Xiaomi Mi Note Release Date: Flagship Phablet Sells Out Within 3 Minutes

Interested in purchasing the Xiaomi Mi Note smartphone today? You can't, it's sold out. The latest flagship device by the Chinese manufacturer went on sale Tuesday and its first batch sold out almost as quickly as it became available.

Xiaomi is known for offering it's devices in flash sales, during which small supplies of devices are made available and create near immediate sellouts. This has been one of Xiaomi's prime strategies for generating interested in its devices in its home market of China.

Xiaomi received over 220 million reservations for the Mi Note prior to launch, according to an unnamed vice president. However, the company had not revealed how many devices were actually sold during the flash sale, which lasted only three minutes before the smartphone sold out. A new batch of Mi Note units will be available on Feb. 3.

Xiaomi announced the Mi Note nearly two weeks ago, alongside the Mi Note Pro, a more powerful version of the smartphone. The devices are Xiaomi's first high-end phablets, but they still adhere to manufacturers philosophy of offering devices with advanced hardware specifications for a fraction of the price of other top manufacturers like Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronic's Co., which sell high-end smartphones for an upward of $600.

The Mi Note features a 5.7-inch Full HD display, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 chip, 3GB of RAM memory and 16GB and 64GB internal storage options, a 13-megapixel rear camera and 4-megapixel front camera and the Android 5.0 Lollipop OS with Xiaomi's MIUI 6 interface. The device sells for ,299 yuan/$371.

The Mi Note Pro features a 5.7-inch Quad HD display, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 chip, 4GB of RAM memory and a 64GB internal storage option, a 13-megapixel rear camera and 4-megapixel front camera and the Android 5.0 Lollipop OS with Xiaomi's MIUI 6 interface. The device will sell for 3,299 yuan/$532, and is expected go on sale sometime in March.

With the Mi Note off to a good sales start, Xiaomi hopes to sell 100 million devices in 2015; an ambitious goal in comparison to the 61.1 million devices the company sold in 2014. In addition to adopting tactics like establishing programs for consumers to trade in their only iPhone handsets for a Xiaomi smartphone, the manufacturer will also expand to new markets, including Brazil, Russia, Thailand, Mexico and Turkey. Many Xiaomi devices, like the Mi 4 and Mi 3, released within the last year and are still popular among smartphone fans.