Xiaomi Mi 8 Series

Processor: unknown, Qualcomm Snapdragon SD 660, Qualcomm Snapdragon SD 845
Graphics Adapter: unknown, Qualcomm Adreno 512, Qualcomm Adreno 630
Display: 5.88 inch, 6.20 inch, 6.21 inch, 6.26 inch
Weight: 0.164kg, 0.169kg, 0.175kg, 0.177kg
Price: 380, 419, 500 euro
price: 82%, performance: 85%, features: 82%, display: 83%, mobility: 80%, workmanship: 84%, ergonomy: 81%, emissions: 94%

 

Xiaomi Mi 8 Explorer Edition

The Xiaomi Mi 8 Explorer Edition features awesome high-end specs, great build, improved features and an affordable price tag. Xiaomi's Mi 8 Explorer Edition is the first phone with a pressure-sensitive in-display sensor. The smartphone is available only with one combination of memory which is 8 GB + 128 GB. It is clearly aimed for users who want to try out the latest features on a smartphone. The back is the biggest highlight of the Xiaomi Mi 8 Explorer Edition. It uses a transparent back shell and a ‘decorative’ motherboard. Specifically, the whole ‘decorative motherboard’ uses a copper substrate. Reinforced with steel plate, there are 101 capacitors, 32 resistors, 6 switch ICs, 11 sensor ICs, and 7 signal control ICs. It has a complete flexible circuit board processing technology. In fact, this is not the first smartphone with a transparent back panel. Previously, the HTC U11 and U12 Plus have come with a similar design. But they are completely translucent and most of them are not beautiful. Xiaomi has added red accents to some components such as the camera sensors. The back of the battery is also covered with a layer of carbon fiber textured film to enhance the visual beauty. The bottom PC board is the same as the top board. There is a letter at the bottom “BE THE COOLEST COMPANY IN THE HEARTS OF OUR USERS.” The power button and volume button are on the right-hand side. The power key is also red, forming a contrast color design. As for hardware specifications, it is a flagship phone that features a Snapdragon 845, 8 GB of RAM, 128 GB of storage, dual cameras and a 3D face scanner. Unlike the iPhone X’s 3D structured light, the Xiaomi Mi 8 Explorer Edition uses a coded dot matrix scheme to create a 3D facial model by projecting 33,000 coded lattices with an accuracy of up to millimeters. This model is combined with an infrared image to become the ‘Face ID.’ The officials claim that the probability of being cracked can be as low as one in a million. Mi Meng is similar to iPhone X’s Animoji, which can imitate the user’s facial expression to make a corresponding expression. Although it is not the latest technology at the moment, the machine sports a built-in high-sensitivity pressure sensor to support vibration feedback. The screen fingerprint of the Xiaomi Mi 8 Explorer Edition requires a certain amount of pressure to be entered. So once the user gets back a vibration, it will mean the process is done. The pressure sensitivity helps the screen fingerprint sensor to obtain a clearer image. Compared with the simple waiting finger for a period in the fingerprint recognition area, the vibration feedback of the pressure-sensing screen increases the realism of fingerprint recognition. On the front, the Xiaomi Mi 8 Explorer Edition sports a 6.21-inch 1080p screen, using a notch design. This AMOLED screen is supplied by Samsung like the Mi 8. On the bottom, it has a microphone, USB Type-C interface, and speakers. The Type-C interface is also decorated with red elements. In terms of battery capacity, the Xiaomi Mi 8 Explorer Edition sports a smaller battery than the original model. It is equipped with a 3000 mAh battery instead of a 3400 mAh capacity. However, with MIUI10, the battery endurance is not bad. Hands-on article by Jagadisa Rajarathnam

Specifications

Notebook: Xiaomi Mi 8 Explorer Edition
Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon SD 845
Graphics Adapter: Qualcomm Adreno 630
Display: 6.20 inch, 18.7:9, 2248 x 1080 pixels
Weight: 0.175kg
Price: 380 euro
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Average Score: 83.84% - good

 

Reviews

Foreign Reviews

 

