Xiaomi MI 8 Review: New Comes Without Big Deffects

Rumput & Kerikil Xiaomi Comment

This is a big 8 that gets the Mi 8 Xiaomi thanks to its performance, its design, its screen and the qualities of its back camera. To get closer to perfection?

INTRODUCTION

What is the place of the Xiaomi Mi 8 in the catalog of the Chinese brand while it now reserves its innovations for the Mi Mix family? Launched at the same price as the Mi Mix 2S and facing the OnePlus 6, how can the Mi 8 differentiate itself? This is what we will see in this comprehensive test.

No Xiaomi Mi 7 this year, the brand takes advantage of its 8 years to move directly from the Mi 6 to Mi 8. The manufacturer has once again waited several months after the Chinese launch to market its device in France, where it is sold to same price as the Mi Mix 2S with which it shares several characteristics. However, the Mi 8 has several arguments to make.

Xiaomi MI 8 TECHNICAL SHEET:

Model: Xiaomi Mi 8
Version of the OS: Android 8.0
Interface: MIUI
Screen size: 6.22 inches
Definition: 2160 x 1080 pixels
Pixel density: 388 dpi
SoC: Snapdragon 845 to 2.8GHz
Processor (CPU): ARMv8
Graphics Chip (GPU): Adreno 630
RAM memory: 6 GB
Internal memory (flash): 64 GB, 128 GB, 256 GB
MicroSD: No
Camera (backpack): Dual 12 Megapixel sensor
Camera (front): 20 megapixels
Wireless: Yes
Bluetooth: 5.0 + ADP + aptX + LE
networks: LTE, HSPA, GSM
Supported bands: 2100 MHz (B1), 1800 MHz (B3), 2600 MHz (B7)
SIM: 2x nano SIM
NFC: Yes
Ports (Inputs / Outputs): USB Type-C
Geolocation: Yes
Power: 3400 mAh
Dimensions: 154.9 x 74.8 x 7.6 mm
Weight: 175 grams
Colors: White, Blue, Black
Price: 394 €

ROUNDED, ROUNDED EVERYWHERE

It's up to me, ugly duckling of the editorial office, the only one with an iPhone X, that we entrusted the test of the Mi 8, the phone that was mocked during his presentation to have strong the look like a clone of Apple's work. It must be said that with a borderless AMOLED display with notch at the front, the famous double speaker grille below, the double camera at the top left on the back, and the lack of port jack, the smartphone of Xiaomi indeed takes several codes of the iPhone.

Difficult yet to really talk about clones beyond these commonalities, which also affect many smartphones in 2018. Indeed, the overall design of the body of Mi 8 is finally quite different from that of the iPhone. The glass back is thus slightly curved on all 4 sides, especially on the two vertical slices, and the 7000 aluminum frame with two plastic strips is also quite different. Like all glass backs, the Mi 8 tends to attract fingerprints, but I find they remain discreet on the black version of the phone tested here.

What matters in my opinion is the ergonomics and handling of a smartphone. This is for me one of the strengths of this Mi 8 which is very nice to hold in hand. Despite the back glass, it does not slip hands, and its rounded corners allow a good grip. The camera comes out of the back, and the phone is not too wobbly. The buttons, like the impression reader, are well placed, fall under the fingers and are pleasant to press.

A BEAUTIFUL AMOLED

The Xiaomi Mi 8 incorporates a 6.21-inch AMOLED display with a resolution of 2248 x 1080 pixels. The manufacturer will not look for Samsung on the QHD, but is content with a definition Full HD+, largely sufficient in my opinion when you do not want to play in virtual reality.

Difficult to take it by default in my daily use, the screen is bright in all circumstances, even in the sun on the street, and with the AMOLED, the contrasts are endless. Nothing to say about colors or responsiveness to the naked eye.

