Each year we all wait for one of the most powerful budget flagships and it is finally here. Meet the Xiaomi Mi 6, the phone that has killer specs, awesome looks, and a compelling dual-camera setup. Stay tuned to find out if the best of Xiaomi is worth your attention in the full Xiaomi Mi 6 review.

Thanks to Giztop for providing the Xiaomi Mi 6 review unit.

VIDEO REVIEW

UNBOXING

The Xiaomi Mi 6 ships with all the usual stuff and some extras include a soft TPU case to protect your phone.

Also, you get a USB-C to the headset jack adapter since the phone lacks the 3.5mm port. Finally, the Mi 6 ships with the fast charger.

DESIGN and DISPLAY

Once you first pick the Xiaomi Mi 6 up, the first impressions are that the phone looks just gorgeous. Also, it has excellent build quality and it is fairly compact since it sports a 5.15” IPS LCD display, which is sharp, vibrant and definitely one of the best 1080p panels you can find.

We have an 8MP shooter and LED notification light, which, however, is not customizable like on previous Xiaomi phones.

At least we have nicely backlit capacitive keys and the fingerprint sensor that is one of the fastest and most accurate scanners that you can find on any smartphone. It unlocks the phone 10/10 times, straight from the standby mode.

I love that the phone sits nicely in the hand. The stainless-steel frame is almost seamless with a curved glass back panel, which actually does a decent job with all the fingerprints and smudges. In comparison, the phone does not attract fingerprints so quickly like the Galaxy S8. Also, the buttons are easy to reach and they have a great tactile feedback.

It’s worth mentioning that the Xiaomi Mi 6 is now splash-proof even though the official certification number is not yet confirmed. Keep in mind that splash-proof phones are not the same as water resistant smartphones. In other words, you cannot submerge the Xiaomi Mi 6 under water, don’t mess your new phone up.

One of the key selling points of the Mi 6 is the dual camera setup that consists of a 12MP shooter with a wide-angle lens and another 12MP sensor with the telephoto lens that gives 2 times zoom and the ability to take beautiful portrait photos with bokeh effect. The main camera has a bright f/1.8 aperture lens, 4-axis OIS, and dual tone dual-LED flash.

It is great that we have the IR blaster that allows you to control devices like TVs.

I love the loudspeaker quality. The sound is balanced and rich, and there is even a decent amount of bass.

What I don’t like is that there is no headset jack on this phone. I know that Xiaomi wants to follow a trend but if you look at the latest flagships from Samsung or LG, Xiaomi should be more careful with this decision and I think they should have kept the headset jack. Anyway, the sound quality via the USB-C port using a supplied adapter is great. No distortions, great volume output, and rich sound.

Xiaomi Mi 6 in pictures:

[envira-gallery id=”130728″]

HARDWARE and PERFORMANCE

As far as hardware goes, the Xiaomi Mi 6 is one of the most powerful smartphones the money can buy.

It ships with the latest and greatest Snapdragon 835 chip, 6GB of RAM and 64GB or 128GB of internal storage, which is, however, not expandable.

The gaming performance is almost perfect. All the 3D games run fine on the very highest graphics settings and the phone does not have any overheating issues. However, I noticed that there were a few skipped frames on the Asphalt 8. I believe that this is due to an early software build and you don’t really need to worry about that since Xiaomi releases software updates very often.

BENCHMARKS

USER INTERFACE

The Mi 6 ships with the MIUI 8, which is built on top of Android 7.1. My device has the MIUI Global ROM 8.2 that has Google Services pre-installed and all the Chinese bloatware removed.

I love how fast the phone is on the daily basis even after installing quite a few apps. So far, the phone has been working fine and I didn’t have any lag.

As usual, there are plenty of customization options Xiaomi phones have been famous for. Just to name a few, you can adjust display settings, choose from a variety of themes or wallpapers, customize the capacitive buttons, use some gesture controls and so on. If you want to customize the phone even further, there are a lot more other features to play with.

