Xiaomi has announced its new flagship phone, the Mi 8 —
and yes, it’s the company’s first phone with a notch. The Mi 8 has a
6.21-inch OLED screen from Samsung, wrapping around a fairly large notch
that houses a 20-megapixel selfie camera.
The phone has a four-way curved glass back panel and an
aluminum frame. Inside there’s Qualcomm's high-end Snapdragon 845
processor, and the new 12-megapixel dual camera setup apparently scores
105 on DxOMark, for what that’s worth.
Xiaomi also says that this is the first phone ever to use
dual-frequency GPS, which is supposed to give more accurate location
data.
Xiaomi’s numbered Mi flagships tend to be
extremely good phones for the price, if not especially cutting edge.
For that, the company is going all-out on the Mi 8 Explorer Edition. The
Explorer Edition has an in-display fingerprint sensor that, for the
first time in a phone, uses pressure sensitivity. Xiaomi also claims
that the Explorer Edition is the first Android phone in the world to use
3D face recognition technology, like the iPhone X’s Face ID — and of
course there’s an Animoji equivalent on board.
Perhaps most importantly, the Explorer Edition has a transparent back panel that looks hot as hell.
The final entry in the Mi 8 lineup is the Mi 8 SE, a
smaller, slower, and cheaper version of the Mi 8 that clearly takes
naming cues from Apple's own fun-sized model. It’s the first phone to use Qualcomm’s brand new midrange Snapdragon 710 processor, and has a 5.88-inch OLED screen.
The
710 is said to save 30 percent in power consumption over the
previous-gen 660 while offering around 20 percent greater performance;
that could give the Mi 8 SE a strong position in the Chinese market,
where several more expensive 2018 phones like the Oppo R15 Pro and Vivo
X21 are based on the 660.
The Mi 8 is priced from 2,699 yuan (~$421) in China, with
the Explorer Edition starting from 3,699 yuan ($577) and the SE
available for 1,799 yuan ($281). As ever from Xiaomi, these prices are
extremely competitive.
The Mi 8 will be available on China from the 5th of June,
with the SE following on the 8th and the Explorer Edition coming at a
later date. No word on pricing and availability for India or any other
markets just yet.
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