With a colorimetric probe test, the Mi 8 shows that it incorporates a very bright screen, up to 470 cd / m² in manual adjustment and up to 660 cd / m² in full sun with automatic adjustment, for a contrast inevitably infinite, and rather fair colors by default, whatever that pulling very slightly towards the blue. The slab covers beyond the sRGB spectrum as illustrated by our CIE chart (Xiaomi Announces DCI-P3). The temperature of the colors is on average 7500 K, it is a little too cold, but without it being penalizing. Xiaomi also offers to configure the screen in the settings of MIUI if you prefer warmer colors. In short, the screen of the Mi 8 satisfies us in all our criteria, Xiaomi made the right technological choices.

MIUI Xiaomi MI 8

MIUI let's talk about it, if the Xiaomi Mi 8 was presented in concert with MIUI 10, the phone actually has the interface MIUI 9.6 based on Android 8.1 Oreo. At the time this test is written, the latest security patches available are those of August 2018.

We are now used to the interface of the Chinese manufacturer, which moves away a lot from the Android of Google, but which also adds a lot of features. One can for example mention the possibility of doing without the virtual buttons of Android with the gestures "in full screen". A slide from the bottom of the screen returns to the home, remaining in this position activates multitasking, and a slide from the left of the screen acts as the back button of Android.

We can also mention the integration of an antivirus and a file cleaner in the security options, the ability to finely manage the behavior of applications in the background in the battery settings, the management of themes, the screen saver "always-on", applications cloned to be able to open a second session on some applications like Snapchat, the synchronization of the phone with Mi Cloud. In short, MIUI is a very rich interface.

Too bad to access these options, it is often necessary to navigate through several menus of confusing and poorly organized settings. Over the years, Xiaomi adds new features, but does not seem to take the time to think about the consistency of its interface. A flat discount would be more than welcome. As is the case with other smartphones of the brand, the Mi 8 is not compatible with DRM Widevine L1. This means that some services like Netflix will not work in HD. Attention, they remain perfectly usable, and the flow displayed by these services on the small screen of a smartphone and often enough, even when it is not HD.

THE FACE

The Xiaomi Mi 8 incorporates a fingerprint reader on the back, but also offers facial recognition as a biometric identification, with the front camera and an infrared sensor. The latter allows unlocking the device, even in the dark or with low light. However, it is not a 3D face recognition as what can offer Apple on the iPhone X. In both cases, these are quick and effective solutions to unlock the device, but it should be noted that the recognition of the face here is much less secure than reading the fingerprint.

JACK, COME BACK!

As soon as you read the data sheet, you will notice that the sound will not be one of the Xiaomi Mi 8's strong points. The phone does not include a double stereo loudspeaker on the front panel or a jack 3,5 mm. Fortunately, a USB Type-C to 3.5mm jack adapter is included in the box, but it will not be possible to use a wired headset and charge the phone at the same time.

Fortunately, the adapter does the job well and the jack output is very powerful, to the point of being able to turn a headphone into a speaker, with the sound to the maximum (pay attention to the ears). Even in this case, the sound remains clear, a good performance.

The Mi 8's speaker is located under the phone, next to the USB Type-C port. Attention, the brand is again appealing to its aesthetic subterfuge, only one of the two grids is actually connected to the speaker, the other is there for the beauty of symmetry. I found the speaker rather disappointing. Even with a medium volume, the sound lacks clarity and seems to reason with the chassis of the phone. It will not be too demanding with the phone without headphones.

THE TOP PERFORMANCES OF 2018

As with the Mi Mix 2S launched earlier this year, Xiaomi has selected the best Qualcomm chip available at the release of the Mi 8, the Snapdragon 845. The chip comes with 6GB LPDDRX4 RAM and 64 to 128GB UFS storage. The version tested here is equipped with 64 GB of storage.

