Xiaomi Mi Max 3 in for review

It's big, it's huge, it's the Mi Max 3 - a phone with decent enough hardware, low price tag and screen of epic proportions.

The Mi Max 3 comes with a 6.9-inch 2160 x 1080px IPS display - it wasn't too long ago that we used to have 7-inch tablets. The screen has rounded corners, no notch, acceptable side bezels and fairly small chin, which along with the tall 18:9 aspect ratio helps a little with the handling. Yet, no matter how good the screen-to-body ratio is the Mi Max 3 is not usable with just one hand. With a footprint this big and a slippery anodized aluminum back drops are more than likely. Even the positioning of the fingerprint reader is rather suboptimal so you need two hands even for unlocking.

Mi Max 3 in the hand

On the inside the Mi Max 3 is a solid mid-ranger with a Snapdragon 636 chipset paired with either 4GB or 6GB of RAM and 64GB or 128GB of internal flash storage, respectively. If that's not enough for you, there's a microSD card slot, but using it will prevent you from accessing the second SIM slot. One would think that on a phone this big we'd actually get three separate slots, but alas we are stuck with a hybrid one.

Mi Max 3 front and back

On the back, the phone sports a dual camera bulge - 12MP main shooter with f/1.9 aperture and a secondary 5MP unit for depth sensing. On the front, the device uses an 8MP snapper with f/2.0 opening and even though we are talking about a mid-range phone here, the MIUI software comes with all the AI goodies of the flagships like beauty mode, scene recognition and face unlock.

A body like this has to carry a corresponding battery, right? Yep, the Mi Max 3 delivers - a humongous 5,500 mAh battery that supports charging at up to 18W with the included QC3 charger.

On the software side, the phone comes with MIUI 9.5 on top of the Android 8.1 Oreo out of the box and Xiaomi promises an update to MIUI 10 soon.

So if you are looking for a phone with as big a screen as possible the Mi Max 3 is probably high on your shortlist. Once we complete the review we'll also know if there's more to it than just a huge screen.