India is one of Xiaomi’s most important markets. However, most of its smartphone released in the country are under the Redmi line. When it comes to flagships, the 2017 Mi MIX 2 is the only one available for purchase on its official website. That may be changing soon as firmware files have revealed a Snapdragon 845-powered phone is heading to India.
The discovery was made by @FunkyHuawei who got his hands on firmware files containing the details. According to XDA Developers who first reported the news, they were already aware of the device’ existence a few months ago.
Their findings revealed then that Xiaomi was working on a number of Snapdragon 845 mobile phones for release this year. The codenames for the devices are “Polaris” which launched as the Mi MIX 2s, “Dipper” which launched as the Mi 8, and “Ursa” which launched as the Mi 8 Explorer Edition. The fourth device is codenamed “Berrylium” and is the one that may be heading to India. A fifth device codenamed “Shark” was also seen and that launched as the Black Shark gaming phone.
“Beryllium” Specs
The firmware files reveal the device known as “Beryllium” will have a Snapdragon 845 chipset, an Adreno 630 GPU, and have an LCD display with a notch. It will come with dual rear cameras with optical zoom, run Android 8.1 Oreo, and pack a 4000mAh battery.
Although details about the RAM and storage were not made available, the phone will not have a microSD card slot. It will have a fingerprint scanner but not an in-display type.
XDA adds that the firmware files which revealed the above specs were built back in March, so there is a possibility they might have changed. However, the device is still in development seeing as it has a global beta version of MIUI 10 available.
Proof “Beryllium” will launch in India (and globally)
So what’s the proof that this device is heading to India? As you can see above, there is a global beta MIUI 10 ROM for the device which points to an international availability of the device and the firmware files are said to have two branches – “Beryllium” and “Beryllium Global”. Proof of it heading to India is found in the latest MIUI camera app. The explanation is a bit technical.
There are two proofs or method as XDA puts it. They are called “isIndiabeautyFlter” and “getDualCameraWaterMarkFilePathVendor”. Both are said to check a build property called “ro.boot.hwc” that only returns as true if it is “India”.
For the first method, it checks the build property if IS_E7S or IS_E10 are true. When IS_E7S is true when the device is “whyred” (Redmi Note 5 Pro) and IS_E10 when the device is “beryllium”.
For the second method, it checks the build prop if “ro.boot.hwc” is set to “India” and IS_E10 is true.
What device will “Beryllium” launch as?
If we are to go by the specs of the device and also recent leaks, Beryllium won’t launch as the Mi MIX 3. The Mi MIX 3 according to leaked photos doesn’t have a notch.
However, there is a possibility that it may launch under the new “POCOPHONE” brand. FCC documents from a few days ago have shown that the model number of the first smartphone under the POCOPHONE brand is M1805E10A. E10 in the model number corresponds to the values in the proofs mentioned above.
We presumed the first phone under the POCOPHONE brand will be a mid-range phone but recent FCC documents spotted by Android Authority reveals the phone will come in 6GB RAM + 64GB and 6GB RAM + 128GB models. This configuration may point at a flagship device, so its possible it is Beryllium.
READ MORE: Xiaomi Mi A2 tipped to launch in Spain on July 25 in 4 memory configurations
Nevertheless, this isn’t conclusive yet. The specs above may change and the device may launch under Xiaomi’s already existing brands. Other than this phone, Xiaomi is also expected to launch the Mi 8 SE in India later this month, though it has been tipped to arrive as the Mi 8i.
(Source)
