Xiaomi is making a push using its brand of Android smartphones into the UK. The Xiaomi Mi 8 Guru has impressed us with its design and creditable AI-enhanced camera . However, the Miami Mi 8 is equally as intriguing a bundle. It gives similar near-flagship specifications for a lower cost than the Miami Mi 8 Pro version. The Mi 8 provides up a large AMOLED display (complete with obligatory notch), top-end Snapdragon 845 processing power, and a solid double -12-megapixel camera to get a UK launch cost of 459. That is half the cost of a Huawei Mate 20 Pro. Maybe more importantly, it also undercuts the present #500 gorilla of the smartphone world, the OnePlus 6T.
Xiaomi Mi 8 – Design
Like its Pro brother, the Xiaomi Mi 8 is a curvy glass-bodied phone place in a 7-series aluminium metal frame. It does not have the attention-grabbing transparent back but to my head that leaves it feeling as the more classy telephone of the two. Instead of gawping at the exposed replica chips of this Pro version, you will only have to make do with a bunch of smudged fingerprints, and your face staring back at you in the reflective surface. There’s also a more conventional fingerprint sensor on the rear of this Miami Mi 8, positioned just below and to the right of a dual-camera array. That fingerprint detector might look like a step but it’s really a more reliable and quicker means to obtain access to this phone.
Otherwise, the dimensions of the Xiaomi Mi 8 will be nigh-on identical to the Guru, using a skinny 7.6mm-thick frame and the exact same surface region. Additionally, it is a 2g. It’s hefty, but not uncomfortably or distractingly. Overall, this is a fairly unassuming phone that liberally borrows stylistic components from its rivals. Most importantly, it owes a debt to the X family with dual-camera module that is stacked and its screen. The Xiaomi Mi 8 feels premium at the hand, thanks to the glass and metallic composition, and an adequate amount of build quality. But there’s a whiff of”me too” for it all, and you think that Xiaomi’s local rival Huawei has stolen a march on it in recent years when it comes to distinctive design. It’s a shame there are not any stereo speakers with just a single easy-to-cover grille on the bottom of the phone. Although this is only one of the signs that you’re not dealing with an absolute top-tier phone. More comprehensible – although still very frustrating for some – is the lack of a 3.5millimeter headphone jack. I need that Xiaomi had utilised this to provide the Mi 8 some kind of proper waterproofing, but an IP rating is possibly a little over the phone’s pay grade.
Display
It’s always pleasing to see AMOLED display technology at a less-than-flagship phone. That is no less true of this Miami Mi 8. As a result, colours really soda here, and there’s full HDR10 support for all relevant media. There’s none of that uncanny over-saturation of which AMOLED screens could be guilty of. All in all, this is a balanced screen. As is becoming customary, you can adjust the Xiaomi Mi 8’s display to your personal tastes. Indeed, the Contrast & Colours tool at the Settings menu offers higher potential for and you can tinker with the contrast level.
There’s also a Reading style which produces the tone of the display warmer for a more eye-friendly effect, and you can schedule this to come on automatically at night. This screen is a large 6.21-inch affair using a 2244 x 1080 (essentially 1080p or Full HD) resolution. No, it does not match the QHD screens of Android mobiles like the Samsung Galaxy S9, but you’re talking about decreasing returns when you pack that many pixels into such a small location. The screen does not approach the eye-searing LCD brightness of a device like the Huawei Mate 20, of course. Nonetheless, it’s perfectly alright in most conditions, and before it would become something like a problem you have to wait around for those bright British summer days to roll up. It is also a very long screen that fills the front of the telephone, using a stretched-out 18.7:9 aspect ratio. There is a notch set up to house IR sensor and the camera, along with a noticeable chin reverse. But otherwise, the display spreads out to fulfill 86.68percent of the front the gadget.
Performance
The Miami Mi 8 is a strong actress, courtesy of a Snapdragon 845 CPU and 6GB of RAM. The Snapdragon 845 has been set to be superseded with the initial tide of 2019 telephones, but it would be churlish to complain about that at a phone that costs less than 500. The Snapdragon 845 stays a very capable chip that will handle anything you throw at it. Within our benchmark tests the Mi 8 scored a multi-core score of 8781 and a single-core score of 2389, which will be roughly on par with the equally specced OnePlus 6T – one of the quickest phones on the market. I should also note that these dents appear to represent a bump up in performance from our Xiaomi Mi 8 Pro tests late last year. Those decreased scores of 7765 and 2275 are probably down to the subsequent software optimisations that have come about with the move to Android 9.0 Pie and MIUI 10.1. Within our previous Xiaomi Mi 8 Pro reviewwe noted that the operation seemed less than optimal, with lower grade scores and one or two high-end performance hitches. I didn’t encounter anything of the sort from the Mi 8, therefore Miami appears to have ironed out the creases.