Xiaomi has announced its new flagship phone, the Mi 8 — pure copy cat of the iPhone X and comes fully equipped with a notch and a similar camera placement. The Mi 8 has a 6.21-inch OLED screen made by Samsung, and here is the kicker, the front facing camera is a whopping 20-megapixel selfie camera tacked away behind that notch.
The phone has a four-way curved glass back panel and an aluminum frame. Inside, there’s Qualcomm’s high-end Snapdragon 845 processor and the new 12-megapixel dual-camera setup. The Chinese phone maker also says that this is the first phone ever to use dual-frequency GPS, which is supposed to give more accurate location data (if you care about such a thing).
Xiaomi’s has gone all-out on the Mi 8 Explorer Edition that comes with an in-display fingerprint sensor that, for the first time in a phone, uses pressure sensitivity. Xiaomi also claims that the Explorer Edition is the first Android phone in the world to use 3D face recognition technology, like the iPhone X’s Face ID — and there’s an Animoji equivalent on board.
Perhaps most importantly, the Explorer Edition has a transparent back panel that looks one of these phones one must carry before they die.
The final entry in the Mi 8 lineup is the Mi 8 SE, a smaller, slower, and cheaper version of the Mi 8 that clearly takes naming cues from Apple’s own fun-sized model. It’s the first phone to use Qualcomm’s brand-new midrange Snapdragon 710 processor, and it has a 5.88-inch OLED screen.
The Mi 8 is will cost around $421 (UGX 1.55 m) in China, the Explorer Edition will start from $577 (UGX 2.03 m), and the SE available for $281 (UGX 1.04 m) a prices quoted before taxes. As ever from Xiaomi, these prices are extremely competitive. No word on pricing and availability for any other markets just yet.
