After months of speculation and rumors, the Xiaomi Mi 9 is officially launched! Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun took the stage at the announcement event in China today to reveal three devices – Mi 9, Mi 9 “Transparent Edition” and the Mi 9 SE.
The Mi 9 will obviously be the flagship device – it comes with a 6.39-inch Samsung AMOLED display with a tear-drop bezel and a 3.6mm chin. During the presentation, Lei Jun boasts the phone’s “fully-curved” form factor which should make for good ergonomics.
Under the hood, the Mi 9 runs on the Snapdragon 855 chipset, 6GB or 8GB RAM, a Kryo 485 processor and Adreno 640 GPU. The top-of-the-line components come as no surprise as Lei Jun considers the Mi 9 a competitor to iPhone and Huawei flagships.
The phone will lack an SD card slot as well as a 3.5mm jack – like its predecessor.
Moving on to the camera, the Mi 9 ships with a triple-camera wide angle setup which incudes a 48MP lens. Lei Jun claims that image quality could rival that of iPhone’s by way of sharper image quality that maintains natural levels of saturation. The Mi 9 scores an impressive 107 on the DxoMark benchmark, slightly below the P20 Pro, but significantly higher than the Mi 8.
The wide-angle lens can take images up to 117-degrees wide. The phone was also shown to come with camera AI Built with the camera are AI features that aid in photography; in the case of wide-angle shots, the AI would manipulate images to fit all the intended subject matter. Lei Jun also boasts of the triple-lens setup’s depth scanning capabilities – images shown during the presentation showed DSLR-like bokeh.
In terms of color options, the pièce de résistance are the blue and pink variants that are iridescent when hit with light – which Lei Jun appeared to be very proud of. According to Xiaomi, the design was achieved via nano-level laser engraving with holographic technology, along with dual layer nano coating. There’s also a black variant which looked to be less iridescent.
The phone sports a 3,300 mAH battery – which is smaller than Mi 8’s – but the phone does support wireless charging and comes and turbo charging USB-C. Xiaomi claims that a full charge would take an hour.
Also new with the Mi 9 are a few quality-of-life features; think a “smart antenna” that provides better signal reception by way of automatic antenna switching. A surprising addition is a dedicated Google Assistant button considering Google Services are banned in China. Meanwhile, Xiaomi also makes small improvements to the UI – namely the “dark mode” which applies dark color schemes to certain menus which Xiaomi claims can save on display power usage by 83% under full brightness.
Other noteworthy features include an optical in-display fingerprint sensor; adaptive brightness optimization and more.
During the presentation, Lei Jun also announced the “Transparent Edition” of the Mi 9 which will sport a transparent back (a-la Mi 8 Explorer’s Edition and Mi 8 Pro). This version of the phone will come with 12GB RAM and 256GB internal storage.
The Xiaomi Mi 9 will be priced at 2,999 Yuan (RM1,815) for the 4GBRAM + 128GB storage variant, 3,299 Yuan (RM1,997) for the 6GB + 128GB storage version. The Transparent Edition will be priced at 3,999 Yuan (RM2,420).
Based on the release dates of the Mi 8 last year, we can expect to Mi 9 and Mi 9 Transparent Edition to reach local shores sometime in May this year. Here’s our coverage of the Mi 9 SE.