It's hard to believe, but just seven years ago no one knew about the Chinese company Xiaomi. Today, on the contrary, it’s hard to find someone who has not heard of her. Still would! Smartphones of the company are in great demand among users, many of them even compare some Xiaomi products with the devices of the famous giant Apple.
In the article, we will take a closer look at one of the representatives of the model range of the Chinese corporation - the flagship smartphone Xiaomi Mi 6. There are a lot of reviews (negative and positive) on the Internet about this device. Let's try to figure out what the new flagship is.
Xiaomi and MIUI branded shell are an example of successful development
Let's step back a little from the topic and talk about Xiaomi. How did you manage to create such a grandiose brainchild from “nothing” in just seven years? But first things first.
The company with the Xiaomi brand was registered in 2010. Her Leader , Father and ideological inspirer was the Chinese Lei Jun. Prior to that, from 1992 to 2000. Lei Jun worked at Kingston Corporation. This person’s talent and originality is evidenced by the fact that in eight years he has come a very difficult way from an ordinary worker to the Kingston CEO.
Lei Jun had a certain weakness for creating startups. Some of his projects were quite successful, for example, the video service yy.com. By the time Xiaomi was founded, Mr. Lei Jun had already made a fortune of billions of dollars.
The first product of a young and unknown company was, surprisingly, not a smartphone, but a software product - MIUI firmware for gadgets with the Android operating system. This firmware has never been tied to Xiaomi devices, which means it could be used by all manufacturers of Android smartphones. The moment for the release of the product was selected extremely well. In 2010, Google’s Android operating system was all two years old, it did not differ in stability. The release of MIUI, an interesting and stable firmware for Android devices, has brought Xiaomi fame.
In 2011, the first smartphone of the company, Xiaomi Mi 1, was released. Thanks to the MIUI shell, the low price for its filling, and also a certain similarity with the inaccessible expensive iPhone, the novelty made a real sensation in China.
Since then, the development of the company has been leaps and bounds. At the moment, Xiaomi, in addition to smartphones and MIUI firmware, offers the consumer a whole line of electronic devices - tablets, laptops, fitness trackers, headphones, routers, gyro scooters, external batteries and many other devices.
The company is constantly expanding the geography of its production and presence in the global market. Today, the corporation employs 8,000 people, and the profit is about $ 20 billion.
And now let's get back to the topic of the article and take a closer look at the company's latest flagship - Xiaomi Mi 6.
Unpacking the device and first inspection
And here is the treasured box in our hands.
What did we find in it:
- The device itself in all its glory.
- Charger.
- USB cable
- Special needle to open the SIM card slot cover.
- USB adapter for headphones. For what we need it, we will find out later.
- Bumper Case Inexpensive, but quite high quality.
No headphones were found . A controversial decision, although better than a cheap tweeter.
We examine the smartphone. On the test we have a version in a ceramic glass case. Beautiful, yes, but is it practical? Wait and see. Although no, already seen. The smartphone in this design is very slippery. And here the bumper coming in the kit will help out .
After the performance material of the case, the moment that is now fashionable at the flagships of famous companies is immediately evident - the presence of two cameras, one of which is designed to help when shooting in portrait mode.
A little later, another “know-how” is revealed - the lack of a standard headphone output. Now you have to either use headphones with a special USB-connector, or use wireless devices via Bluetooth to listen to music. Yes, you can still use the bundled adapter. The lack of a standard output for connecting headphones is considered by many to be a drawback of the Xiaomi Mi6. User reviews on the Web eloquently testify to this. But let's be fair. The fact of the absence of such a nest is now a fashionable “trick”. By the way, a similar design solution was used by Apple in the iPhone 7 smartphone.
Separately, I want to note a thinner frame that frames the screen. The predecessor Mi 5, it was noticeably wider, which annoyed many buyers.
And yet, Xiaomi in the characteristics of its flagship indicated that it is protected from dust and water according to the IP67 standard, that is, theoretically, the smartphone should withstand even immersion in water. It may, of course, be true, but it is not recommended to try - it’s still an expensive thing, and the gadget doesn’t look much protected from getting into the water.
A fingerprint sensor is also present in the phone, although it does not explicitly give out its location. It is located in a recess under the display and combines the functions of a button and a fingerprint sensor.
It is not superfluous to mention Xiaomi's proprietary nuance - the presence of an infrared port in the smartphone.