Xiaomi Mi 8 SE

Is this the new mid-range king? It is a big promise to hold on to. Will Xiaomi Mi 8 SE deliver what it promises? Will it seal the deal for mid-range phones about which one is the best? Lots of questions, but one simple answer: It seems so. The reason I cant give 100 % net answers to the questions is that the Xiaomi Mi 8 SE is the first phone to utilize a Snapdragon 710 processor. This new processor tries to fill the gap between the 600 and 800 series. It is produced in 10 nm, optimized for efficiency, and comes with new features. Benchmarks show that it performs about 10 to 15 % better than its counterparts from the 600 series. Therefore, any current mid-range device with a Snapdragon 600 series SoC, is automatically left behind by Mi 8 SE. When we start to see more devices using the new SoC, we can then debate about who is the mid-range king, but, for now, I announce the Xiaomi Mi 8 SE as the mid-range king. It is not just about the processor of course. The 5.88-inch OLED screen comes with a resolution of 1,080 x 2,244 pixels. This gives a pixel density of 423 PPI. The display delivers great colors and totally astonishes the user. 3120 mAh battery combined with OLED screen and also the efficiency of the SoC make it possible to last a day without a charging. Even if you need to charge your phone, no problem, with Quick Charge 3.0 it is just a breeze. The cameras are just fine, there is not much to discuss here. Specs say it all. Overall this is a mid-range phone and you can't expect the performance of a flagship phone. But in general, if you aim not to spend too much on a smartphone, yet want premium feeling and also need performance, the Xiaomi Mi 8 SE can be for you. The only competitors in terms of price can be Nokia 7 Plus or Vivo V9. But in price performance ratio, they can't even come close. Now, would I buy it? Hell, yes. I mean, why shouldn’t I. Its price tag of about 450$ makes it very attractive. One day full usage, OLED display, modern connections and hardware all make it very appealing. There might be only one disadvantage; storage can not be expanded. So, you are literally stuck to 64 GB ROM. If you are fine with it, no problem. But if you are a type that wants to keep everything all the time, you might have a hard time going forward. All things considered, Xiaomi Mi 8 SE is a mid-range phone with premium look and up-to-date hardware. This makes it a can’t miss when considering a new phone. Hands-on article by Ümit Yılmaz Güneş

Specifications

Notebook: Xiaomi Mi 8 SE
Processor: unknown
Graphics Adapter: unknown
Display: 5.88 inch, 18.7:9, 2244 x 1080 pixels
Weight: 0.164kg
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Average Score: 83% - good

 

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Foreign Reviews

 

Xiaomi Mi 8 Pro

Specifications

Notebook: Xiaomi Mi 8 Pro
Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon SD 845
Graphics Adapter: Qualcomm Adreno 630
Display: 6.21 inch, 18.7:9, 2248 x 1080 pixels
Weight: 0.177kg
Price: 500 euro
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Average Score: 82.96% - good

 

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Foreign Reviews

 

Xiaomi Mi 8 Lite

The Mi 8 Lite is a 6.26-inch mid-range phone. At a reasonable price it packs capable hardware including a Snapdragon 660 and an Adreno 512 GPU.

Design and Connectivity

The 6.26-inch phone measures at 156.4 x 75.8 x 7.5 mm and weighs 169 grams. It has a glass front, a 2.5D-curved back glass and a chrome-colored aluminum side frame. It comes in three color options - Midnight Black, Sunset Gold, and Aurora Blue. The front glass is not curved and www.gsmarena.com finds you might feel its protruding edge along the sides though it doesn't cause any discomfort. They report a screen-to-body ratio of 82.5 %, lack of IPxx certification against water and dust (not to be expected at the phone’s price point) and that the glass back is not only prone to scratches and cracks, but also easy to smudge. www.techadvisor.co.uk finds that the Mi 8 Lite is a 6.26-inch-screen phone in the body of a 5.5-inch model, fitting comfortably in the hand. The Mi 8 Lite runs Android 8.1 Oreo with Xiaomi's MIUI 9.6. www.techadvisor.co.uk thinks that MIUI is quite a departure from standard Android, removing the app tray, reorganizing and redesigning the drop-down notification bar, and reordering the Settings menu. The Lite has horizontally-stacked camera sensors and a smaller notch than the Mi 8 SE. The narrow notch on the front side houses the earpiece, the front-facing camera, the usual sensors, and a subtle LED notification light. The left side houses the SIM/microSD card tray, while volume rocker and power button are on the right side. A SIM/microSD ejection tool (included) is needed to open the card tray. The USB-C connector is on the top side. Unfortunately, the Mi 8 does not have an audio jack, but Xiaomi has included a USB-C to 3.5mm adapter. www.gsmarena.com says the buttons are delightfully clicky and feel quite firm without any noticeable wobble. The phone comes with a rear-mounted fingerprint reader, which is ideally positioned and works flawlessly according to www.gsmarena.com. www.trustedreviews.com says the fingerprint reader is fast. For connectivity the phone supports GSM, 3G and LTE, Bluetooth 5.0 and Wi-Fi a, b, g, n and ac, but lacks support for NFC, which is necessary for making mobile payments. In our review, we compared the Mi 8 Lite to the Garmin Edge 500 navigator and found that the phone can only be used as an occasional navigator.

