Mivi One 5G First Impressions

There has been a noticeable rise in new smartphone brands entering the Indian market in recent months. What makes it more interesting is that some of these companies are not traditional phone makers at all. For example, wearables brand Boltt recently made the jump to smartphones, and now Mivi is joining the growing list with its first smartphone, Mivi One 5G.

The price of the Mivi One 5G in India starts at Rs. 14,999. It packs a 6.75-inch display, Qualcomm's Snapdragon 4 Gen 2 chipset, and a 6,000mAh battery.

From the front, the Mivi One 5G looks fairly familiar to smartphones from about five years ago. You get a large display with a waterdrop-style notch, thick bezels, and a noticeable chin at the bottom. It is not exactly the kind of phone that makes you stop and look twice. However, there is a little more going on once you turn it around.

We have the Dark Blue variant of the handset, and it looks understated. There is no flashy pattern or gradient here. Instead, the brand has opted for a simple textured finish. The Mivi logo sits towards the lower-left corner, while the top-left houses a vertically arranged dual-camera setup. The side-mounted fingerprint sensor doubles as the power button, while the volume controls sit above it.

The camera island itself has a slightly raised design. The most noticeable element here is the presence of the two large camera lenses. The frame is flat, and the phone is fairly large in the hand. It is 9.15mm thick and weighs around 210g, so it is not exactly lightweight.

On the front, the Mivi One 5G sports a 6.75-inch HD+ display with a 120Hz refresh rate. Based on first impressions, it looks to be a typical LCD panel that you find in the lower smartphone segments. However, I will reserve judgement on the actual display quality for the full review.

Under the hood, the Mivi handset is powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 4 Gen 2 chipset, paired with up to 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. The phone runs Android 16, and Mivi has kept the software fairly close to stock Android. I'll put the phone through its paces over the next few days to see how it performs.

For photography, the Mivi One 5G gets a 50-megapixel Samsung ISOCELL primary camera with PDAF, alongside an 8-megapixel front-facing camera. I have only had a short time with the cameras so far, so I will save my detailed observations for the full review. It is backed by a 6,000mAh battery with support for 18W charging.

Mivi has picked an interesting time to enter the smartphone market. The One 5G is restrained in design, has relatively clean software, and comes with a large battery. These give it a few things to talk about. The real test, though, will be whether the Snapdragon 4 Gen 2, cameras, and display can keep up with everything else available around Rs. 15,000. Stay tuned for our full review of the Mivi One 5G.