CAMERAS

Check out our camera review video:

We have a familiar Xiaomi camera app that allows you to take pictures very fast. You can also play with some basic shooting modes and settings. E.g. you can adjust some image properties using the manual mode or shoot slow-motion videos at 720p.

There is also 2x lossless zoom mode that allows you to utilize that secondary camera sensor and this feature comes really handy. The results are pretty good, definitely a lot better than using digital zoom.

The portrait mode takes good-looking pictures with bokeh effect but sometimes you may get a picture with a bit unnatural looking blurred background.

When it comes to the image quality using auto-mode, the Mi 6 can take great pictures in good lighting. There is plenty of detail, the colors look nice and noise reduction is pretty good. However, I found that the dynamic range adjustment is a bit worse than on the top tier phones like the Samsung Galaxy S8.

The indoor and macro shots are great too. Again, there is lots of detail and you get that nice bokeh effect thanks to the bright lens.

The low-light camera performance is decent but it is far from the top-shelf flagship-grade quality. If we compare the pictures with the Samsung Galaxy S8, you will see that there are much less detail and much more noise.

The 4k video quality is great. The footage is detailed and the continuous auto-focus feature works well. The colours look nice too but they seem to be slightly oversaturated. Also, there are some video artifacts going but in general, this is probably the best video quality from any Xiaomi phone.

The 1080p video looks good too. Obviously, there is less detail but the OIS seems to do a better job than in 4k video mode.

The selfies look great as there is a lot of detail and the colors are accurate. However, the quality decreases quite dramatically in lower-lit situations.

The 1080p selfie video looks quite good. There is a good amount of detail but the footage is not as good as the one shot with the Galaxy S8. Finally, the sound recording quality is decent but still, not quite the mainstream flagship quality.

Download full-resolution camera samples

CONNECTIVITY

When it comes to connectivity, the Xiaomi Mi 6 is flawless. The call quality and signal reception have been excellent, the Wifi range and speed are good, the Bluetooth works fine and finally, the GPS is very accurate, thanks to a reliable Snapdragon processor.

BATTERY LIFE

The Xiaomi Mi 6 ships with a 3350 mAh battery that performs great. I used my phone very intensively for taking a lot of pictures and shooting 4k video, running benchmarks, installing a lot of apps and so on and I still managed to get over 5 hours of screen-on time. If you use the device just for the basic stuff, you should be able to get 6 or even 7 hours of SOT.

Finally, the Mi 6 ships with the fast charger. It takes about 1:30 h to fully charge the phone, thanks to the Quick Charge 3.0.

CONCLUSIONS

So, there you have it, the Xiaomi Mi 6, the latest and greatest from the Chinese tech giant.

I have to say that this is one solid smartphone and it brings a lot of flagship-grade qualities for a much lower price than the mainstream flagships.

Xiaomi nailed the design and build quality, the display is nice and sharp, and the overall performance is great. You also get a great battery life with the fast charger and all connectivity options work flawlessly.

The dual-cameras can take some very nice pictures but the quality is still not on par with the top tier phones like the Galaxy S8, especially if you compare the low-light photos.

You should also know that the Mi 6 lacks the headset jack and there is no microSD card slot.

At the end of the day, the Xiaomi Mi 6 is the best Xiaomi’s phone yet. Even though it has a few cons to consider, you can definitely call it a flagship phone even if it does not carry a mainstream flagship price tag.

The post Xiaomi Mi 6 Review – The Best Xiaomi’s Phone Yet appeared first on Gizmochina.