Display

The 6.26-inch IPS display features a 19:9 aspect ratio, a resolution of 1,080 x 2,280 pixels, and a pixel density of 403 ppi. The display is protected by Gorilla Glass 5. www.gsmarena.com complains about poor uniformity of the backlight around the notch and the top bezel. They report a maximum brightness of 468 cd/m², a black value of 0.322 cd/m² and a contrast ratio of 1,453. Furthermore, this online-magazine recommends switching over to the "Standard" mode (average DeltaE of 0.9, maximum DeltaE of 2) in the display calibration menu as it renders colors way more accurately than "Automatic" mode (average DeltaE of 5, maximum DeltaE of 10.1). However, they observed that the maximum brightness will go down to 415 cd/m2 in "Standard" mode and find that the sunlight legibility is satisfactory in default mode. www.trustedreviews.com says, “Colours are vibrant, contrast only perceptibly worse than the best LCDs at an angle in a dim room, and maximum brightness is high enough to make the display readable on a sunny day.”. In www.techadvisor.co.uk’s opinion, the display produces realistic colors, good contrast and strong viewing angles.

Hardware and Performance

The Mi 8 Lite uses a slightly older Snapdragon 660 chipset, which came out in 2017. The 14 nm processor features an octa-core CPU with four 2.2 GHz Kryo 260 cores and four 1.8 GHz Kryo 260 cores. www.gsmarena.com did not notice any thermal throttling or overheating even after a few consecutive benchmark tests and say that the performance was as expected from a Snapdragon 660-powered smartphone in view of their benchmark results (GeekBench 4.1 (multi-core): 5894; GeekBench 4.1 (single-core): 1628, AnTuTu 7: 143257; Basemark OS 2.0: 2338; GFX 3.0 Manhattan (1080p offscreen): 22; GFX 3.0 Manhattan (onscreen): 20; GFX 3.1 Car scene (1080p offscreen): 9, GFX 3.1 Car scene (onscreen): 8, Basemark X: 21269). www.trustedreviews.com thinks, “This is one of the best phones available in its class for gaming.”. www.vienna.at reports that the processor gets warm quickly under high load, but the phone never became uncomfortably hot since the processor throttles to constant 80 % after about 2,5 minutes under full load. As for RAM and storage, there are two variants, which are 4GB + 64GB, 6GB + 128GB. Storage can be expanded with a microSD card by up to 128 GB. In our storage benchmarks, the Mi 8 Lite with 128 GB performs as well as the rest of the competition.

Battery Life

The phone comes with a 3,350 mAh built-in battery and supports Quick Charge 3.0. However, the included brick and USB-A to USB-C cable only support 5V/2A charging speeds (10 W). Hence, you might want to get a QC 3.0-compliant charger for faster charging. www.gsmarena.com calls the 3G talk (29.59 h) and standby times respectable and reports web browsing and video playback times of 10:24h and 10.15 h, respectively. They summarizes that the Mi 8 Lite sacrifices power efficiency for performance and performs worse than most of its competitors in battery life, but only a few of them feature a powerful chipset like the Snapdragon 660. According to www.trustedreviews.com the device will survive a full day of solid mid-to-heavy use. www.techadvisor.co.uk ran the Geekbench 4 battery test and the Mi 8 Lite recorded 6 hours 22 minutes.