	Xiaomi Mi 8	Galaxy S9	OnePlus 6	Xiaomi Mi 6
SoC	Snapdragon 845	Exynos 9810	Snapdragon 845	Snapdragon 835
AnTuTu 7.x	266,201 points	242,627 points	267 316 points
PCMark 2.0	8,245 points	5,418 points	8,233 points	6,655 points
3D Mark Slingshot Extreme	4,162 points	3,244 points	4,668 points	2,361 points
3D Mark SSE (Graphics)	5,164 points	3,532 points	5,204 points	2,494 points
3D Mark SSE (Physics)	2,478 points	2,525 points	3,430 points	1,990 points
GFX Bench Car Chase (onscreen / offscreen)	33/35 FPS	26/28 FPS	32/35 FPS	19/19 FPS
GFXBench Manhattan (onscreen / offscreen)	59/82 FPS	57/73 FPS	58/71 FPS	44/44 FPS
Sequential read / write	729/192 MB / s	820/204 MB / s	718/154 MB / s	717/206 MB / s
Random read / write	34.5k / 5.6k IOPS	32.8k / 5.8k IOPS	35.9k / 5.6k IOPS	36k / 6.3k IOPS

The Snapdragon 845 is once again comfortable with all our tests and demonstrates that it is the best chip available for smartphone manufacturers in 2018. The Xiaomi Mi 8 is on par with the OnePlus 6 equipped with the same chip In both cases the manufacturers have done a good job of integrating and optimizing the software.

In game, Arena Of Valor runs perfectly at 60 frames per second, with HD display and settings pushed to the maximum. Same story for PUBG Mobile which is perfectly comfortable and runs stably with the settings to the maximum. Even after a long gaming session, the phone does not really tend to heat up. Xiaomi seems to have managed well the integration of the chip. With an introductory price equivalent to that of the OnePlus 6, we expected no less from the Xiaomi Mi 8, but we are reassured.

THE DEMONS OF MI 8

The Xiaomi Mi 8 has the same photo module and processing processor as the Mi Mix 2S. That is, a first 12-megapixel sensor with f / 1.8 lens and 4-axis optical stabilization, and a second 12-megapixel sensor with f / 2.4 telephoto. I was rather positively surprised by the quality of the pictures of this Mi 8. It is repeated on each test of Xiaomi, your first reflex must be to disable the "double watermark app. photo "in the settings, otherwise you will be entitled to a very ugly watermark on each of your photos.

Out door

Night view

Indoor

This is particularly in the wide shots where he is doing best, with a beautiful dynamic and a wide range of colors captured. The digital processing of photos is felt, but the mark stays on a fine line between the over and the under. Understand that the photos look a little more beautiful to the eye than the reality of the scene, but without falling into the surrealism that produce some smartphones that rely too much on "AI".

Here is an example of what gives the same photo, first without the use of the "AI" mode, then with its use. The difference on the sky is immediate, but the algorithm does not push the blue too much to become unrealistic. The pictures of subjects without using the portrait mode made me a little less convinced. The dive is not excellent, but it remains good, and the focus shows its shortcomings, especially indoors.

Using the telephoto lens gives you 2x optical zoom. Even if the stabilization and thus the development are more complicated with this mode, it remains perfectly usable and makes it possible better to capture an element located at ten meters.

At night things go bad, but it is expected on smartphone and the results of this Mi 8 remain suitable in these difficult conditions. The focus is once again in trouble and the white balance tends to pull too much towards the yellow. However, the photos are still very good for a smartphone at this price. The photo of the house with the climbing plant is particularly successful.

The Mi 8 incorporates a 20-megapixel sensor at the front with an f / 2.0 aperture. By day, the sensor has no trouble being bathed in light and thus makes beautiful shots, well detailed. At night, it will be better to do his photos in double or triple so as not to end up with a selfie completely blurred because of a capricious focus.

The portrait mode on the selfie side does not get too bad, but we can easily see the aberrations at the contours of the face or clothing, with a white halo clearly visible all around the subject. This result is exacerbated in harsher conditions at night.

IT WILL NOT DRAG YOU TO THE END OF THE NIGHT

The Mi 8 is equipped with a battery of 3400 mAh, which places it in the right average, without more, high-end smartphones in 2018. We are far from the battery of 4000 mAh that the brand offers on d other models in its catalog, such as the Pocophone F1. It is therefore without any surprise that I obtained a good autonomy, without it being excellent. With a few shots and especially a lot of web, I had 33% after 5 hours of active use ( screen on time ) of the phone.

With our test protocol Viser 3.2, simulating a varied use of the smartphone, the Mi 8 held 8 hours 56 minutes, which places it a little below the average of smartphones tested in 2018. The Mi 8 is not so one of the champions of market autonomy.

