Chinese electronics company Xiaomi on Wednesday unveiled its latest flagship smartphone, the Mi 6. Per usual for a Xiaomi phone, it appears to pack powerful hardware at a relatively affordable price.
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This Chinese smartphone has similar specs as the Samsung Galaxy S8 for almost $400 less
Xiaomi's new Mi 6 phone packs a lot of power for a not-so-high price — but don't expect it to hit the US anytime soon.
The Xiaomi Mi 6.
More specifically, the Mi 6 runs on a Snapdragon 835 chip — the latest entry in Qualcomm’s line of mobile processors, which recently debuted with Samsung’s Galaxy S8 phone — along with a healthy 6 GB of RAM and 64 GB of storage space by default. (There’s an option with 128 GB of storage, too.)
Like many recent high-end phones, there’s also a 12-megapixel dual-camera setup on the back. A decent-sized 3,350 mAh battery, stereo speakers, and USB-C charging port round out the spec sheet.
What the Mi 6 won’t have, though, is the bigger display and shrunken bezels of the Galaxy S8. Instead, there’s a nice-but-standard-looking glass and metal frame, with a familiar 5.15-inch, 1080p display. To give a point of comparison, the Galaxy S8 packs a sharper, 5.8-inch display, despite only being 0.14 inches taller. Xiaomi does have a phone that takes the no-bezel approach — the stunning Mi Mix — but that design has been omitted here.
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There’s also no headphone jack, a la the iPhone 7 and other recent Android phones.
A tough road ahead
It doesn’t help that Xiaomi has gone through a rough patch in the past year. After the company exploded to the point of being the world’s most valuable tech startup in 2014, its smartphone sales have sunk, in part due to the drop-off in online sales, Xiaomi’s preferred method, in China.
According to the latest quarterly figures from research firm IDC, Xiaomi has fallen from first to fifth in terms of Chinese market share, with a 40% decline in year-over-year sales. Global giant Huawei and local upstarts Oppo and Vivo have provided further competition, and now hold the top three spots in the country.
Xiaomi head Lei Jun says the company is now looking to India to spur growth, and recently told Bloomberg that he thinks the company’s business is closer to Costco than Apple. The company sells a number of accessories that use its branding beyond smartphones, including headphones, battery packs, and media streamers in the US.
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Here are a few more photos of the Mi 6:
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