Cameras

Mi 8 Lite features a primary 12 MP camera with f/1.9 aperture, 1.4 µm pixel size, dual pixel phase detection autofocus and 5 MP sensor for depth sensing only. The camera lacks optical image stabilization. Additional settings like HDR, AI camera mode, beautify effect for the portrait shots filters are available. A pro mode allows more control over the camera. www.gsmarena.com finds HDR's Auto mode did not use HDR in most scenes it should, AI covers the very basic and is not as capable as in flagships, and the camera struggles to produce good shots under low-light. www.trustedreviews.com confirms that the Xiaomi Mi 8 Lite isn’t a low-light master with any configuration of modes, but think that it is better than some in this class. In contrast, www.techadvisor.co.uk thinks that the camera’s large 1.4um pixels were able to do a decent job lighting the scene without turning to the flash in low-light. Videos can be recorded in up to 4K at 30 fps. www.trustedreviews.com find that 4K stabilization isn’t very effective, but 1080p stabilization is, dramatically reducing hand judder. The 24 MP front camera uses fixed focus. According to www.gsmarena.com some of your selfies may not come up as sharp as they should be. www.trustedreviews.com summarizes, “Considering everything from shooting speed to selfie quality, video capture options and the image quality you can get using the right modes, the Xiaomi Mi 8 Lite is one of the very best sub-£250 phone cameras you can get.” vulcanpost.com thinks that as a point and shoot camera, the Mi 8 Lite actually produced images they would consider very good for what you pay for.

Sound

According to www.gsmarena.com, the bottom-firing single speaker gets pretty loud. They say that the phone delivers very loud output with perfect accuracy with an active external amplifier. With headphones they experienced a slightly above average degradation with a noticeable spike in stereo crosstalk, some intermodulation distortion and some frequency response shakiness. According to our review the Mi 8 Lite provides a very good call quality.

Summary

The Xiaomi Mi 8 Lite delivers good system performance and big storage capacity, but its battery life is only average, and it lacks a 3,5 mm headphone jack. In view of its price point, the cameras are good. In www.trustedreviews.com’s opinion, the Xiaomi Mi 8 Lite has unusually good hardware considering its price. Competitors include the Mi 8 SE and the Mi A2, Samsung’s Galaxy A7 (2018), the Motorola One, the Nokia 7 Plus, the Honor Play, the Honor 8X, and HTC’s U12 Life.

Sources

• https://mobile.mi.com/uk/mi-8-lite/#specs
• https://www.gsmarena.com/xiaomi_mi_8_lite-review-1859.php
• https://www.trustedreviews.com/reviews/xiaomi-mi-8-lite
• https://www.techadvisor.co.uk/review/android-smartphones/xiaomi-mi8-lite-3686190/
• https://www.vienna.at/xiaomi-mi-8-lite-test-und-fazit-zum-selfie-handy/6011783
• https://www.giztop.com/blog/Xiaomi-Mi-8-Lite-Review/
• https://vulcanpost.com/651649/xiaomi-mi-8-lite-review-malaysia/
• https://www.china-gadgets.de/xiaomi-mi-8-lite-smartphone-test/
• https://www.notebookcheck.net/Xiaomi-Mi-8-Lite-Smartphone-Review.400796.0.html

Press Review by Martina Osztovits

Specifications

Notebook: Xiaomi Mi 8 Lite
Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon SD 660
Graphics Adapter: Qualcomm Adreno 512
Display: 6.26 inch, 19:9, 2280 x 1080 pixels
Weight: 0.169kg
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Average Score: 78.76% - good

 

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Foreign Reviews

 

