Mivi One 5G review: Clean Android experience at an affordable price

Mivi has entered the smartphone market with the Mivi One 5G, a budget phone starting at Rs 13,999. After using it as my primary device for around two weeks, India Today Tech found that it offers respectable performance, a clean software experience and a capable battery, although its display resolution leaves room for improvement.

Mivi One 5G review - 8/10

Pros

• Fast display
• Big battery
• Simple design
• No bloatware

Cons

• Minor software niggles 

In Short

• Mivi enters the smartphone market with the Mivi One 5G
• It stands out as a compelling option priced under Rs 15,000
• It has a big battery and ships without any bloatware

Doubt could be a natural reaction when someone does something for the first time. I also started using the Mivi One 5G with a dubious attitude, knowing that Mivi, a homegrown audio and electronics brand, is stepping into the smartphone business. But after using it as a main device for the past 10-15 days, my perspective has changed. Mivi barely leaves any room for anyone to dismiss the device as novice work. From its design to its performance, the Mivi One gets several things right for a first attempt.

Mivi has built its identity around offering value for money in the audio and electronics market. Now, with smartphone prices rising amid an ongoing component shortage, the company is entering a competitive market with a phone that starts at Rs 13,999. For that price, the Mivi One 5G offers a Snapdragon processor, a big display with a 120Hz refresh rate and a 50-megapixel main camera. On paper, that sounds like a promising start. But how does it hold up in everyday use?

Design

The Mivi One comes with a rectangular frame and a flat panel. It has a very simple design. Looking at the device from the rear, it reminds me of the iPhone 17—two camera sensors sitting inside a pill-shaped camera island and a small LED flash protruding from the right side of the camera module. The Mivi branding is struck on the bottom, lower-left side of the device, parallel to the camera setup. The outer body of the phone is built from polycarbonate, but it feels good in the hand.

Despite its larger size, it feels comfortable to hold. It measures 9.15mm in thickness and weighs 210g.

On the front, it has a waterdrop camera notch and there is a fairly substantial chin at the bottom. One area for improvement in the design is that the whole display seems slightly raised above the phone’s body. This gives an old-school look.

On the right side, you get volume up-down buttons alongside a fingerprint-equipped power switch. And on the left, you can open the SIM card tray, which also has a microSD slot. The bottom edge houses a USB Type-C port for charging, flanked by a speaker grille on the left and a microphone for calls and audio recording, along with a 3.5mm headphone jack on the right.

The phone ships in five colourways: Blue, Pink, Green, Burgundy, and Navy Blue. The Navy Blue colour I use looks quite charming in sunlight. Apart from the design, the Mivi One has an IP64 rating to protect the device from dust and water.

Display

Moving on to the display, the Mivi One features a 6.75-inch HD+ LCD panel. While a full HD display is often preferred, HD+ remains quite acceptable given the phone’s price point, especially considering that several smartphones nowadays priced closer to Rs 20,000 still offer HD+ displays.

However, the display experience is fine as the phone features a 120Hz refresh rate. So you can switch between apps and work without any interruption. On paper, in terms of brightness, it offers only 450 nits. But from my outdoor experience, I felt the phone worked decently even in the mild sunlight. The phone ships with a 2.5D cover glass.

Performance

In terms of the processor, while most phones in this price range offer lower MediaTek or Unisoc chipsets, Mivi made a smart move by putting an older Snapdragon 4 Gen 2, which comparatively works better.

I have played BGMI on the phone, and its gaming performance is quite respectable. It sustained well actually at 40 FPS. The phone features 128GB of UFS 2.2 storage alongside 4GB, 6GB, or 8GB of LPDDR4X RAM options.

I occasionally ran into a glitch with Gemini where the phone's microphone wouldn't activate on the first try. Interestingly, accessing the mic through WhatsApp first seemed to fix the issue and get it working properly again. But this is a budget smartphone again, so a minor software quirk like this is easy to forgive.

While texting on WhatsApp or other major platforms, whether casually or formally, the Mivi One’s keyboard offers suggestions to correct grammar and spelling, making your writing sound more polished and professional. Well, the feature is not as good as apps like Grammarly, but it works pretty well, especially when you forget to add articles like ‘the’ or ‘a’ to a sentence.

The phone scored 725 in the single-core test and 1,887 in the multi-core test on Geekbench.

Camera

Mivi packs a 50-megapixel main camera on the rear side of the Mivi One 5G, accompanied by a second auxiliary lens. Mivi doesn’t specify what this second lens does. And on the front, an 8-megapixel sensor is placed inside the waterdrop notch for selfies and video calls.

In this segment, the camera performs decently in broad daylight and captures colours well. Like most phones in this price range, it tends to over-enhance certain colours, making reds look too red and yellows too yellow, and it alters saturation. The Mivi One, however, handles this better and leans towards what I’d call a “naturalish” look. In terms of detailing, it does fall short, but again that’s about what you can expect from a device at this price.

Night photography is worth checking out too; I found it impressive. When capturing images of buildings, roads and LED billboards, the phone does over-brighten the light, making it hard to tell what the billboard is showing. However, there’s an option to adjust the exposure, and once it’s set correctly, the camera captures good, near-clear photos. HDR processing is also available in-camera, and it works quite well.

Moving on to videography, the Mivi One records 1080p at 60 fps from the rear camera and 1080p at 30 fps from the front camera. Video quality is decent, but you may notice stabilisation issues while recording on the move, such as when walking, since the phone doesn’t have OIS. Even so, it works well and you get decent quality.

One area of improvement I felt while taking photos is that the camera focusing could be improved.

Battery and software experience

The Mivi One 5G ships with a 6000mAh battery along with an 18W charger. On the charger, you will find the Mivi branding on both the cable and adapter. The phone can easily last a full day of use and a little more. To reach a full charge, it takes about 1.5 hours.

The Mivi One runs Android 16. Right out of the box, there is no bloatware, which means no unwanted apps to uninstall. The Android experience is simple. Swipe right on the home screen to open the Google Discover page, swipe up to open the app drawer, and swipe down to pull up the notification shade, with the quick settings section above it. At the bottom of the shade, there are two buttons: a power icon to shut down, restart or access emergency help, and a settings icon to open the phone’s settings.

Some of the features I find interesting include flip to silent, which lets you mute your phone simply by turning it face down. There is also an “Incoming call flashing reminder,” which makes the flash blink when a call comes in. And if your hands are full, the lift to ear to answer feature picks up the call as soon as you bring the phone to your ear.

The Mivi One, despite being a budget phone, ships with a promise of two years of software updates. This means you will get Android 17 and Android 18.

Price and availability

The phone comes in three RAM configurations, all with the same 128GB of storage. The base variant with 4GB of RAM is currently available at Rs 13,999, and the 6GB RAM variant is priced at Rs 14,999. The top-end 8GB RAM variant is also priced at Rs 14,999. Buyers can get an additional Rs 1,000 off on the base and mid variants with an ICICI credit card, while the 8GB variant gets a Rs 750 discount on select credit cards.

Mivi One 5G verdict

Now we have discussed all the major aspects of the Mivi One 5G; it's now time to talk about whether you should buy this device. If you are looking for a good phone under Rs 15,000, especially given the current mobile market conditions, the Mivi One is absolutely worth considering. At this price and time, the company is offering a Snapdragon chipset, a large 6,000mAh battery, a fast 120Hz display, and decent performance. The phone does fall short in a few areas, such as the mentioned mic issue and the Gemini glitch, but it’s also true that only a handful of phones in the world can be called perfect.

- Ends