I'm curious. I've got 2 Hongmi here now. One was bought in Singapore, one in China. They seem pretty different.
Few things I noticed:
One is called HM 1, the other one HM 1W.
Firmware updates... the China one is stuck on what seems like version 5, while the other one has 17?!
The LED flash light of the China version is so dim that after 15 cm you can barely see it anymore. The other one is really bright, almost comparable to my Galaxy Nexus, just with a green-ish hue...
The screen of the Singapore version is warmer, yellowisher. Looks better, more pleasant to me. It also has slightly deeper blacks and perhaps better viewing angles. It also seems to me like the spacing between the pixels is bigger on the China version... fonts are a bit smoother for the Singaporean version, and you can make out a grid on the China version (unlike the other one).
The camera on the Singapore version is better. It is less noisy in the dark, and it just showed me a dark blue sky just now... for the China version it's pitch black.
Did I miss something? Where do these differences come from? They seem rather significant to me, but I only know there is the Hongmi and the Hongmi 1S... and then WCDMA and SCDMA versions (and even then, different screen, LED and camera?).
Ok, I just checked. It's the SCDMA version. Luckily it's not mine.

I'm kind of surprised that besides having a different modem Xiaomi seems to have swapped in so very different hardware... the SCDMA version clearly is inferior in many ways not related to the modem.
This post has been edited by kadajawi: Aug 10 2014, 09:10 PM