Xiaomi Mi 8 Review: Maximum Power with a Nice Price Tag

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The editors thank the online store allo.ua for kindly provided for the review of the smartphone

Xiaomi still

famous for its flagships with the top “iron” forvery adequate money. The current flagship Xiaomi Mi 8 is already on sale in several versions and another Pro version with a subscreen fingerprint scanner on the way. It is also in the Explorer Edition, but this version is extremely difficult to find and it is intended only for China. The “standard” version, which is just in our review, did not break the tradition: it is still the most powerful stuff for an adequate amount of money. The company jumped the number 7 in the title, Xiaomi Mi 8 became the heir to Mi 6 and is named after the 8th anniversary of Xiaomi.

What is it?

Xiaomi Mi 8 is a flagship smartphone with 6.21-inch AMOLED display FullHD +, Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 64-bit 8-core processor, 6 GB of RAM, 64 GB of internal memory, dual 12-megapixel main camera, dual SIM card support and a fingerprint scanner.

What makes him interesting?

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Unlike its frameless Mix line,Xiaomi Mi 8 received a large display, also with small frames, but also with a cutout at the top of the screen. This is the first such decision by Xiaomi, the general “fashionable” trends have reached it. Used AMOLED-matrix, there is a function Always on Display. They promise a brightness of 430 nits and a coverage of the DCI-P3 color space. The configuration inside the smartphone is expected: the currently most powerful processor from Qualcomm and 6 GB of RAM. Built-in can be 64 or 128, depending on the configuration. The main camera consists of two modules: 12 megapixel with f / 1.8 aperture and 4-axis optical stabilization plus 12 MP with f / 2.4 telephoto lens without OIS. There is 2x zoom, blurring of the background and “artificial intelligence” (as Xiaomi proudly calls it), although we know that this is not quite so. The camera can recognize various shooting scenarios. The smartphone is powered by a 3400 mAh battery, it supports Quick Charge 4+ fast charging, wireless is not supported, which is strange considering the glass case and Qi support in Xiaomi Mi Mix 2S. The body is made of metal and glass, still without protection from dust and water. There are all modern wireless interfaces, including a full-fledged NFC, which works with Google Pay (of course, provided the official global version with the appropriate firmware and locked bootloader). The smartphone supports the trendy function of unlocking the face, but there is one small nuance, which will be described later.

What is included?

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The smartphone comes in a black cardboard boxwithout an abundance of colorful pictures, with the number 8 in front and the red designation “Global Version” on the side (in our case). The set includes a smartphone, a USB Type-C cable, a charger with support for Quick Charge 3.0, an adapter with USB Type-C to a 3.5 mm headphone jack, a simple silicone bumper, a tray eject tool and a set of documentation:

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What does Xiaomi Mi 8 look like?

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If you were expecting some serious innovations indesign, I dare to upset. This is a typical modern smartphone with a glass front and back cover and a metal frame. Which is not bad, in fact: it looks and feels good, and this is the main thing. The only innovation is “monobrow”, but this applies only to Xiaomi smartphones. In front is a screen with rounded corners, thin frames on the sides and a little more chin. In fact, given the cutout and the absence of something under the screen, it could have been made a little smaller. In the cutout - the earpiece, camera, sensors and LED notification indicator. Software cutout can be hidden and it looks quite good thanks to the AMOLED screen:

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The frame is metallic streamlined, withoutany sharp corners. Mentioned that this is an aluminum alloy 7000 series, there is enough information on this topic in the network. The layout of the elements is also absolutely standard. Above is an optional microphone:

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Power and volume buttons on the right side:

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Bottom - external speaker, speaking microphone and Type-C. 3.5mm jack missing:

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On the left is the SIM card tray:

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It is possible to install two nanoSIM, memory cards are not supported:

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The back panel is glass, with oleophobic coating,but it cannot, of course, fully protect it from prints and dirt. Our black version looks very presentable, but the prints are especially clearly visible. There is also white and blue (it would be interesting to see it alive). Fingerprint scanner at the usual place:

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The dual main camera module is located intop left corner of the case. It protrudes slightly above the back panel. Layout like Apple flagships: vertical orientation, flash between two lenses:

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Despite the lack of any new solutions, the smartphone looks and feels nice, monolithic.

