It's hard to believe, but just seven years ago, no one knew about the Chinese company Xiaomi. Today, on the contrary, it is hard to find a person who has not heard of her. Still would! The company's smartphones 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 Chinese corporation's lineup - the flagship smartphone Xiaomi Mi 6. There are quite 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 proprietary shell are an example of successful development
Let's digress a bit and talk about Xiaomi. How did you manage to create such a grandiose creation out of "nothing" in just seven years? But first things first.
The company with the Xiaomi brand was registered in 2010. Its creator, father and ideological inspirer was the Chinese Lei Jun. Prior to that, from 1992 to 2000. Lei Jun worked for Kingston Corporation. The talent and eccentricity of this man is evidenced by the fact that in eight years he has gone through a very difficult path from an ordinary worker to the CEO of Kingston.
Lei Jun had a certainweakness for start-ups. Some of his projects have been quite successful, such as the yy.com video service. By the time Xiaomi was founded, Mr. Lei Jun had already made a fortune worth 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 was never tied to Xiaomi devices, which means that it could be used by all manufacturers of Android-based smartphones. The moment for the release of the product was chosen extremely well. In 2010, Google's Android operating system was only two years old, and it did not differ in stability. The release of MIUI, an interesting and stable firmware for Android devices, brought Xiaomi to wide popularity.
In 2011, the company's first smartphone was released - Xiaomi Mi 1. Thanks to the MIUI shell, the low price for its filling, as well as a certain similarity with the unattainably expensive iPhone, the novelty made a splash in China.
Since then, the development of the company has been going by 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 world market. Today, the corporation employs 8,000 people, and the profitis 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 for opening the cover of the SIM card slot.
- USB adapter for headphones. What it is for, we will find out later.
- Bumper cover. Inexpensive, but quite high quality.
Headphones were not found in the kit. A controversial decision, although better than cheap tweeters.
Let's examine the smartphone. On the test, we have a version in a ceramic glass case. Nice, yes, but practical? Wait and see. No, you've already seen it. A smartphone in this design is very slippery. And here the bumper that comes with the kit will help out.
After the material of the case, the moment that is fashionable now among the flagships of eminent 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 Bluetooth wireless devices to listen to music. Yes, you can still use the included adapter. AbsenceThe standard headphone output is considered by many to be a disadvantage of the Xiaomi Mi6. User reviews on the Web eloquently testify to this. But let's be fair. The very 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 would like to note a thinner frame framing the screen. The predecessor Mi 5 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, purely theoretically, a smartphone should even withstand immersion in water. Maybe, of course, it is so, but it is not recommended to try - after all, it is an expensive thing, and the gadget does not look very protected from water ingress.
A fingerprint sensor is also present in the phone, although it does not clearly reveal its location. It is located in a recess below the display and combines the functions of a button and a fingerprint sensor.
It would not be superfluous to mention Xiaomi's proprietary nuance - the presence of an infrared port in the smartphone.
Unfortunately, it will not be possible to expand the memory of the device's internal storage - the phone does not have a slot for memory cards. But the built-in 64Gb in Xiaomi Mi 6, according to reviews and reviews of the device, is quite enough for the needs of the average user. If this volume is still not enough, you can buy a more expensive version of the smartphone, which has 128Gb of memory on board.
Screen: Is an old friend better than the new two?
The display of Xiaomi Mi 6 is not a new development. In its unchanged form, it migrated from the previous flagship Mi 5. Although now it looks quite decent. The picture in FullHD resolution on a 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 a different case. Using an IPS-matrix allows you to get bright, saturated, natural colors. Viewing angles are excellent, the image only fades a little when tilted, 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.
It would not be superfluous to mention a software chip related to brightness. On the Mi6 smartphone, the brightness can be adjusted in very small steps: its values can be from one to six hundred.
Camera - why two eyes?
Now let's turn our attention to the smartphone's camera, that is, immediately to two cameras of 12 megapixels each, with different focal lengths. Such an optical tandem is needed for shooting in portrait mode, with background blur in the background. In numerous online reviews, reviews of Xiaomi Mi6 cameras vary greatly: from outright delight to negativity. The portrait mode, according to the owners of the smartphone, works out with a bang, although there are some complaints about the correctness of color reproduction. The built-in editor to improve the image, in principle, makes the picture better, but at the same time very much distorts the original colors in the picture.
The second camera serves another important purpose: it allows you to take photos with a 2x optical zoom. In this case, the two cameras work in a kind of bundle. Photos are very good, but subject to sufficient natural light. In low light, the color reproduction of the image deteriorates, and unpleasant optical noise appears in the image.
On specialized sites in reviews of Xiaomi Mi 6 64Gb, you can find a lot of unflattering remarks regarding the quality of the software module responsible for shooting. According to users, frequent application freezes are observed.
Communication, navigation and wireless modules
With the communication module of Xiaomi Mi6, everything is fine. Voice transmission is of high quality, audibility is also at a high level. You can insert 2 nano SIM cards into your phone. The smartphone supports LTE. The Internet connection is stable, there are no complaints about the speed of surfing.
GPS with a "cold" start finds satellites very quickly: in 20-30 seconds. This is a very good indicator.
