Xiaomi Mi 8

Xiaomi is known for bringing flagship phones for much lower prices than its competitors. The Mi 8 was a brilliant success in China and is now available across the world.
Instead of the Mi 7, Xiaomi has released the Mi 8 for its 8th year anniversary. Like last year’s flagship, this phone is also made from shining Gorilla Glass 5. Around its edges is the curved aluminium frame and as a whole, the phone is rounded and comfortable to hold. The Mi 8 also comes with a soft plastic case. With there being no IP rating for dust and water resistance, it compels you to stay extra alert near water.

The Xiaomi Mi 8 is a 7000-series aluminium frame covered in gorilla glass 5 all over. It has a 6.21″ Super AMOLED, 2,248×1,080px resolution, 18.7:9 aspect ratio, and a 402 PPI screen. With Android 8.1 Oreo, MIUI 9.5 custom overlay, and a Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 octa-core CPU processor, the phone runs a 3400mAh Li-Po battery with Quick Charge 4.0. The Flagship has a 12+12MP dual camera setup with autofocus and a secondary telephoto lens.

Moving over to the back, you have the dual camera setup on the left with the fingerprint reader in the centre. The positioning of the reader is delightful as it is in the centre and secluded enough to not worry about smudging the lens of the camera — another option is infrared face recognition. The phone comes with storage either of 64, 126 or 356 gigs, and there is no expandable memory option. For audio, the Mi 8 has a single bottom speaker which scores high on loudness even against the stereo setup of certain competitors. It does not have a 3.5 mm jack and requires a type C adapter to use headphones

One of the defining features of the Xiaomi Mi 8 is the larger screen size (6.21”) on the  Super AMOLED, 1080x2246PX with 402 PPI touchscreen and an 18.7/9 aspect ratio, instead of the previously used IPS LCD. There is even a trendy notch cut out at the top to make room for extra space on the screen. The unique part of the software is if you want, you can choose to get rid of the notch by removing the extra space with a black strip.
The brightness is good as well, maxing at 458 nits, with the auto brightness mode taking it higher to 624 nits. Another benefit of the Mi8 is the always-on display so that you can get time and notifications at a glance.

The phone runs a top of the line Snapdragon 845 with 6GB RAM and, as expected, the performance is excellent. However, it fails to reach the benchmarked expectation for other flagships due to poor heat management on the part of the processor.

The camera is a 12MP (f/1.8, 4-Axis OIS, Dual Pixel PDAF) + 12MP (f/2.4), 2x optical zoom dual LED flash. The images from the primary camera come out sharp and detailed with lively colours and excellent dynamic range, having very low noise. The AI mode is a beautiful addition as it recognises places and objects and enhances photos accordingly.
The telephoto camera allows you to go with optical zoom two times over to take a high-quality picture under good lighting.
In low light, the Mi 8 does an admirable job of delivering sharp photos with well-deserved colours – there’s still a little noise, though.
The portrait mode works very well, with subject separation providing the perfect ground for dynamic focus. The selfies also come out very good with the 20MP front camera. The Xiaomi Mi 8 records 4K videos in 30fps, and show good sharpness and detail, low noise, excellent contrast, and vivid colour rendition – the only issue is that they lack stabilisation.

The 3400 mAH battery has a total life endurance of 86 hours and comes with quick charge 4.0 – charging from 0 to 44% in half hour. The flagship phone runs an Android Oreo OS, but with enough proprietary changes to have its own identity.

The Xiaomi Mi 8 has a lot of strong points like the AMOLED screen, good battery life, nice cameras, tons of software features, and decent speakers (even though they are bottom firing). It has neither water resistance nor an audio jack, which was a problem with the Mi 6 as well. Despite that, the Mi 8 is a fantastic flagship that comes at a very good price.