Xiaomi Mi 8

The Xiaomi Mi 8 is a flagship smartphone released by the company. The naming of the Xiaomi Mi 8 (skipping the Mi 7) is in celebration of Xiaomi Inc's eighth anniversary. The Mi 8 measures 154.9 x 74.8 x 7.6 mm and weighs at 175 g. It has an ultra-thin four-sided curved body. It is lightweight and curved on all four sides, which features amazing hand-feel and is comfortable to carry. The Mi 8’s curved-edge glass body is in a 7000 series aluminium alloy frame, which feels premium. As for color options, it comes in blue or black finish. As for the screen, the Xiaomi Mi 8 features a 6.21-inch AMOLED Full-Screen Display with a resolution of 2,248 x 1,080 pixels. Note that a phone of this size would traditionally have a 5.5-inch display. As a result of full optimization of the space available on the smartphone, it has an 18.7:9 screen ratio and 86.68 % screen to body ratio for the bigger screen. It has a wide notch on the top of the screen. For the rear camera, it has an AI dual camera with optical zoom. The 1.4 μm large pixels brighten and bring out the details of nightscape photos while SLR-quality dual-pixel autofocus allows the Mi 8 to snap photos rapidly. With seven Studio Lighting Modes, the Mi 8 is a portrait studio in the pocket. Users can instantly transport portrait to the shadow under a summer tree, or beneath a window where gentle rays shine through. The AI camera can distinguish between 206 common scenes and automatically adjusts exposure, saturation and other optimizations. Besides that, with seven AI-powered effects, users can edit, add music and mix colors to give video the feeling of Hollywood trailer. As for the front camera, it features a 20 MP front camera, which has 3D Beautify to blur backgrounds for stunning portraits. It has powerful analytic capabilities coupled with 1.8 μm large pixel (4-in-1 Super Pixel) technology to produce clearer, brighter selfies. The newly upgraded 3D Beautify uses AI to blur backgrounds with a single camera. It's as if each shot is taken in front of a studio canvas. The processor of the smartphone is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 845, which has a clock speed of up to 2.8 GHz. It also comes with a Qualcomm Adreno 630 GPU with up to 710 MHz. It is paired with 6 GB LPDDR4x dual-channel and 64 GB or 128 GB UFS flash storage. Powering the Mi 8 is a 3400 mAh battery, which supports Quick Charge 4+. The battery is charged by plugging the included 18 W QC3.0 charger into the reversible USB Type-C port. As a conclusion, the Xiaomi Mi 8 is a rival to any top-spec flagship phone out there. Despite featuring great design and performance, it is more affordable than many other flagship phones. There is a little compromise here and there, with the battery can be more long-lasting, software being not as clean as stock, and the camera is not the greatest of its class, but it is still a great choice for the price. Hands-on article by Jagadisa Rajarathnam

Specifications

Notebook: Xiaomi Mi 8
Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon SD 845
Graphics Adapter: Qualcomm Adreno 630
Display: 6.21 inch, 18.75:9, 2248 x 1080 pixels
Weight: 0.175kg
Price: 419 euro
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Average Score: 86.73% - good

 

Reviews

Foreign Reviews

 

Comment

Xiaomi:

Founded in 2010, Xiaomi Corporation is a Chinese multinational electronics company and produces consumer electronics and related products, including smartphones, televisions, fitness bands, power banks, headphones, smart devices and accessories. Xiaomi offers its products under the Mi, Redmi and POCO brands.

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Non demanding games should be playable with these graphics cards.

Qualcomm Adreno 630: Integrated graphics card in the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 SoC. According to Qualcomm 30% faster than the old Adreno 540 in the Snapdragon 835 with 30% less power consumption.

These graphics cards are not suited for Windows 3D games. Office and Internet surfing however is possible.

unknown:

Only some 3D games with very low demands are playable with these cards.

Qualcomm Adreno 512: Integrated graphics card based on the Adreno 500 architecture, like the Adreno 520 in the Snapdragon 820. According to Qualcomm up to 30% faster than the previous generation (Adreno 510?). Supports DirectX12, OpenCL 2.0, OpenGL ES 3.1 + AE.

» Further information can be found in our Comparison of Mobile Graphics Cards and the corresponding Benchmark List.

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Qualcomm Snapdragon:

SD 845: High-end SoC for smartphones that was introduced in early 2018 and manufactured in 10 nm LPP FinFET at TSMC. Integrates 4x Kryo 385 cores (Cortex-A75) at up to 2.8 GHz (max) for performance and 4x Kryo 385 at 1.8 GHz (max) for efficiency. Furthermore offers an X20 LTE modem, ac-WiFi and a dual-channel 32-Bit 1866 MHz LPDDR4x memory controller.

SD 660: Fast mid-range ARM SoC with 8 CPU Kryo 260 cores (four fast 2.2 GHz cores in a cluster and two power saving 1.8 GHz cores) and a rather slow Adreno 512 GPU. Manufactured in a 14 nm process.

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» Further information can be found in our Comparison of Mobile Processsors.

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» To find out how fine a display is, see our DPI List.

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No weight comment found (one expected)!

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82.71%: This rating is slightly above average, there are somewhat more devices with worse ratings. However, clear purchase recommendations look different.

» Further information can be found in our Notebook Purchase Guide.

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