Xiaomi Mi 6 is finally launching on April 19. Yes, it’s late, much later than what we had expected. Considering last year’s launch schedule, the Mi 6 is nearly 2 months late. But the company had a fair share of valid reasons to delay its launch, one of it being the delay in getting hold of the Snapdragon 835 chipset from Qualcomm. If the phone was to be released early, like in February, sticking to the usual schedule, you would have probably had the Xiaomi Mi 6 Snapdragon 821 edition and not the 835 edition. Well, it didn’t make sense for Xiaomi to use SD821 on an important phone like the Mi 6 (unlike what LG did with its LG G6) and now, after patiently waiting for the past few months, the Mi 6 is here to meet us. Well, there’s still a couple of days left for the phone’s launch, but we know a lot about the device, thanks to the leaks in the past few weeks.

In fact, the transition from a relatively unleaked Xiaomi Mi 6 to the popular — hot in the news — at least a new leak everyday device — was quite quick. My previous Xiaomi Mi 6 summary , published a month ago, had very little details about the device. Fast forward a few weeks, and now we know so much about the phone. So, let’s paint a rough picture of what Xiaomi Mi 6 looks like and what to expect inside in terms of specs and features.

Xiaomi Mi 6 Design

To get it out there, the Xiaomi Mi 6 is not expected to feature a curved display like the Xiaomi Mi Note 2. At least, that’s what all the leaks told us, until the recent teaser sent out by the company. So, we are yet to see good renders of the Mi 6 with a dual curved display but according to the recent teaser, the Xiaomi Mi 6 is confirmed to feature a four curved design. If not for the constant rumors of a flat Mi 6, we would have instantly translated this teaser as a curved display phone from Xiaomi. But there’s another possibility, the Mi 6’s back could be curved on the four sides, which also translates into four curved design. Given that even in the past couple of days, after the release of this teaser, we are still seeing flat display on the leaked Mi 6 renders and leaks, could be it be that the teaser hints at the curved back design? Possible, but we cannot confirm it until Xiaomi clarifies this confusion.

Camera Setup & Flash

After a rather conflicting series of renders in the past few weeks, Xiaomi Mi 6 leaks and renders have kind of converged in on the phone featuring a dual horizontal camera setup. There’s another confusion — placement of the dual LED flash. Some renders show the flash to the left of the dual camera setup, while other show it on the right side. As of now, we cannot say which one’s the real deal. So, we’ll have to wait till the official launch to confirm this.

In the past few months, Xiaomi seems to have improved its ceramic body production, which is why the Mi 6 is said to come with a ceramic body. Now, we don’t know for sure whether all version of the Mi 6 feature ceramic or is it like an exclusive edition, like the Mi 5 Pro. One thing’s sure, we are going to see ceramic on the Mi 6.

By the way, there are at least two versions expected of the Xiaomi Mi 6 at launch. A Xiaomi Mi 6 with a 5.15-inch display and a Xiaomi Mi 6 Plus with a larger 5.7-inch display. Naturally, the larger model is expected to feature better specs and features than its smaller sibling.
Waterproofing & 3.5mm Jack

Xiaomi is not known for waterproof smartphones, but given that this feature has become standard on many known flagships, this time, the Xiaomi Mi 6 is said to be waterproof. This, if true, would be interesting, as the phone is said to lack the traditional 3.5mm headphone jack. No headphone jack means you are left with Bluetooth headsets or USB Type-C headphones. This may not go well with many Xiaomi Mi 6 fans, but we’ll have to wait and see if this turns out to be true.

The home button won’t be clickable and instead will lie under the glass like the Xiaomi Mi 5S. The sensor will be similar to the iPhone 7 Plus according to recent reports.

Xiaomi Mi 6 Specs & Features

Xiaomi is known for bringing top-end specs on its Mi series.

Xiaomi Mi 6 CPU & RAM

The Mi 6 is expected to come with Snapdragon 835 on board. Given that the powerful Samsung Galaxy S8 is the only flagship featuring this latest chip from Qualcomm, the Mi 6 is sure to get some extra love. This is mainly because reports state that we won’t see SD835 flagship from manufacturers apart from Samsung and Xiaomi anytime soon.

