As most of you know from time to time cover mobiles phones (A break away from the tablets I normally cover) Yesterday I received the Xiaomi Mi 6, it’s a Snapdragon 835 powered 5.15″ mobile. It’s got the same ultrasonic fingerprint reader and screen as the Mi 5 I reviewed, but the latest flagship chipset and a new splash-proof housing and dual camera arrangement all for around $370 USD (In China)
The cameras are interesting, Sony IMX 386 with 4-aix OIS for video and as the main rear camera, then a secondary Samsung S5k3m3 PDAF camera without OIS but a fixed two times optical zoom for getting in closer to your subject and it also has this bokeh shot mode that blurs the background using both cameras for nice looking portraits. (Camera sensor info can be obtained by entering this code in the dial pad: *#*#64663#*#*)
Below’s the Xiaomi Mi 6 unboxing video:
First impressions:
- Premium build quality feels as good in hand as my Samsung Galaxy S8
- Cameras are flush with the rear glass
- The buttons are made of metal, feel firm and don’t rattle around
- The fingerprint scanner works flawlessly and very fast to unlock.
- It’s very slippery as expected. But it comes with a TPU slim fit case.
- 54GB free storage, remember there is no MicroSD card slot on this, so if you need more get the 128GB version
- The camera performance seems really good at times as good as my Samsung S8 (See up and coming comparison for proof)
- The auxiliary second camera can only be used in camera mode, not video. I guess Xiaomi wants as to have OIS over zoom.
- The screen is very vibrant, sharp with good brightness. It might not be a 1440p display but it is fitting for a flagship mobile
- The second loudspeaker (front facing) is located within the earpiece, a similar set up to the LeEco Le Pro 3 I reviewed.
- Decent volume from the loudspeakers.
- Performance is one of the best I have seen on a mobile. Super fast storage, 700mb/s reads and 200mb/s writes. Benchmarks are also very good.
- Antutu scores of over 180,0000
- The ROM isn’t stable, the gallery app has crashed on me and the UI (MIUI 8.2) has crashed and had to be reloaded a few times. Not good to see!
- Audio bitrate in video is still low 96kbps. Should be much higher like other flagships.
- Front facing camera offers decent quality, 1080p video but often overexposes if you’re in direct sunlight.
More on this mobile soon, as well as the Cube Thinker i35 review and various other tech that arrived.