Xiaomi made headlines early last year with its 2016 flagship, the Mi 5. Not only was the Mi 5 affordable, beautiful, and packed with top-tier features, it was also one of the first devices to support Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 820 processor. Now Xiaomi is back with its 2017 flagship smartphone, the Mi 6. With the Xiaomi Mi 6, you get a phone with high-end specs, a unique design, a zoom lens, and a sub-$400 price tag.
Does
the Xiaomi Mi6 really shine as bright as suspected or will there be any flaws
at a closer look? Let’s take a look.
Look
and Design
The Mi 6 manages to stand out with its design. While it doesn’t stray too far from past Xiaomi phones, we still applaud the company for trying to be unique. With the curved glass on the front that melts into the rear the phone seems as it was made out of one piece. In comparison to its predecessor, Mi6 feels firmer and also looks much better. With 171g it feels little bit heavy but it gives some premium feel. It fits in our hand comfortably with a size of 145x71x7.5mm. It feels incredibly premium and hefty, but can slip around in the hand a little too much. This smartphone made of glass, the device is slippery and easily gets grease and finger marks
The Mi 6 manages to stand out with its design. While it doesn’t stray too far from past Xiaomi phones, we still applaud the company for trying to be unique. With the curved glass on the front that melts into the rear the phone seems as it was made out of one piece. In comparison to its predecessor, Mi6 feels firmer and also looks much better. With 171g it feels little bit heavy but it gives some premium feel. It fits in our hand comfortably with a size of 145x71x7.5mm. It feels incredibly premium and hefty, but can slip around in the hand a little too much. This smartphone made of glass, the device is slippery and easily gets grease and finger marks
Below
the display, you’ll find a set of capacitive back and recent apps keys, which
flank the physical home button. The home button also doubles as a fingerprint
sensor, and has proven to be fast and accurate in our experience. And, as an
added bonus, the capacitive keys can also be customized in the settings menu.
The dual camera is perfectly fitted into the rear and even the dual-LED flash
is located under the glass rear. The notification LED is located on the top
right of the display, but it can only shine in white. There’s one more major
design decision worth pointing out here, and that’s the lack of a 3.5 mm
headphone jack. Xiaomi says removing it allowed them to include a bigger 3,350
mAh battery.
Overall
the design is good but not excellent.
Display
Much have changed since the Mi 5, but the display is not among the long list of upgrades. The Xiaomi Mi 6 uses a 5.15" IPS LCD with 1080p resolution. This LCD isn’t bad in any regard, though Quad HD is very much a standard this year in high-end devices. We are very much impressed with display quality in daylight as LCD panel are extremely bright. But one major issue we found that when the slider turned to zero the display is extremely dark and troubles to locate slider again.
Much have changed since the Mi 5, but the display is not among the long list of upgrades. The Xiaomi Mi 6 uses a 5.15" IPS LCD with 1080p resolution. This LCD isn’t bad in any regard, though Quad HD is very much a standard this year in high-end devices. We are very much impressed with display quality in daylight as LCD panel are extremely bright. But one major issue we found that when the slider turned to zero the display is extremely dark and troubles to locate slider again.
The
display has nice viewing angles and it is razor sharp.
For
an IPS display the contrasts are good and colour representation seems accurate.
In the settings you can choose between cold, warm and default. Additionally
there is the reading mode that gives your eyes a little rest with a reduced
blue-light proportion, which you can even set on a certain time and it then
starts automatically. Xiaomi does not
mention any Corning Gorilla glass, but the display is scratch resistant.
Specifications
Aside from the Galaxy S8 and HTC U11, the Mi 6 is one of the first devices to sport the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor. It also comes with either 4 or 6 GB of RAM and up to 128 GB of on-board storage.
Aside from the Galaxy S8 and HTC U11, the Mi 6 is one of the first devices to sport the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor. It also comes with either 4 or 6 GB of RAM and up to 128 GB of on-board storage.
Here
you can see general specifications at glance.
-5.15
inch IPS LCD display with 1920*1080 resolution, 428 ppi
-2.45
Ghz octa core Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 Processor
-Adreno
540 GPU
-4
or 6 GB RAM
-64
or 128 GB storage
But
this phone lack of micro SD card and 3.5 mm jack.