We know for sure that there will be 6GB of RAM inside the Xiaomi Mi 6. This has been confirmed by Xiaomi in the recent teasers. But there should be other versions too with 4GB RAM, retailing at a cheaper price. Unlike OnePlus, Xiaomi loves variants, and we can expect a few RAM + ROM as well as other feature options available for the Mi 6 in different variants.

Xiaomi Mi 6 Iris Scanner

Yes, Iris Scanner is one of the expected features on the Mi 6. There have been a couple of leaks about such a sensor on the front, but nothing concrete so far.

Xiaomi Mi 6 Camera

Both AnTuTu and Geekbench listings have confirmed 12MP cameras on the Xiaomi Mi 6. Note that the benchmark scores have been pretty impressive so far, 170K+ on AnTuTu and 2000+ (in Single-core) & 6400+ (in multi-core) tests on Geekbench.

Experience tell us that megapixel count reveals nothing about the camera quality. In fact, even the sensor inside cannot guarantee good camera performance as there are multiple factors other than these that affect the quality of the camera inside a device like software optimizations. The sensor is said to be either Sony IMX386 or the IMX400. We are not sure about this information at the moment, as details about the rear camera setup are scarce. Hopefully, one of the teasers in the next two days will enlighten us about the setup.

Up front, there should be an 8MP shooter.

Apart from the display size and maybe the resolutions (1080p vs 2K), the Xiaomi Mi 6 and the Mi 6 Plus may not differ in terms of its other specs. Both versions are expected to feature SD835 with high clock speeds. The Mi 6 Plus could start with 6GB of RAM, while the Mi 6 could start with 4GB but also offering a 6GB RAM version at a slightly higher price.

Xiaomi Mi 6 Battery

Xiaomi Mi 6 is said to feature a 3200mAh battery with Quick Charge 3.0. We have seen the model get an 18W charger which should ensure fast charging. The Mi 6 Plus should ideally feature a larger capacity battery, but we don’t have details about the same.

Xiaomi Mi 6 Price & Launch

Like tradition, the Xiaomi Mi 6 price is expected to start at 1999 Yuan ($290). The Mi 6 Plus should start at 2499 Yuan ($360). The pricing is not yet confirmed, so we better wait for the official launch two days later to know the pricing details for sure.

The phone will be officially announced on April 19. Rumors say that we could meet the rumored Xiaomi Mi Max 2 at the same event, but no hints from Xiaomi yet.

Stay tuned to detailed updates about the Xiaomi Mi 6 by checking out this link.

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There is no doubt the Xiaomi Mi 6 is on its way and its launch is drawing closer, considering the spate of new leaks surrounding the device. The Mi 6 promises to offer lots of new features and among the lot is the Snapdragon 835 chipset that would pilot the affairs on board the flagship.

Another new feature may have just been discovered with a new leak that emerged. The leak is that of the SIM card tray of the Mi 6 lying on top of that of the Mi 5. In comparison, the Mi 6 SIM tray looks thicker with watertight features than the Mi 5’s SIM tray which isn’t water tight. Apart from revealing that the Mi 6 would pack dual SIM slots, the SIM card tray also reveal another stunning feature which is the presence of waterproofing on the trays.

Waterproofing the SIM tray or making it water tight only means one thing, that is the presence of IP67 level of water and dust protection on the flagship. If that should be the case, then earlier rumours that the Mi 6 would not feature the 3.5mm audio jack may just have some credibility. We had also seen leaked image of the Xaiomi Bluetooth headphone X which would function as the Mi 6’s wireless headphones. We still haven’t seen how the USB Type-C slot would look like in order to support the waterproof and dustproof feature. The Mi 6 details just keep getting juicier. Keep it locked on Gizmochina for more details as they emerge.

