Xiaomi will be announcing its new Mi 8 flagship smartphone next week and the launch also marks the company’s 8th anniversary. If you’re wondering what it looks like, a couple of leaked renders and hands-on video has just surfaced online.
As you would expect, the new Mi 8 will continue the use of glass and metal for its exterior. The rear design retains the same iPhone X inspired vertical mounted dual-camera bump and it appears to come with a rear-mounted fingerprint sensor. There’s speculation that the Mi 8 could feature an in-screen fingerprint sensor and if this is true, that’s two fingerprint sensors on a single device like the Porsche Design Huawei Mate RS.
In term of the display, this could be Xiaomi’s first smartphone to have a notch. In this sample render for the case, it looks narrower like most new Android smartphones from OPPO, vivo, ASUS and Huawei.
Strangely, the case renders also showed a cut out for what could be a 3.5mm headphone jack at the bottom. Since the Mi 6, Xiaomi has removed the headphone jack for most of their flagships including the Mi MIX 2 and even the new Mi 6X, we think it is unlikely for them to bring back the 3.5mm port. As this would be an 8th-anniversary phone, Xiaomi might include a jack just for the fans. Then again, take these renders with a pinch of salt since most case makers would likely just have the schematics for the overall dimensions and cut out for buttons and camera, so the rest are just possible mockups.
While other phone makers have toyed with gradient colours for the rear glass, Xiaomi could be experimenting with translucent designs like HTC’s U11+ and U12+. A purported hands-on video had surfaced showing a Mi 8 with a dark see-through glass back. You could see a the board that has a chip with a Qualcomm Snapdragon logo at the top.
The video also showed a brief moment of the front and it appears that the notch is as wide as the iPhone X. We’ll find out more next week as the launch will take place in Shenzhen on 31 May.
In case you missed it, the Mi MIX 2S which comes with a notch-less “Full screen” display and a Snapdragon 845 processor will be available in Malaysia very soon. Would you rather get that or wait for the Mi 8? Let us know in the comments below.
