Xiaomi Mi 8 Review: Near iPhone X Experience

Released in June 2018, Xiaomi brand is out with another smartphone - Xiaomi Mi 8.

Xiaomi did make a grand celebration of its 8th anniversary at the end of May by introducing three new smartphones.

The phones, Mi8, Mi 8 Explorer Edition, and Mi 8 SE all came with high-end hardware and software features that should turn your experience into a stellar one.

Xiaomi Mi 8 Key Specs

• Body: Front/rear glass, aluminum frame (7000 series)

• OS: Android 8.1 (Oreo)

• SIM Type: Dual SIM (Nano-SIM, dual stand-by)

• Screen Size: 6.21 inches, 97.1 cm2

• Screen Resolution: 1080 x 2248 pixels, ~402 ppi density)

• Processor Type: Qualcomm SDM845 Snapdragon 845 Octa-core (4x2.8 GHz Kryo 385 Gold & 4x1.8 GHz Kryo 385 Silver)

• RAM: 6GB

• Internal Storage: 256/128/64GB

• External Storage: No

• Back / Rear Camera: 12MP camera & dual-LED Flash

• Front Camera: 20MP

• Fingerprint Scanner: Yes (front-mounted)

• Other Sensors: Infrared face recognition, accelerometer, gyro, proximity, barometer, compass

• Battery: 3400 mAh (non-removable)

• Price: About 360 EUR

• Colours: Black, Blue, White, Gold

Overview

The Xiaomi Mi 8 follows last year's Mi 6, skipping the 7 to mark the company's eighth year. The resemblance to the iPhone X starts with a similar notch design. While this creates an uncanny resemblance to the iPhone, the Mi 8's 6.21-inch AMOLED display doesn't quite stretch all the way to the bottom like the X's does.

You'll also find two 12-megapixel cameras on the rear of the Mi 8, laid out in just the same way as the iPhone X. Xiaomi says the Mi 8's cameras achieved a 105 photo score after being rated by DxOMark. On the front is a 20-megapixel camera using "pixel-binning" technology to combine four pixels into a larger one for better low-light selfies.

This is the first device, with the Snapdragon 710 chip, it’s paired with an Octa-Core processor and 64-bit CPU architecture. The 8-Cores of processor here runs at a fast speed of 2.2GHz with 10nm FinFET process technology as well. A new graphics processor, the Adreno 616 controls graphics here.

There are two versions in terms of RAM here, there’s one with 6GB of RAM and another with 4GB of RAM. Both RAM space has a memory speed of over 1GHz. For storage, there’s just 64GB available on both variants, with no option to upgrade further. The Xiaomi Mi 8 SE runs on Android 8.1 Oreo with the new MIUI 10.

The cameras on the Xiaomi Mi 8 SE is different from the one on the Mi 8. The SE sports dual 12MP + 5MP shooters with f/1.9 and f/2.0 aperture respectively. The first camera on top is a 12MP shooter with 1.4µm pixel size, dual-pixel PDAF, and gyro-EIS. While the second 5MP telephoto camera underneath the dual-LED flash has 1.12µm pixel size.

Features on the cameras include dual pixel phase detection autofocus, geo-tagging, touch focus, face detection, HDR, panorama and the usual AI enhancements like beautification, bokeh and scene recognition. Videos are shoot at 2160p@60fps and 1080p@30/120fps. For selfies, the same 20MP selfie shooter is present here with f/2.0 aperture, AI beautification, and 2.0µm pixel size.

Powering the Xiaomi Mi 8 is a 3400mAh non-removable Li-Po battery with fast charging technology. With the fast charging feature, charging the battery from 0% to 100% shouldn’t take up to 1.7 hours.