Otherwise
all general specification, we expect from this phone , is available.
Software
Xiaomi is shipping the Mi 6 with its own custom version of Android, MIUI 8, atop Android 7.1.1 Nougat. And if you’re at all familiar with Xiaomi devices, you probably already know that MIUI doesn’t come with an app drawer, which means you’ll need to rely on folders to help organize your home screens. This is par for the course for many other Chinese ROMs, but users in the West might have a hard time getting used to it.
Xiaomi is shipping the Mi 6 with its own custom version of Android, MIUI 8, atop Android 7.1.1 Nougat. And if you’re at all familiar with Xiaomi devices, you probably already know that MIUI doesn’t come with an app drawer, which means you’ll need to rely on folders to help organize your home screens. This is par for the course for many other Chinese ROMs, but users in the West might have a hard time getting used to it.
Even
though we’re using the latest version of MIUI on the Mi 6, the core experience
hasn’t changed much at all over the years. Some extra features include a Dual
App mode that allows multiple iterations of the same application, a Deep Clean
application that helps to clear the phone of junk files, and included Mi Cloud
storage if you have a Mi account. If there’s one thing we always enjoy hearing
about with MIUI, it’s how often it gets updated due to feedback in the Mi
forums. All in all, if you’re familiar with MIUI (and, really, any Chinese ROM)
there isn’t much else that differentiates this new version.
Performance
The Xiaomi Mi6 houses the Snapdragon 835, which is currently the fastest mobile processor in the world. When turning the phone on for the first time, you instantly notice that the device is a real performance monster. Unfortunately, the RAM (6GB) does not have a top speed with 7GB/s. Heat development is okay, but noticeable if no protective cover is used. However, the phone does never get much warmer. But processor does goes on the during playing games.
The Xiaomi Mi6 houses the Snapdragon 835, which is currently the fastest mobile processor in the world. When turning the phone on for the first time, you instantly notice that the device is a real performance monster. Unfortunately, the RAM (6GB) does not have a top speed with 7GB/s. Heat development is okay, but noticeable if no protective cover is used. However, the phone does never get much warmer. But processor does goes on the during playing games.
Currently,
the Xiaomi Mi6 runs with MIUI V8.2 based on Android 7.1. Some weeks could go by
until there will be an official Global ROM. We recommend using the official
China Stable ROM. With this ROM, you have a Playstore and you will get regular
updates. However, we have to say that it has never been so difficult to set up
a MIUI ROM with Playstore, and even after having installed the ROM, there are
still some problems. For instance, you are not able to load a backup for
WhatsApp from the Google account, G-Mail does not work and contacts are not
synchronized.
In
benchmarking , Mi6 performs incredibly well as it is able to score approx.
160,000 in AnTuTu which is approximately equals to iPhone 7 Plus. In GeekBench
4 Single Core Mi 6 able to score 2028 which is much lesser than iPhone 7 but
slightly greater than galaxy S8 but in GeekBench 4 Multi Core result are
flipped out as it makes 6135 which slightly less than Galaxy S8.
Apps
are installed really fast on the Mi6, so that you almost have no delays between
downloading and starting the app. Any
load time is minimal and all 3D games available in the Playstore can be played
without any problems on the Mi6.
Camera
If you have been following the trend of this review, you may notice that the Xiaomi Mi 6 seems to take a lot of the best features from previous devices and puts them into one complete package. That’s definitely true for the camera, which is a dual lens system that provides a 2x optical zoom aside the original wider angle. Zoom can be quite important to shutterbugs and Xiaomi has done well to provide one for picture taking in particular. Zoom capabilities are unfortunately not available for video recording, which is a rather significant downside.
If you have been following the trend of this review, you may notice that the Xiaomi Mi 6 seems to take a lot of the best features from previous devices and puts them into one complete package. That’s definitely true for the camera, which is a dual lens system that provides a 2x optical zoom aside the original wider angle. Zoom can be quite important to shutterbugs and Xiaomi has done well to provide one for picture taking in particular. Zoom capabilities are unfortunately not available for video recording, which is a rather significant downside.
Throughout
the testing period, we have enjoyed using the Xiaomi Mi 6 for video recording.
Optical image stabilization helps keep all footage from looking too jittery,
and there was a good amount of detail in each shot. Even though exposure might
jump around from time to time, there was little to complain about other than
the omission of zoom when in Movie Mode.