The smartphone boasts a modern Wi-Fi 2x2 MIMO module. The module uses two antennas for connection. Probably, it is this feature that allows the gadget to connect to networks even with a very weak signal, while ensuring good connection stability.
The phone has a Bluetooth 5.0 module. There are no complaints about his work either. The only conditional disadvantage is the impossibility of simultaneously connecting several wireless devices, for example, two speakersto listen to audio content.
What is Xiaomi stereo sound?
And how is the flagship doing with the sound? The manufacturer himself proudly declares that the phone is equipped with speakers capable of delivering stereo sound. To claim that these words hide a deceit, the tongue will not turn, but let's put it this way: Xiaomi was a little cunning here. Yes, two speakers are really used to reproduce sound, which allows us to talk about stereo sound. But the whole 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 outputting the desired frequency range. That is, there is some hypothetical semblance of a stereo effect, but you cannot call it a full-fledged one. In fairness, it must be said that the playback quality offered by the device is generally quite tolerable, and the music lover will use good headphones to listen to music in any case, moreover, in this mode, the listener gets a decent sound of his favorite songs.
Performance - as always on top
Performance is the only parameter for which there are no questions to the Xiaomi Mi 6 smartphone, and the owners' reviews confirm this.
The device uses the new Shapdragon 835 processor, thanks to which the device turned out to be very fast. Games such as Real Racing 3, Asph alt 8 and Injustice 2 were tested on it. No freezes were noticed in all gaming applications, pictureremained smooth at any parameters. At the same time, the heating of the smartphone was insignificant, 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, it almost caught up with such monsters as the Samsung S8 and iPhone 7 Plus. We can say with confidence that the smartphone will appeal to gamers. A powerful processor, coupled with 6 GB of RAM, will allow you to run almost any gaming application on your smartphone.
Unfortunately, the smartphone does not have the ability to expand the internal memory. The owner of the device will have to be content with the available 64 GB for the younger version. If you have finances, you can purchase the top version of the device, offering the user 128 GB of internal memory.
My phone's battery ran out…
It's time to analyze the autonomy of the device. The smartphone uses a 3350 mAh battery. Considering the filling of the smartphone, we can assume that it is better not to expect a long time of work without recharging from the device. Basically, that's how it happened. With the active use of "heavy" functions, the gadget does not survive until the end of the day. You will either have to carry the charger with you to work, or buy an additional one for use in the office.
To be honest, from a flagship of this level I wanted more battery life. Well, why couldn't you put an increased capacity battery in it? It would be very convenient if a smartphone without using an outlet lasted until the end of the day. It won't be redundantIt should be noted that in the network, among the reviews about the Xiaomi Mi6 battery, there are often negative ones.
Comparison with iPhone 7 Plus
Smartphones from the Chinese manufacturer Xiaomi strive to be compared with Apple products. Yes, and the Xiaomi Mi6 smartphone 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 stereo headphone output, which is repeated by a colleague from Apple. The Mi6 screen is also not much inferior to the iPhone 7 display in performance. The performance is almost the same.
If not for a bunch of "almost", then it would be safe to say that Xiaomi Mi6 is on par with the device from the "apple" company.
But a miracle, alas, did not happen. In all respects, the iPhone 7 Plus is better than its opponent with the Android system. And given that the MIUI shell often does not behave in the best way, allowing the system to freeze and applications to close spontaneously, then everything falls into place. The iPhone 7 simply does not have such problems with the firmware and the system.
The only point on which Apple's gadget loses to its colleague from China is the price. Still, Xiaomi Mi6 has it much lower.
Running around Xiaomi Mi6 plus
In early 2017, even before the release of the hero of our review, unconfirmed information about the forthcoming announcement of the Xiaomi Mi6 plus smartphone often slipped on the Internet. The characteristics of this device, presumably, were not much different from XiaomiMi6.
The plus-added smartphone was predicted to have a larger screen than the regular Mi6 (5.7 inches) and a 2K resolution. It is important to note that Xiaomi Mi6 plus, according to some users, wanted to leave a standard headphone output and the ability to expand the built-in memory through support for microSD cards. The battery was supposed to be 4500 mAh.
However, Xiaomi in May 2017 made it completely clear regarding the release of the Mi 6 plus smartphone. The corporation decided to cancel the release of this gadget altogether in order to give way to another of its offspring - the new Xiaomi Mi Note 3 phablet, which was officially introduced in September 2017.
Despite this circumstance, many hope that the release of Mi6 plus will still take place.
Final impressions
To be frank, the model caused very conflicting feelings. One gets the impression that the outstanding characteristics in terms of performance are the only undeniable plus of a smartphone when compared with competitors. According to other parameters, he could not offer anything new.
Ceramic glass case no longer surprises anyone, the modern user will not be impressed by the dual camera with portrait mode either. The screen resolution clearly loses to competitors, although it produces a decent picture. The work of the MIUI shell is not stable and periodically makes the user nervous, although this problem can be solved with the release of a firmware update.
Controversial decisions include the rejection of a standard audio jack for the sake of fashion and the absence ofcard slot.
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. For almost 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 has both a headphone output and a memory card slot.
Probably the older brother that never appeared, Xiaomi Mi 6 plus, would be more interesting thanks to a large 2K screen and a larger battery. But that's just a guess.
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.
