Xiaomi just announced its flagship Mi 8 smartphone at its 8th Anniversary celebration event in China. As rumored, the device comes with a powerful hardware and premium design. It is company’s first handset to feature a notch on the display that can be hidden with a toggle. A Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 SoC, dual cameras, and dual GPS are the highlights of the flagship device. Apart from Mi 8, Xiaomi also announced Mi 8 SE, Mi 8 Explorer Edition, Mi TV 4 75”, Mi VR Standalone, and Mi Band 3 at the same event.
Xiaomi Mi 8 Specifications, Features
Introduced by the CEO of the company, Lei Jun, the Xiaomi Mi 8 features a 6.21-inch FHD+ (1080 x 2248 pixels) Samsung AMOLED display with an 18.7:9 aspect ratio, 88.5 percent screen-to-body ratio, and support for Always On display. Under the hood, there is a 2.8GHz Octa-Core Snapdragon 845 SoC coupled with Adreno 630 GPU. Xiaomi claims that the Mi 8 scores staggering 301,472 on Antutu highest by any device till date.
On the camera department, the Mi 8 sports a 12-megapixels rear camera with Sony IMX363 sensor, 1.4µm pixel size, OIS, Dual Pixel auto focus, and a secondary 12-megaixels rear camera for AI portraits, AI Scene detection, and video detection. On the front, there is a 20-megapixel selfie camera with f/2.0 aperture, 1.8 micron pixels, AI portrait selfies, and beautify.
The devices features 6GB of RAM and 64GB / 128GB / 256GB of internal storage. There is also a more exclusive version of the Mi 8, called Explorer Edition. It has 8GB of RAM, 128GB of inbuilt memory, 3D face recognition, an in-display fingerprint sensor and a transparent back.
The dual-SIM (nano + nano) Mi 8 runs on Android 8.1 Oreo based MIUI 9 OS (upgradable to MIUI 10), features a fingerprint sensor on the back, and packs a 3400mAh battery with Quick Charge 4+ support. The connectivity options includes 4G VoLTE, Bluetooth 5.0, NFC, dual-frequency GPS, rear-mounted fingerprint sensor, and USB Type-C.
Price and Availability:
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 128GB storage version. Both these will be available in China from June 5th.
