64GB Xiaomi Mi 4 to go on sale in India from February 24 for Rs 23,999

Looks like Xiaomi’s 16GB Mi 4 will be accompanied by its higher capacity sibling – the 64GB Mi 4 coming February 24th. This announcement was made on Xiaomi’s official Twitter handle today.

The tweet is quite simple and only states the capacity and a Rs 23,999 price point. The original Xiaomi 16GB Mi 4 goes on sale tomorrow.

We reviewed the Mi 4 and were impressed with the phone, although had stated that the 16GB storage space of which 12GB was available to the users, would not really go down well with a lot of users. Also for just Rs 2,000 over the Mi 4 price point – the OnePlus One certainly offers better value.

The timing is particularly interesting because just today morning OnePlus One made an announcement stating that it in order to celebrate its 10 weeks in India, it will be selling the OnePlus One tomorrow in an open sale format ie. no invites will be required to buy the OnePlus One tomorrow. The OnePlus One sale will start at 10am IST tomorrow.

It is no surprise that the Xiaomi Mi 4 is facing a lot of heat from the OnePlus One, which at just Rs 2,000 more offers a 4G LTE handset and 64GB storage space. While Xiaomi has matched its upcoming Mi 4’s storage capacity with the OnePlus One, the phone will still be a 3G handset. Also the Xiaomi Mi 4 with 64GB storage will cost Rs 2,000 more than the OnePlus One.

This is a first for Xiaomi, to announce a new variant of its phone before the parent phone starts selling. Clearly Xiaomi seems to be on a sticky wicket, as unlike its budget offerings, the Mi 4 is priced quite close to the OnePlus. A quick look at any forums in India will give you a picture of how a lot of Indian consumers are not happy about the fact that Xiaomi would limit the storage space to 16GB on the Mi 4, while pricing is touching Rs 20,000. The response to the 16GB Mi 4, at least on the forums, seems lukewarm. But one can only get a real picture after the Mi 4 flash sale tomorrow. Regardless, it will be interesting to see how this battle between the OnePlus One and Xiaomi Mi 4 pans out.