Xiaomi just announced its flagship Mi 8 smartphone at an event in China, as it had promised. It has a 6.21-inch FHD+ AMOLED display from Samsung with a notch and 88.5% screen-to-body ratio. It has a glass back with an unique water drop arc design, four curved glass body with 7 series aluminum frame. It is powered by Snapdragon 845 with up to 8GB of RAM and runs Android 8.1 (Oreo) with MIUI on top. It has a 12-megapixel rear camera with Sony IMX363 sensor, 1.4µm pixel size, OIS, Dual Pixel auto focus and a secondary 12-megapixel rear camera for AI portraits has AI scene recognition.
The 20-megapixel front camera has support for AI portrait selfies with real-time background blur, AI Studio Light Effect, and the phone also has face unlock, which uses an infrared sensor and lens that works even in dark by scanning 4096 facial points.
The company said that it scored 105 in DxO Mark for photo and the overall DxO Mark score is 99. It has a fingerprint sensor on the back and packs a 3400mAh battery with support for Quick Charge 4+.
There is also Mi 8 Explorer Edition with a pressure-sensitive in-display fingerprint sensor that has dedicated pressure sensor that activates unlocking more quickly. It uses Synaptics FS9500 Clear ID family of optical in-display fingerprint sensor placed in a natural location directly in the OLED touchscreen. It has 3D face recognition that uses advanced structured lighting technology to capture 33,000 facial points, lets you create animated emojis based on facial expressions, same as Apple’s Animoji and it features a transparent back.
Xiaomi Mi 8 / Mi 8 Explorer Edition specifications
- 6.21-inch (2248 × 1080 pixels) Full HD+ 18:7:9 AMOLED display with 600 nits brightness, 60000:1 contrast ratio, DCI-P3 color gamut
- 2.8GHz Octa-Core Snapdragon 845 64-bit 10nm Mobile Platform with Adreno 630 GPU
- 6GB LPDDR4x RAM with 64GB / 128GB / 256GB (UFS 2.1) storage, 8GB LPDDR4x RAM with 256GB (UFS 2.1) storage in Mi 8 Explorer Edition
- Android 8.1 (Oreo) with MIUI 9, upgradable to MIUI 10
- Dual SIM (nano + nano)
- 12MP rear camera with 26mm wide-angle lens, 1/2.6″ Sony IMX363 sensor, f/1.8 aperture, 1.4µm pixel size, dual-tone LED flash, 4-axis OIS, Optical zoom, 4K video recording, secondary 12MP rear camera with Samsung S5K3M3 sensor, f/2.4 aperture, 1.0µm pixel size, 2X zoom
- 20MP front-facing camera with real-time AI portraits
- IR Face unlock (Mi 8) / 3D Face unlock (Mi 8 Explorer Edition)
- Fingerprint sensor (Mi 8) / in-display fingerprint sensor (Mi 8 Explorer Edition)
- Dimensions: 154.9×74.8x 7.6 mm; Weight: 175g (Mi 8) ; 177g (Mi 8 Explorer Edition)
- Dual 4G VoLTE, WiFi 802.11ac dual-band (2×2 MU-MIMO ), Bluetooth 5, Dual-frequency (L1+L5) GPS/GLONASS/Beidou, NFC, USB Type-C
- 3400mAh (typ) / 3300mAh (min) battery with Quick Charge 4+ fast charging (Mi 8) / 3000mAh (typ) / 2900mAh (min) with Quick Charge 4+ fast charging (Mi 8 Explorer Edition)
The Xiaomi Mi 8 comes in Black, Blue, Gold and White colors, is priced at 2699 yuan (US$ 421 / Rs. 28,460 approx.) for the base 6GB RAM with 64GB storage version and also comes in 128GB and 256GB storage versions for 2999 yuan (US$ 468 / Rs. 31,620 approx.) and 3299 yuan (US$ 512 / Rs. 34,785 approx.) respectively. The Mi 8 Explorer Edition with transparent back and an in-display fingerprint sensor is priced at 3699 yuan (US$ 577 / Rs. 39,000 approx.) and comes only in 8GB RAM and 256GB storage version. Both these will be available in China from June 5th.