Xiaomi (pronounced Shiao Me) has been mentioned a few times before on TechRadar, regularly picked out as one to watch for the future as the emerging smartphone brand becomes more widely known. That's for two big reasons: it has a reputation for making good phones at very low prices, and the fact that former Google/Android man Hugo Barra joined the Chinese maker last year to head up an international push.It's an interesting company. It sells mobiles direct to customers via its website, so the money it saves on marketing pushes is passed on in offering solid hardware at a budget price - it's not too dissimilar to the OnePlus One in this respect. Xiaomi's current high-end model is the Mi4, but before then it was the Mi 3 and it offers specs similar to those of most of 2013's flagship Android models, combining a 2.3GHz Snapdragon 800 chipset (as seen in the Nexus 5, LG G2, Xperia Z1 Compact and many, many more top-spec mobiles) with a 13MP camera, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of internal storage and a 5-inch 1080p resolution display.In terms of what's inside it, the Xiaomi Mi 3 is very nearly as good as it gets in the world of on-paper performance, if you ignore 2014's brand new models with their superior Snapdragon 801 chipsets.