I had 33% left after 5 hours of active use. The Xiaomi provides a USB Type-A 18W charger in the box, with a USB Type-A to USB Type-C cable. Initially charged at 8%, the battery rose to 52% after 30 minutes of charging, 87% after one hour and it took only 1 hour and 30 minutes to return to 96%. Despite a glass back, the Xiaomi Mi 8 is not compatible with the wireless charge Qi.

NETWORK AND COMMUNICATIONS

The Xiaomi Mi 8 incorporates two nano SIM slots, where each can be used as the primary SIM. The device is compatible with 4G LTE on all frequency bands used in France, except the famous band 28 (700 MHz) used mainly by Free Mobile. The network hang is generally good, but I noticed a few hiccups on my current trips, where I have no problems with other smartphones. The smartphone indicates well capture the 4G LTE, but the flow is not there. These worries were very occasional and on short moments.

During a telephone conversation, the sound remains relatively clear to the caller, but he may feel a little annoyance if there is a lot of background noise, such as traffic. On the other hand, the call loudspeaker works very well, and even in the middle of the street you can hear exactly what our correspondent is saying.

The device manages the latest wireless network standards. We have Bluetooth 5.0 and Wi-Fi 802.11 g / n / ac 2 × 2 compatible MU-MIMO. Bluetooth AAC, aptX and aptX-HD codecs are all supported. Good point, rare enough for Xiaomi to mention, the phone integrates the NFC and will be compatible with the payment without contact or to use as a transport card.

The GPS grip is fast and the compass quite reliable. However, the GPS sometimes shifted me a few meters from my actual position, the plans thus showing me inside some buildings, while I was in the street.

PRICES, AVAILABILITY AND ALTERNATIVES

The Xiaomi Mi 8 is available from 500 euros for the 64 GB version and 6 GB of RAM, and from 550 euros for the 128 GB version of storage and 6 GB of RAM. The brand offers it in blue or black. At this price, the Mi 8 is in direct competition with the OnePlus 6, which offers quite similar features, but a completely different user experience and software interface. We can also mention the Xiaomi Pocophone F1, launched at 140 euros less. It offers the same SoC, the MIUI interface, a larger battery, but an IPS LCD screen and a less convincing camera.

XIAOMI MI 8 TEST CONCLUSION

DESIGN: Metal frame, glass back and borderless notch screen, the Mi 8 is in the market standards in 2018 for a phone of this range. It holds well in hand, the fingerprint reader falls under the finger and the camera is not too protruding, despite a rather thin chassis.
SCREEN: Xiaomi made the right choice with its well-defined AMOLED display, displaying just right colors by default and perfect contrasts. In the sun, the screen is perfectly legible and very bright.
SOFTWARE: MIUI 9 and Android 8.1 Oreo. The interface is very rich in functionality while being very fluid. Too bad she is so confused. It sometimes becomes difficult to find the function or the parameter sought.
PERFORMANCES: With the Snapdragon 845, 6 GB of RAM and UFS storage, raw performance is at the rendezvous. To get 10 at this price, we would have liked a complete 4G and a more accurate GPS.
CAMERA: The double camera of the Mi 8 is doing very well and produces beautiful shots for a smartphone, regardless of conditions. Hard to say the same for the sensor at the front which shows its weakness when the light is missing. Watch out for the watermark activated by default.
AUTONOMY: The Mi 8 is not a marathoner, but it is placed in the average of the smartphones that we tested. It helps to keep a day with good use, but no more. Fortunately, fast charging by USB-C can quickly recover a few hours of battery life.
FINAL SCORE OF THE 8/10 TEST: It's a big 8 that gets the Mi 8 Xiaomi thanks to among other things its performance, its design, its screen and the qualities of its back camera.

To get closer to perfection, Xiaomi must further improve the autonomy and refine the interface of MIUI, which is certainly rich and fluid, but too often leads to confusion. At this price, the shortcomings of Xiaomi (the 4G 700 MHz band, the jack or the partial support of DRM) are more difficult excusable, especially that we do not find the competition, including OnePlus.