Now, what can 499 yuan buy? 0.5 pairs of Martin boots, 0.6 pairs of Beats earphones, or half a Jeannet, but at the same price, you can buy a mobile phone with full functions that can last for a year or two if you like. This is the Hongmi 4A, a very cheap and interesting handset.

Simple packaging

Xiaomi is very consistent in the style consistency of its products. It can be seen from their products at a glance, which belongs to Xiaomi family. The same is true for Hongmi 4A. The difference between Hongmi 4A and other Xiaomi mobile phones lies in the name printed on the box.

The package is very compact. When the box is pulled out, the mobile phone itself takes up almost all the space. After taking out the red rice 4A, there are three packs of vouchers/instructions in one, charging head, data cable, and a pin clip inside. No earphone is attached.

Appearance, restrained and durable

Hongmi 4A uses a 5-inch 720p screen（ 296ppi ）The front is very clean and simple. In terms of aesthetic feeling, 4A may not be very good, but it is generally durable. The frame is slightly wide enough to run a horse or a car. Hold it in your hand. It is slightly larger, and you can barely operate it with one hand.

(By contrast, Xiaomi 5s Plus on the left and Hongmi 4A on the right)

(Above the front of the fuselage, sensor, earpiece, 5 megapixel front camera)

(At the lower front of the fuselage, multi task key, home key and return key, no backlight)

(On the top of the body, noise reduction microphone, infrared transmitter, headphone interface)

(At the bottom of the body, microUSB interface, microphone)

On the left side of the fuselage, SIM/SD two in one card slot supports dual cards and dual standby, or single card+SD card. But there is a very worrisome problem. Nano and SD card share the same slot. If you use nano SIM, you can't install SD card, and the other slot is an outdated micro SIM. This will bring a lot of trouble in compatibility. You'd better always prepare a nano to micro adapter card

(On the right side of the body, power button and volume adjustment button)

(Back of body, 13 megapixel camera, monochrome flash)

(Below the Xiaomi logo is a row of speaker openings)

The handle is the same as the price

The author does not require the use of high-end materials such as aluminum alloy, glass or ceramics for the mobile phone with a price of 499 yuan, but requires solid workmanship and no obvious defects. Not surprisingly, Hongmi 4A uses plastic as the body material, but fortunately, the overall workmanship is excellent, and the splicing between the materials is very tight. After careful observation, no gaps are found. This is commendable, and the weight of 131.5g is still very light, so you won't feel tired even if you hold your hand for a long time.

The 4A's plastic feels good. It's not just the rubbery plastic, but it has some frosted texture. It was found during use that the back of the 4A's shell is basically free of fingerprints. This is a great blessing for users with more hand oil, and its scratch resistance is also better than ordinary plastic.

The whole phone has only three physical keys, the power key and the volume plus/minus key. The key range is short, the force required for pressing is moderate, and the feedback of the key is also very real. There is no soft feeling. The position of the power key is easy to find. When you hold it with one hand, you can easily press it, while the volume key is relatively close. You may need to move the position of your hand during operation.

MIUI， opinions differ

Before the deadline, Hongmi 4A was running MIUI 8.6. Based on Android 6.0.1, it is estimated that every user who has used Xiaomi's mobile phone can not feel that this is an Android system. MIUI has always been a system with different opinions. People who like it say that it is easy to use and has many functions. People who don't like it will dislike it for being too bloated. However, MIUI is already a very mature and highly practical system. Users can almost find any function they want on it.

But even though the MIUI is very bloated and the contents are too fancy, it is practical, and almost all the quick, convenient and efficient operations are included in Xiaomi. Moreover, Hongmi 4A runs MIUI very smoothly, and there is no jam. What's more, this mobile phone is only equipped with a low-end processor, but it does not give you a low-end feel in the use process, In general, daily use is very comfortable.

