Xiaomi has long been known as the "Chinese Apple", or the more unflattering version "copycat" outside of China. At the Mi Note event, CEO Lei Jun tried to shake off this reputation by going on the offensive against the iPhone.

The enigmatic leader of Xiaomi compared the Mi Note to the iPhone 6 Plus, claiming the Mi Note was "shorter, thinner and lighter" than the iPhone 6 Plus, and did not feature an extruding camera on the back.

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These are not typical comments thrown at Apple's iPhones and are all the more powerful since they hit at Apple's design flaws, rather than internal specifications or software.

The extruding camera—no matter how much Apple fanboys want to spin it—is an appalling design decision and an obvious consequence of the thinner design on the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus.

It sticks out like a sore thumb, making it hard to rest the iPhone on a table without using the screen-side. Lei Jun won some laughs and applause from the audience, a hall filled with 3,000 journalists and tech pundits. 

Comparing these design flaws could be an opening, allowing Xiaomi to compete on the same level as Apple. The Chinese company is missing the 30 years of brand recognition however, which Apple has in its back pocket. 

Even if Xiaomi can say its smartphones are better than Apple's, it might not make a lick of difference to the hundreds of millions of iPhone users, especially since the overall experience of Xiaomi's Mi Note runs on a forked version of Android.

The Mi Note and Mi Note Pro are far from bad devices, but the overall package Xiaomi is delivering still needs some more stuffing in terms of software and services, to really compete with Apple.

TagsLei Jun, Mi Note