The
camera software in the Mi 6 provides a few extra modes that shutterbugs will be
particularly fond of, including a Pro mode. And even as an automatic shooter,
the Mi 6’s camera is quick enough to take a good shot, even when shooting in
HDR mode. HDR is a toggle rather than an automatic mode, and keeping it on will
often boost up the shadows and bump up the saturation to a noticeable degree.
Pictures
in broad daylight generally came out looking good, though the dynamic range
left a bit to be desired. Highlights tend to be too bright when I tried to
bring up the exposure compensation for better shadows. And this same overly
bright effect was observed in HDR adjustments, too. While zooming into elements
without a loss in quality is a nice option to have, but it wasn’t required in a
ton of situation.
That
is, until you use the marquee feature of the Xiaomi Mi 6 camera – Portrait
Mode. Heavily inspired by the iPhone Portrait Mode, Xiaomi utilizes the optical
zoom to tighten up the frame while working to isolate the subject from the
background. When subjects are, at most, a couple of meters away, the phone goes
right into a Depth Effect mode, adding bokeh to the background elements.
The
Mi 6 does a decent job of this as it softens out the edges, but it does
sometimes cut the line a bit incorrectly. This is only really noticeable when
zooming in; taken on their own, the portrait photos turned out to be the most
enjoyable part of the camera experience. Especially in good lighting, photos of
friends and colleagues yielded new-profile-picture-level shots. Lower light
situations make these and pretty much any other photo suffer especially in the
finer details of the pictures, making this a less than ideal indoor or night
time camera.
Battery
Xiaomi choose a 3350mAh battery for Mi6. Due to the compact display size and the “low” resolution the battery life is just perfect for a flagship phone. With intensive use I managed to use the phone for 1.5 – 2 days with a display-on-time of 6-7 hours. In the PC-Mark battery test Xiaomi Mi6 made it through great 9 hours and 15 minutes (with the display brightness set on medium). To run Mi6’s battery down in one day you have to try really hard! Therefore power users will be very satisfied.
Xiaomi choose a 3350mAh battery for Mi6. Due to the compact display size and the “low” resolution the battery life is just perfect for a flagship phone. With intensive use I managed to use the phone for 1.5 – 2 days with a display-on-time of 6-7 hours. In the PC-Mark battery test Xiaomi Mi6 made it through great 9 hours and 15 minutes (with the display brightness set on medium). To run Mi6’s battery down in one day you have to try really hard! Therefore power users will be very satisfied.
Charging
times of the delivered charging adapter are not quite impressive, as it took
the Mi6 2 hours and 15 minutes to full charge. This is different when using a
default Quick-charge 3.0 adapter. Here you get 18-20% battery within 10 minutes
(from 10-90%). It is fully charged after 1 hour and 10 minutes. The China
adapter should not be used non-stop anyway. I can recommend the Quick-charge
adapter to you!
Conclusion
Xiaomi-Mi-masterpiece: Xiaomi Mi6 is not only the most recent device but also the best one, yet! Build quality is outstanding, design is awesome and finally it is also additionally splash-proof. The great 64GB storage, the monstrous 6GB RAM and the fast Snapdragon 835 processor make Xiaomi Mi6 a performance monster that is unique in this field. The display is perfect and the camera is great under good light conditions. Connectivity and communication are great, too, even with the missing audio jack. You can purchase the Mi6 for little more than 400$ and with this price the device beats the competition in terms of price/performance and is the biggest bang for your buck!
Xiaomi-Mi-masterpiece: Xiaomi Mi6 is not only the most recent device but also the best one, yet! Build quality is outstanding, design is awesome and finally it is also additionally splash-proof. The great 64GB storage, the monstrous 6GB RAM and the fast Snapdragon 835 processor make Xiaomi Mi6 a performance monster that is unique in this field. The display is perfect and the camera is great under good light conditions. Connectivity and communication are great, too, even with the missing audio jack. You can purchase the Mi6 for little more than 400$ and with this price the device beats the competition in terms of price/performance and is the biggest bang for your buck!
The
only problem we see is the missing global ROM that may keep you from buying it.
With the official global ROM we can give you a full buying recommendation!
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Superb information
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