Unfortunately, expanding the memory of the device’s internal drive does not work - the phone does not have a memory card slot. But the built-in 64Gb in Xiaomi Mi 6, according to reviews and reviews of the device, is quite enough for the needs of an ordinary user. If this volume is still not enough , you can buy a more expensive version of the smartphone that has 128Gb of memory on board.
Screen: is an old friend better than the new two?
The Xiaomi Mi 6 display is not a new development. In an unchanged form, he migrated from the previous flagship Mi 5. Although now it looks quite worthy. The resolution and FullHD picture on the 5.15-inch screen looks very good. Perhaps, with a larger diagonal of the display, the image would not be so high-quality, but we have another case. Using IPS-matrix allows you to get bright, rich, natural colors. The viewing angles are excellent, when tilted, the image only fades a little, but remains quite acceptable for perception. Of course, it was possible to insert a screen with a higher resolution into a smartphone of this level, but this is not important.
Not be out of place mention of the software chip related to brightness. On the Mi6 smartphone, the brightness can be adjusted in a very small step: its values ​​can be from one to six hundred.
Camera - why two eyes?
Now let's turn our eyes to the smartphone’s camera, that is , to two cameras at once , 12 megapixels each, having different focal lengths . Such an optical tandem is needed for shooting in portrait mode, with blurring the background in the background. In numerous online reviews, reviews about Xiaomi Mi6 cameras vary widely: from frank delight to negativity. The portrait mode, according to the owners of the smartphone, works out with a bang, although there are minor complaints about the correct color rendering. The built-in editor to improve the image, in principle, makes the picture better, but it very much distorts the original colors in the picture.
The second camera serves another important purpose: it allows you to take photos with double optical zoom. In this case, two cameras work in a kind of bundle. Photos are very good, but subject to sufficient natural light. In poor lighting, the color reproduction of the image worsens, and an unpleasant optical noise appears in the image.
On specialized sites in the reviews of Xiaomi Mi 6 64Gb you can find many unflattering comments regarding the quality of work of the software module itself , which is responsible for shooting. According to users, there are frequent freezes of the application.
Communication, navigation and wireless modules
With the communication module at Xiaomi Mi6, everything is fine. Voice transmission is high-quality, audibility is also at a high level. You can insert 2 nano-size SIM cards into the phone. The smartphone has LTE support. The Internet connection is stable, there are no complaints about the speed of surfing.
GPS during a cold start finds satellites very quickly: in 20-30 seconds. This is a very good indicator.
The smartphone boasts a modern 2x2 MIMO Wi-Fi module. The module uses two antennas to connect. Perhaps this particular feature allows the gadget to connect to networks even with a very weak signal, while ensuring good connection stability.
The phone has a Bluetooth module version 5.0. There are no complaints about his work either. The only conditional disadvantage is the impossibility of simultaneously connecting multiple wireless devices, for example, two speakers for listening to audio content.
What is Xiaomi stereo sound like?
And how is the flagship doing with the sound? The manufacturer itself proudly declares that the phone is equipped with speakers capable of delivering stereo sound. It is up to us to expect that fraud is hidden in these words, the language will not turn around, but let's say this: here Xiaomi was a little disingenuous. Yes, two speakers are really used to play sound, which allows us to talk about stereo sound. But the trick is that one of the speakers used for playback is conversational, and it invariably loses to the main speaker of the smartphone both in volume and in the quality of the output of the desired frequency range. That is, there is some hypothetical semblance of a stereo effect, but you cannot call it full-fledged. In fairness, I must say that the playback quality offered by the device is generally bearable, and the music lover will use good headphones to listen to music, in addition, in this mode, the listener gets a decent sound for their favorite compositions.
Productivity - as always on top!
Performance is the only parameter by which there are no questions for the Xiaomi Mi 6 smartphone, and the reviews of the owners confirm this.
The device uses the new Shapdragon 835 processor, thanks to this the device turned out to be very smart. Games such as Real Racing 3, Asphalt 8 and Injustice 2 were tested on it. There were no freezes in all game applications, the picture remained smooth with any parameters. The heating of the smartphone was negligible, which can also be attributed to the pluses.
