Xiaomi may have already released the Mi Mix 2S earlier this year, but it’s actually kept its true 2018 flagship, the Mi 8, for marking its eight anniversary –…
Xiaomi may have already released the Mi Mix 2S earlier this year, but it’s actually kept its true 2018 flagship, the Mi 8, for marking its eight anniversary — hence the jump from last year’s » Mi 6. » As announced in Shenzhen today, the new handset starts at 2,699 yuan (about $420) and comes in a familiar-looking dual-sided glass design, with the most notable difference being the new vertical dual camera — exactly the same module found on the Mix 2S, according to Xiaomi. And yes, there’s a notch, which is for accommodating an infrared front camera for facial recognition.
There’s even a higher-end Mi 8 Explorer Edition which uses a more powerful 3D face scanner instead — one that’s similar to the TrueDepth camera on the iPhone X. Not only that, this version also has a fully transparent back to show off its chips and battery. For the sake of this cool look, there’s no rear fingerprint reader; instead, this device uses an in-display fingerprint reader, which is backed by pressure activation to save power. This is priced at 3,699 yuan or about $580 off-contract.
As you’d expect from the latest flagships, both flavors of Mi 8 come with Qualcomm’s powerful Snapdragon 845 chipset plus 6GB of RAM, with the normal edition offering up to 256GB of storage, and the other with just 128GB. They carry a 6.21-inch 2,248 x 1,080 AMOLED screen with 600-nit brightness, and it takes up a good 86.68 percent of the front side, leaving a small chin at the bottom.
The Mi 8 is also the world’s first smartphone to support dual-frequency GPS: By leveraging the newer, more powerful L5 band on top of the common L1 band, Xiaomi claims that navigation accuracy is three to five times higher.
As mentioned, the Mi 8 models have dual-12-megapixel main cameras with large 1.4um pixel sites, along with a 20-megapixel front camera that uses pixel binning to combine four pixels to one, in order to simulate the efficiency of 1.8µm pixels. These are enhanced by Xiaomi’s AI-enabled studio lighting — very much like those offered on the iPhone X — as well as the latest beautification software for prettier portraits.
Last but not least, Xiaomi also unveiled the Mi 8 SE for those with budget in mind. This happens to be the first device to be powered by Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 710 chipset, which is designed for better battery life — so the 3,120 mAh cell should be plenty — while still offering AI features. It has a 12MP/5MP dual camera on the back, and a 20-megapixel selfie camera on the other side. This model starts at 1,799 yuan or about $280.
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