How good is the screen?

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The smartphone has an AMOLED screen with a diagonal6.21 inches and a resolution of 2248x1080 (18.7: 9), pixel density - 402 ppi, it occupies about 86.68% of the front panel. They promise a maximum brightness of 430 cd / m2 and a peak of 600 cd / m2 (an extremely subjective indicator that can be achieved on small areas of the screen for a short time). The screen quality, with maximum viewing angles. Always On Display is supported with useful information displayed on the screen off:

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Declared color gamut DCI-P3. In the display settings there is a reading mode, double-tap awakening and color display settings. There are three modes: auto (automatic adjustment for ambient lighting), enhanced contrast and standard mode. You can adjust the color temperature:

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Maximum brightness and contrast change independing on the mode is not significant. In the enhanced contrast mode, the maximum brightness was 412.539 cd / m2, the black field brightness tends to 0, and the contrast goes to infinity, as always with AMOLED. The color gamut is much wider than sRGB, similar to the promised DCI-P3. The picture in this mode goes somewhat cold colors:

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In standard mode, maximum brightnessamounted to 413.036 cd / m2, and the color coverage is close to sRGB. At the same time, the slope to cold tones is less, calibration is more accurate. Although for everyone it is possible to adjust the color temperature manually:

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Comparison with other models:

Device name
White field brightness,
cd / m2
Black field brightness,
cd / m2
Contrast

Xiaomi Mi 8
413.036
0
∞

Samsung Galaxy Note9
340.32
0
∞

LG G7 ThinQ
457.281
0.333
1373: 1

Huawei P20 Pro
415.876
0
∞

Sony Xperia XZ2
509.328
0.469
1086: 1

Samsung Galaxy S9 +
321.918
0
∞

What about performance and autonomy?

The smartphone uses the flagship platformQualcomm Snapdragon 845 graphics accelerator Adreno 630 and 6 GB LPDDR4X. These are familiar characteristics for current flagship smartphones. We have already had quite a few smartphones on this platform, so there are no surprises. The smartphone copes with the shell, applications and games. At the moment it is the most suitable processor for games among Android smartphones. You can mark only a small nuance: the image is cropped from the cutout side if the game supports super widescreen screens and from two - if not. It is quite logical:

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Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 includes 4 coresKryo 385 Gold at 2.8 GHz and 4xKryo 385 Silver at 1.8 GHz, the Adreno 630 graphics chip operates at a frequency of up to 710 MHz, the drive (in this case 64 GB) of the UFS 2.1 standard. The smartphone is gaining an impressive amount of points in synthetic tests and is expected to take places in the tops of the charts:

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Xiaomi Mi 8 does not support card installationmemory, we had a 64 GB version, which by today's standards is not enough. It seems to me, it is worth paying 1000 UAH more and get 128 GB. The smartphone has dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11 a / b / g / n / ac 2 × 2 MIMO Wi-Fi and MU-MIMO, Bluetooth 5.0 with support for aptX and aptX HD for high-quality sound transmission to wireless headphones (LDAC for some reason not , although Sony released it in open access). Global positioning systems GPS, Galileo, QZSS, GLONASS, BeiDou are supported. Satellites catches very quickly:

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The smartphone works in networks of the 3rd and 4th generation. There is a full-fledged NFC that works with Google Pay. Built-in battery capacity - 3400 mAh. Qualcomm Quick Charge 4.0+ fast charge is supported. By cable, the smartphone charges up to 50% in half an hour, full charge - about one and a half hours from the native Quick Charge 3.0 charger. There are no revelations for autonomy: this is a typical flagship that lives for a day at a heavy load. Of the bonuses there are proprietary power saving modes that can come in handy in a difficult moment:

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What about the interface?