The Chinese are very proud of the results of synthetic tests of their offspring. In terms of performance in the AnTuTu program, he almost caught up with such monsters as the Samsung S8 and iPhone 7 Plus. We can say with confidence that gamers will like the smartphone. A powerful processor, coupled with 6 GB of RAM, will allow you to run almost any game application on your smartphone.
Unfortunately, the smartphone does not have the ability to expand the amount of internal memory. The owner of the device will have to be content with the available 64 GB from the younger version. If you have the finances, you can purchase the top version of the device, offering the user 128 GB of internal memory.
"The battery drained sharply on my phone ..."
It's time to analyze the autonomy of the device. The smartphone uses a 3350 mAh battery. Given the stuffing of the smartphone, we can assume that it is better not to expect a long time without recharging from the device. In principle, it turned out that way. With the active use of "heavy" functions, the gadget does not survive until the end of the day. You have to either carry the charger with you to work, or buy an extra one for use in the office.
To be honest, the flagship of this level wanted more battery life. Well, why was it impossible to put a battery of increased capacity in it ? It would be very convenient if the smartphone reached the end of the day without using an outlet. It will not be superfluous to note that there are often negative ones on the network among Xiaomi Mi6 battery reviews.
Comparison with iPhone 7 Plus
Smartphones of the Chinese manufacturer Xiaomi are striving to compare with Apple products. Yes, and the smartphone Xiaomi Mi6 in some details repeats the solutions used in the iPhone 7 Plus. For example, it has two cameras. And at the same time it does not have a standard output for stereo headphones, which is repeated by a colleague from Apple. The Mi6 screen also does not lose much in terms of the characteristics of the iPhone 7. The performance is almost the same level.
If it weren’t for a bunch of “almost,” it would be safe to say that Xiaomi Mi6 is on a par with the device from the “apple” company.
But the miracle, alas, did not happen. In all respects, the iPhone 7 Plus is better than its opponent with the Android system. And if you consider that the MIUI shell often behaves in a bad way, allowing the system to freeze and spontaneously close applications, then everything falls into place. The iPhone 7 simply has no such problems with the firmware and system.
The only point on which the Apple gadget loses to a fellow from the Middle Kingdom is the price. Still, Xiaomi Mi6 is much lower.
Running around the Xiaomi Mi6 plus
In early 2017, even before the hero of our review was released, unconfirmed information about the upcoming announcement of the Xiaomi Mi6 plus smartphone often slipped on the Internet. The characteristics of this device, presumably, should not differ much from Xiaomi Mi6.
A smartphone with the addition of plus predicted a screen with a larger diagonal (5.7 inches) than a regular Mi6, and a resolution of 2K. It is important to note that the Xiaomi Mi6 plus, according to some users, wanted to leave the standard headphone output and the ability to expand the internal memory due to support for microSD cards. The battery was supposed to have a capacity of 4500 mAh.
However, Xiaomi in May 2017 completely clarified the launch of the Mi 6 plus smartphone. The corporation decided to cancel the release of this gadget altogether in order to give way to its other brainchild - the new Xiaomi Mi Note 3 phablet, which was officially introduced in September 2017.
Despite this circumstance, many hope that the release of the Mi6 plus will nevertheless take place.
Final impressions
Frankly, the model aroused very conflicting feelings. One gets the impression that the outstanding performance characteristics are the only undeniable plus of the smartphone when compared with competitors. For other parameters, he could not offer anything new.
No one can surprise anyone with a case made of ceramic glass; the dual camera with portrait mode will not impress the modern user. The screen by resolution clearly loses to competitors, although it gives a decent picture. The operation of the MIUI shell is not stable and periodically makes the user nervous, although this problem can be solved with the release of the firmware update.
Controversial decisions include the failure to please the mod from the standard audio jack and the lack of a slot for memory cards.
There is another significant drawback of the Xiaomi Mi6 smartphone - its cost in the Russian market. For the younger version they ask about 28,000 rubles. Almost for the same money, you can buy the flagship P10 from Huawei , which is in no way inferior to the device from Xiaomi, but at the same time it has both an outlet for headphones and a slot for memory cards.
Probably, the elder brother who did not appear, Xiaomi Mi 6 plus, would be more interesting due to the large screen with a resolution of 2K and a more capacious battery. But this is only an assumption.
In the meantime, we will wait for the appearance of new Xiaomi products. Despite the short period of existence, the Chinese manufacturer has repeatedly surprised the whole world with bold and interesting new products. You just need to be patient.