemed inappropriate and i was annoyed that the press was acting all that surprised by the specs when they were pretty much as expected, so i went in rant mode…

sez May 16, 2014 um 7:54 pm

I don’t understand how anyone can seriously complain about 4:3. This format is so much better than these annoying widescreen displays that have become omnipresent. iFive already has thin and light 4:3 tablets with these 2048×1536 pixel retina displays you can buy for about $170 on Aliexpress. This Tegra K1 device is more expensive since the K1 is new and might be more expensive. I, for one, welcome every move back to 4:3 devices very much. We don’t need to add to the annoying flood of widescreen devices. What’s still needed is an inexpensive iPad Air hardware clone with a documented processor. There doesn’t seem to be any other device the size of the iPad Air that’s also as lightweight as it.

Nate Hoffelder May 16, 2014 um 8:05 pm

16:9 is better in certain situations, mostly when you are going to hold the device in one hand (below 7″). But for large tablets I agree that 4:3 is better.

M.Singh May 16, 2014 um 4:06 am

Xiaomi, Oppo and Meizu are the three emerging premium brands from China. They will soon expand into the world. I will not mention Karbonn and Micromax in the same sentence as above 3 brands. Karbonn and Micromax just sell rebranded phones in India; forget about manufacturing or research & development. The only reason Karbonn and Micromax are popular is because of large market base in India

jjj May 16, 2014 um 12:44 pm

Meizu and Oppo are pretty small at this time,while Oppo doesn’t really do cheap.
Vivo is also premium if you want but again not that big and not cheap.
Anyway, i mentioned a few companies as examples but are a bunch more , wasn’t making a losts since that would include dozens of names.
Micromaz and Karbonn are from India and India is huge with crazy growth potential. China is starting to saturate , India has some years before it gets there. Sure maybe those 2 will fade away and others from India will rise but for now they are the bigger names there.
And BTW premium is not a positive thing , the growth is in the developing nations, price is what matters.


jjj May 16, 2014 um 12:16 am

Just found some interesting info , hope you notice this post.
Here http://en.miui.com/thread-21500-1-1.html
in this pic http://en.miui.com/data/attachment/forum/201405/16/111334hqli790k9r7vm9j2.png.thumb.jpg

the mipad is called "my mocha" and in the next screenshot the model is listed as "mocha" so this is Mocha , remains to be seen if there will be other Mochas around.

While at it, this site and brand is owned by Meizu http://www.bigertech.com/
The tablet suggests they might have a tablet soon too, while the brand and the other objects suggest wearables.

Nate Hoffelder May 16, 2014 um 6:32 am

Thanks!


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