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At the time of use, the smartphone worked on the OSAndroid 8.1 Oreo with MIUI 9.6.7.0 shell (stable global), in the near future there should be a stable MIUI 10 (for some modifications in China already exist). Our shell was fast and stable, there were no serious bugs or glitches. The shell features are already familiar to us: only desktops with applications, there is no separate menu for them. There are various themes. The far left desktop is used for individual widgets. You can manually adjust the display of applications to full screen or with cropped edges if it does not work correctly in full screen mode. It is possible to use gestures instead of the navigation panel (while the panel is hidden):

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Shutter familiar to MIUI, with round icons (similar to us waiting for the stock Android 9.0 Pie) and the current weather:

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Applications in the manager are displayed with large cards, it is possible to close everything, fix individual ones or switch to dual-window mode:

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To unlock the smartphone, you can usegood old fingerprint scanner or your face. But with the last option there is one little thing. With the firmware at the time of testing, it was not available for our region. It is necessary to choose Hong Kong (with Russian), as the function appears. It works fast. As far as I understand, new regions are added with updates, and soon the function will be available for our region without such manipulations:

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And a bunch of traditional bunch of branded applications: voice recorder, calculator with a converter of everything, compass, notes, second space for duplicating applications, cleaning utilities, own music player, Mi Drop and so on:

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How are things going with the camera?

The smartphone uses the main camera of the sameconfiguration, as in Xiaomi Mi MIX 2S: Sony IMX363 main 12 MP 1 / 2.55 ″, 1.4 µm, with f / 1.8 aperture, optical stabilization and phase autofocus and additional 12 MP, Samsung S5K3M3 1 / 3.4 module, 1.0 µm, with a f / 2.4 telephoto lens for zoom and background blur. The interface is simple and clear, all the most important thing is on the main screen: HDR modes, flash modes, camera change, and so on. The above-mentioned Ai automatically detects the scene, displays the corresponding icon and automatically adjusts the camera. There is a fully manual mode:

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In general, the camera does well. Detailed images, in most cases, with the correct white balance. In the dark, the camera loses at more expensive competitors, there is a graininess, noise-refusing artifacts. But in general, the photos are very sensible:

Blur background:

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Zoom:

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Video is written in 4K and FullHD. In 4K, the picture is not bad, but stabilization does not cope:

In the dry residue

Xiaomi Mi 8 turned out very interesting, buta bit controversial flagship. Xiaomi has used its usual tactics: the flagship configuration, high-quality case materials, a pleasant appearance, high-quality display, very good cameras and a full set of modern interfaces. And for all this, they are asking for 15,000 UAH (for the 64 GB version), which is significantly lower than most competitors with similar characteristics. It worked, the smartphone is really nice to use and good in terms of price / quality ratio. But somehow it turned out that Xiaomi created competition for itself: first, there is a Xiaomi Mi MIX 2S with a nearly identical filling, a similar camera and exactly the same price tag. It differs in design, size, type of display (IPS, but not AMOLED), the absence of “monobrow”. But there is also a Pocophone F1 for 4000 UAH cheaper with the same Snapdragon 845. It has a plastic case, no NFC, a slightly simpler camera, some firmware glitches and IPS, and not AMOLED. But at the same time, it has a slot for memory cards, a 3.5-mm headphone jack and a larger battery, 4000 mAh. Although the choice is always good, especially from the point of view of the buyer.

6 reasons to buy Xiaomi Mi 8:

excellent display;
top performance;
high-quality camera;
availability of all modern wireless interfaces, including NFC;
quality materials and assembly;
smart and comfortable shell.

3 reasons not to buy Xiaomi Mi 8:

no moisture protection;
no microSD slot;
There are interesting competitors of the same brand.

Xiaomi Mi 8

Xiaomi Mi 8 is the flagship of the 2018 company. Equipped with a large display with small frames and a cutout in the upper part. Used AMOLED-matrix, there is a function Always on Display. Inside - the flagship processor Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 and 6 GB of RAM. Built-in can be 64 or 128, depending on the configuration. The main camera consists of two modules: 12 megapixel with f / 1.8 aperture and 4-axis optical stabilization plus 12 MP with f / 2.4 telephoto lens without OIS. There are 2x zoom, blur background. Powered smartphone from the battery to 3400 mAh, supported by quick charging Quick Charge 4+. The body is made of metal and glass. There are all modern wireless interfaces, including full-fledged NFC, which works with Google Pay.

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