Mi6 was recently announced. In a few words, Mi6 appeared quite nice. Briefly describing main features and advantages, it has:
- Steel chassis: that's a perfect comeback to what we had in the Mi4. Comparing to Mi5, Mi4 looks just like new although it was in use almost 2 years! No more cheap aluminium like in iPhone, Mi5 etc!
- Two-lens camera. I was afraid they will do silly B&W second sensor, but they did something similar to LG and iPhone Plus. Wide angle plus normal lens setup. OIS is present, pixel size is not impressive, 1,25um, however, it is much bigger than Mi5's one, which is also nice!
- Splash resistance: unfortunately, no IP68, which is fail. But, if Mi6 will occasionally swim, that splash resistance could help.
- Snapdragon 835 and 6GB RAM. That's a win. Although 835 offers roughly the same single-core performance as 820, the new Adreno 540 graphics is very powerful. Actually, it can compete with discrete graphics up to GT930! 6 GB ram for all the version is also very useful. After the moment of thinking that 3GB was enough for Mi4 I am finally convinced that the more RAM, the better.
- 3350mAh battery. That is a record for any flagship 5-inch smartphone, period. Samsung is traditionally behind with its 3000mAh.
- Extremely low minimum brightness of the display. Personally, I don't care about display quality. The IPS panels do maintain perfect image quality at least since Mi2 and the only situation when IPS could be considered worse than AMOLED is side-by-side comparison, which is not a real life scenario.
- IR-blaster is back! For me it is a killer-feature, because controlling AC and TV as well as DSLR has never been that easy. In comparison to mini jack, the function cannot be substituted by any wireless technology etc.
- Stereo speakers. Quite useless feature that, however, does not cost much for the company, because Mi6 just uses front speaker as second channel.
Drawbacks:
- No wireless charging. That's no good - Samsung is using it since S6 while Xiaomi does not.
- No 3.5mm Jack. For me it is not needed because of BT headphones, however, many people live with their outdated wired solutions. As iPhone has become the most selling smartphone even after launching minijack-less 7, the actual need for 3.5 could be overrated.
- Huge bezels. Surprisingly, mi6 is wider than mi5 while having the same screen size. Big upper and lower bezels unlike S8, so, the MIX heritage was no way applied in Mi6. No rounded screen, no futuristic design. Looks like MIX 2 will come soon.
- For the first time Xiaomi decided to bump up the minimum price of its flagship. Of course, it looks on par with mi5, where 64GB variant did cost the same 2500 RMB. So, the trend is understandable - new camera module and other perks do cost more, but they could implement at least the wireless charging!
At the time of mi5, I was telling that S7 was worth some 500 dollars as it offered some features that were unavailable in mi5 while not losing in others. However, when comparing S8 to Mi5, the gap has become smaller and contains the following:
- Thinner bezels and better display. Although S8 has bigger resolution, due to AMOLED Pentile overall sharpness is about the same as by 1080p IPS displays. But, AMOLED features like black mode of battery saving and ambient display do matter.
- Wireless charging
- 3.5 jack
- Full water resistance
While mi6 has more RAM, second lens, IR-blaster, bigger battery, no more underclocked Snapdragon, stereo speakers and much more.
So, for 2017 Mi6 looks quite competitive in comparison to S8, which is just perfect taking into consideration the price difference.
