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| Xiaomi Mi 8 |
What we have here today is the model for the Chinese market, while it's sort of unlikely some aspects of its performance may change in future international releases, instead of a Mi7 Xiaomi has released some Mi8 for this year's 8 anniversary and just like last year it's made from shiny glass Gorilla Glass 5 to be exact, around the edges as the curved aluminum frame it's rounded and comfortable to hold though there is no sharp edge to easily grab onto, ours came bundled with a soft plastic case which makes it easier to grip and handle, you'll have to be careful around water though the knee aid is solid there's no IP rated water a dust protection just like last year's Mi6.
One defining feature of this year's model is the larger screen which is now AMOLED instead of IPS LCD, it's 6.21 inches in 1080p resolution with a TOA eighteen point seven by nine aspect ratio, there's even a trendy notch cut out at the top to make room for extra screen space the notch is kind of wide if you want you can hide it with a black strip, the me 8 screen is excellent content looks sharp at 400 PPI and you have the deep blacks typical of an AMOLED, brightness is great too maxing at 458 nits, if you use auto brightness mode it can go even higher up to 624 nits you won't have any problem using this phone in bright Sun, another benefit of the AMOLED screen is the always-on display so you can get time and notifications at a glance, you can turn the always-on display off if you want to save power since there's a notification LED you'll never be left wondering when to check your phone and before you ask it's only white in color.
Moving over to the back you can see the vertical dual camera setup on the left and the rear mounted fingerprint reader, I really like this reader it's perfectly placed for me to reach and a bit recessed so it's easy to find, plus it's always on and lightning fast awake of the phone. Another option is infrared face recognition for face unlock it's super convenient and quick and won't unlock your phone if your eyes are closed and it works in the dark too, but although there is an infrared camera on the front there is no IR blaster to control appliances with which was a convenient feature than Mi6.
Storage wiser models with 64, 128 or 256 gigs of internal memory there is no microSD slot though so this is an expandable, for audio the me8 has a single bottom firing speaker though it’s no serious it's loudness score was very good and has clean and full-bodied output. You won't be able to plug in headphones without a USBC adapter though like last year there is no 3.5 millimeter jack a dongle does come bundled with the phone and sound through headphones test out impressively loud and quite clean.
Under the hood is a top-of-the-line snapdragon 845 chipset along with 6 gigs of ram as expected performance is great but in benchmarks that falls behind other snapdragon 845 flagships, the numbers were seeing iron said more like a snapdragon 835 this seems to be due to poor heat management and throttling we did notice that the Mi8 heats up quite a bit under heavy use it's only through extra cooling that we're able to get better numbers.
For battery life we weren't disappointed the 3400 milliamp hour battery posted very good numbers in our proprietary tests earning an endurance rating of 86 hours, there's fast charging too with quick charge 4.0 with the bundle quick charger we were able to get from 0 to 44% in half an hour not bad, there is no wireless charging though.
The Mi8 OS is Xiaomi's MiY 9.5 over Android 8.1 Oreo it's pretty far from stock Android with plenty of proprietary features while the apps are kept on the homescreen no drawer here, swiping over reveals panels with shortcuts to frequently use apps me notes an upcoming calendar events, there's a theme store with plenty of customisation options for your homescreen. MiY also offers a proprietary gallery, music and video player as well as a security app and a bunch of other pre-loaded tools and even though it's from China someone had pre-loaded ours with Google services in Play Store too, make sure that if you're buying a gray import you get the same treatment.
For navigation you can use the normal on-screen buttons or off to replace these with swipe gestures swipe up from the bottom for home swipe up and hold for the task switcher and swept in from either edge to go back. The Mi8 also aims to improve real-life navigation too it taps into one extra band of satellites so we should be able to more accurately figure out your position.
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| Xiaomi Mi 8 Dual Lens Cam |
Moving on to the cameras we have a 12 megapixel dual setup that's updated from last year the main cam is F1.8 with dual pixel phase detection autofocus and OIS the secondary telephoto cam is F2.4 and this one lacks stabilization images from the main camera come out sharp and detailed with lively colors and very good dynamic range, we do see a bit of visible noise though even at low ISO but it's not a big deal also onboard is an AI mode which recognizes scenes and enhances photos accordingly based on that the AI gives a boost in colors in amps up the contrast - for some extra pop at the cost of some detail on colour extremes, unless you like this particular look it's better to leave this off thanks to the telephoto camera you can take shots with 2 x optical zoom if there's plenty of light zoomed images look good, there's great sharpness and detail and dynamic range and colors are comparable to the main cam.
In low-light Mi8 does an admirable job delivering sharp photos with well preserved colors though there is some extra noise, if you have the AI camera enabled a night motor kicks in but it only really seems to affect the color saturation. The Mi8 will actually use the telephoto in the dark instead of switching to digital zoom you can't expect miracles without OIS but the images are usable. In portrait mode the dual cameras can work together to create shots with a deep focus background behind your subject if you have decent lighting these come out good there's excellent subject separation and convincing blur.
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| Xiaomi Mi 8 Photo sample |
The front facing cameras 20 megapixels and has fixed focus in a good light it takes stunningly detailed selfies with nice skin colors you can also take portrait selfies which look decent. The Mi8 age requires 4k videos at 30fps they have good sharpness and detail low noise excellent contrast and vivid colour rendition, but no good stabilization you also can't record - the telephoto cam so zooming is all digital, 1080p videos are also only 30fps but have similar great quality as well as excellent electronic stabilization.
So the Xiaomi Mi8 has a lot of strong points like an excellent AMOLED screen good battery life tons of software features and a decent speaker even though it is moderate firing and don’t forget the cameras which are nice too, there are some things you might need to consider though there's no water resistance and no audio jack though last year's Mi6 was the same and this phone does tend to heat up a bit which did slow down performance at benchmarks.
But that said, the Mi8 is a solid flagship that comes at a great price around 400 Euros for the cheaper model, so even if he had to buy a great import this phone is easy to recommend and even more so when it becomes officially available globally.
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