Three Key Points from the Mi 6 Launch
If you managed to stay clear of tech news yesterday, Xiaomi has just launched their flagship phone of the year — the Xiaomi Mi 6. While we’ve already written about the launch, we wanted to break our coverage into the main points of the Chinese company’s livestream, so you can easily come back to it once the phone becomes available on April 28. Let’s start off by listing out its spec sheet before jumping into the three key points in their presentation.
Xiaomi Mi 6 Specifications
- 2.75GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 octa-core processor
- 6GB of RAM
- Adreno 540 GPU
- 5.15-inch Full HD IPS display; 1920×1080 resolution
- 64GB/128GB of storage
- Dual 12-megapixel rear cameras, 2x Optical Lossless Zoom, 4-axis OIS
- 8-megapixel front camera
- Dual SIM
- 3G, LTE
- WiFi, Bluetooth
- GPS, A-GPS, GLONASS
- Fingerprint scanner
- USB Type-C
- Splash Resistant
- 3350mAh battery
- Android 7.1 Nougat with MIUI 8.0
A Strong Emphasis on Design
Xiaomi was clearly proud of the exterior of the Xiaomi Mi 6, as the Chinese brand was constantly bringing up what they’ve done to make their flagship look as good as it does. Its stainless steel frame is sandwiched in between glass, making it fit the mold in terms of flagship build quality. They separate themselves from the rest of the pack, however, by using four-sided curved glass; this gives the phone rounder edges. There’s also the Ceramic Edition of the Xiaomi Mi 6 that comes with, you guessed, a ceramic back and 18k gold rings around the rear camera lenses.
There’s also the addition of splash resistance. One thing people immediately noticed while looking at the photos Xiaomi shared during the presentation was the lack of a 3.5mm jack. RIP, headphone jack.
The Best Internals Available
It comes to no surprise that Xiaomi has put the very best internals available in their flagship device, the Xiaomi Mi 6. Armed with Qualcomm Snapdragon 835, which has been paired with 6GB of RAM, an Adreno 540 GPU, and up to 128GB of storage — the Mi 6 certainly looks like its ready to take on all comers on paper. While we know that benchmarks aren’t everything, the Chinese company also eagerly shared the results of the benchmarks scores using AnTuTu, where the Mi 6 got a score of 184,292; topping the recently released Samsung Galaxy S8 in their chart.
Going the Dual Camera Route
It was rumored that Xiaomi would go along with the dual camera trend, which was soon confirmed with leaks of the phones renders. The Mi 6 comes equipped with twin 12-megapixel rear cameras, with one lens featuring a wide-angled sensor and the other a telephoto sensor. The cameras are also equipped with 4-axis OIS to make your shaky hands a non-factor while shooting and is capable of 2x optical lossless zoom. Since Xiaomi, and other Chinese brands for that matter, borrow heavily from Apple’s playbook, you’ll also be able to shoot in “Portrait Mode” where you can blur out backgrounds for that software bokeh effect that we’ve all come to know.
For pricing, the Xiaomi Mi 6 has been priced at 2499 RMB (Php 18,055) for the variant with 6GB RAM/64GB storage, 2899 RMB (Php 20,945) for the one with 6GB RAM/128GB, and 2999 RMB (Php 21,667) for the Ceramic Edition. The Xiaomi Mi 6 will be available on April 28.