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Performance, expected

It is reasonable to put Qualcomm Snapdragon 425 processor on Hongmi 4A. Four ARM Cortex-A53 1.4GHz cores, Adreno 308, 2GB memory+16GB storage space, and up to 128GB microSD card expansion are supported. There is nothing to be surprised about the score, so we can only say that it conforms to its positioning. The only thing worth praising is the high fluency in daily use. When running maps, microblogs, WeChat or some ordinary apps, the performance of Hongmi 4A is very satisfactory. Although 2GB of memory is a little less, it does not often happen that the app is forced to close due to insufficient memory. It is also OK to play small games in your spare time, but if you play such games as NBA 2K, the frame dropping phenomenon will be serious and not smooth enough, so you may feel terrible when playing.

Look at a group of run points

*In addition, the author also used Hongmi 4A to run Geekbench 4, and the results were single core 662 and multi-core 1720.

Screen, unsatisfactory

The Hongmi 4A is equipped with a 5-inch 720p screen, 296ppi, which is not precise enough. The look and feel is also ordinary. Due to cost constraints, the author has no expectations for this screen. Moreover, it has two very fatal shortcomings: high reflectivity. Almost everywhere there is light, the reflection of the screen will be very serious, which will greatly affect the use experience. Secondly, the screen of Hongmi 4A is simply a fingerprint collector, which is extremely easy to be contaminated with fingerprints. Basically, a cloth needs to be prepared for a long time to wipe the screen.

Although the appearance is ordinary, we were impressed when testing the screen data. Color temperature 6991K, contrast 961:1, average deltaE 2.4, maximum deltaE 4.8, 88.5% gamut. Red rice 4A performs a little better than usual in terms of color accuracy, but even so, appearance is more important. However, the high reflectivity makes it difficult to watch the screen in some cases.

Endurance, burst

The battery capacity of 3120 mAh+720p screen+Qualcomm Snapdragon 425 is equal to: strong endurance.

The performance of the 4A is excellent both in daily use and in standby mode. The endurance can definitely meet the needs of most people. The power of the attached charging head is 5V 1A, which is not fast charging. The 4A itself does not support fast charging, and the charging speed is only average.

Photograph, within level

The Hongmi 4A is equipped with a 13 megapixel camera, f/2.2 aperture, and a monochrome flash. The camera has good playability, supports HDR and has various shooting modes（ Panorama, continuous shooting, beauty, scene mode, etc ）, supports face recognition, and even manual mode, but there are not many options for adjustment. You can only manually change the white balance and ISO.

In addition, there are various filter options. The continuous shooting speed is remarkable, and the focusing speed is also good. In general, in some light environments, 4A can still take some pictures that can be viewed, but once it reaches the low light environment, its performance is difficult to be satisfactory. But for a mobile phone that costs 499 yuan, the performance of Hongmi 4A can be given a 60 pass mark.

Daytime proof sheet

Night proof sheet

Red rice 4A, that's right

The Hongmi 4A, which is positioned at the middle and low end, has all the elements that users expect. It has a good hand feel, a smooth system, and a strong endurance. In addition, it has a highly practical MIUI, which includes almost any function you need.

Of course, as a mobile phone that can't even buy a bicycle, the Hongmi 4A is inevitably full of various compromises, and some places even directly affect the user experience, such as the screen with high reflectivity, which seems to be powerless when facing the lights and Sunshine. Moreover, the appearance of the Hongmi 4A has no design to speak of, and simple plastics are spliced together, It seems to be an "ordinary" mobile phone, a bit back to what Lei Jun once said "no design is the best design".

Can the 4A be used as the main engine? It may or may not be possible. The low processing performance makes it extremely difficult to run large apps. 2GB of memory is also very tight in many cases. Occasionally, some programs are forced to close to alleviate the tight RAM. Of course, just like a coin has two sides, so does the Hongmi 4A. Maybe you won't put it in the position of the main machine, but if it acts as a standby machine, The performance of the 4A is believed to be better than you expected. With its strong endurance and small size, put it in the bag. When your high split screen and strong performance iPhone 7 or S7 edge is out of power, take out the 4A at any time, replace it with a SIM card, and immediately revive with full blood.

At the same time, it is also a very good choice to use it as an elderly machine or a child machine for family members, because many of its features can just meet the needs of these people. In general, the performance of Hongmi 4A is in line with its positioning, and should be.

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