(source)

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Qualcomm officially announced the Snapdragon 835 chipset last month at MWC but before then, analyst Kevin Wang had hinted that the Xiaomi Mi 6 would be the first domestic flagship in China to feature a Snapdragon 835 chipset. Although that disclosure is yet to get an official confirmation, subsequent rumors have continually placed the Mi 6 flagship as coming with a Snapdragon 835 chipset. Even the latest rumor hinting at the existence of a Snapdragon 821-powered version also tips the Mi 6 as having a high-end version with Snapdragon 835.

Now, Xiaomi mobile official Weibo page has inadvertently given us the idea that the Mi 6 may come with a Snapdragon 835. If you are a keen follower of the Mi brand, then you would agree that Xiaomi most times communicate via teasers where the real message is coded. In this case, the Xiaomi mobile phone official Weibo page shared Qualcomm’s latest post about the features of the Snapdragon 835 and then added a teaser; “I come, I see, I conquer” accompanied by a Snapdragon 835 hashtag.

Related: Xiaomi Mi 6 Case Leaked, Confirms Dual Rear Cameras

For now, this should suffice to allay doubts that the SD 835 would likely be onboard the Mi 6. We look forward to more details as the April launch of the device draws closer.

(source)

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Unlike previous Xiaomi flagships, the expected Mi 6 has been lacking in leaked images and despite its launch rumored as coming in March, we still hardly know exactly what the Xiaomi flagship looks like. Even though Xiaomi had done a good job of keeping the Mi 6 images from the public glare, a couple of images have appeared online purportedly of the Mi 6.

A couple of such leaked images appeared recently on Weibo from a relatively unknown tipster. What stood the purported Mi 6 out is the amazing screen-to-body ratio it highlights on the device. If truly the leaked images are those of the Xiaomi Mi 6, then it marks a deviation from the design language of its predecessors, talking about the Mi 5, Mi 4, Mi 5S and so on. Instead, the screen ratio reminds one of the concept Mi Mix.

Another notable feature is the absence of a front physical home button on the device which seems to have a screen size between 5.2 inches and 5.5 inches. The device is noticed to be running on the MIUI skin but that doesn’t mean it is a Xiaomi smartphone for sure. The front Mi logo is conspicuously missing and the design doesn’t look very attractive except for the great screen-to-body ratio. So we’ll give this a credibility of 20%, so take it with a pinch of salt.

Related: Xiaomi Mi 6 Configuration Details Leak: 2K Display, Mi Note 2 Camera

The Mi 6 is rumored to come with a 5.2-inch 1080p display with 4GB of AM and 32GB of storage. There are rumors of a second version with WQHD display of same size and 4GB RAM + 64GB ROM. The Mi 6 is expected to be powered by Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 835 chipset and pack an 8MP Sony IMX268 8MP autofocus sensor up front as well as a 12MP Sony IMX386 sensor at the rear.

source

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Xiaomi’s expected Snapdragon 835-powered Mi 6 flagship leaked in what was said to be its AnTuTu benchmark score. Although the leaked data may be false, but the score shows the potential enormous fire power of the smartphone’s chip. Again, there’s been another leaked data which is said to be the Master Lu benchmark data of the Xiaomi Mi 6.

Well, we still can’t vouch for the authenticity of this recent leaked benchmark score but it seems to have popped up on Xiaomi’s MIUI forum. The data showed the Mi 6 with a monstrous benchmark score of 1103215 points. The CPU alone polled a total of 224855 points. Not much is known about the Master Lu benchmark but we have got earlier Master Lu benchmark data of the Samsung Galaxy S7 (also pictured) which we can compare it with. The difference is just out of this world. While the Galaxy S7 managed a score a little above 100 thousand points back then, the Mi 6 is credited with a score of over 1.1 million points! Perhaps, there is a mistake somewhere because it is just unbelievable.

The Xiaomi Mi 6 also recorded a super high score when its purported AnTuTu benchmark score leaked recently. An indication that the Snapdragon 835 id indeed a flagship chip with immense power. If all these turn out to be true, then we sure would be expecting a super fast device with top notch performance that won’t have many rivals.

(source)

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