Translated material
When smartphones finally stopped being different: a week with Xiaomi Mi 6
The Chinese are successfully dumping the leaders of the premium market - Apple and Samsung.
On July 4, sales of Xiaomi's flagship, the 5.15-inch Mi 6 smartphone on Android, began in Russia. TJ's editor-in-chief spent a week with a smartphone as his main one: the device successfully mimics its venerable competitors in the form of the iPhone 7 Plus and Galaxy S8, while it costs half as much, but is completely devoid of individuality.
I had no experience using other popular “Chinese” devices like ZTE or Meizu, but, as it turned out, there was no need to compare Mi 6 with them. From conversations with top managers of the company, several presentations in Moscow, device design and even the design style of its stores, it is clear that Xiaomi is aiming for the role of Apple, only in developing markets.
But if earlier Xiaomi seemed to copy Apple devices in a stencil, then Mi 6 is something between the aesthetics of the iPhone 7 and Galaxy S8 . The Koreans have clearly set the design trend for slightly beveled edges and glossy surfaces, so the Mi 6 is just as shiny and just as easily soiled.
Apple's design details also remain: for example, a clean white box or a charging cable twisted and secured with cardboard, like an iPhone.
This whole hodgepodge makes the Mi 6 almost indistinguishable from other flagships. Even the screen size - 5.15 inches - is somewhere in between the iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus and Galaxy S8.
It is already too large to be used with one hand, but there is no good solution for enabling one-handed mode in Mi 6: it must be activated by swiping to the right from the Home button, but this gesture works in one attempt out of five. Perhaps this is the main disappointment - in everything else, the Mi 6 is satisfied as a flagship, with the exception of the lack of a headset.
Peripherals and no headset
Like Apple in the iPhone 7, Xiaomi in the Mi 6 decided to abandon the 3.5 mm headphone port, only the Chinese replaced it not with the proprietary Lightning, but with the open USB Type-C standard. At the same time, there are no headphones with this connector included, and Xiaomi does not sell them in Russia yet, but there is an adapter for the old port - they were clearly in a hurry with the revolution.
In China, Mi ANC headphones with a USB Type-C port and active noise cancellation are already on sale: I had a chance to use them, although they were not without a defect in the wire. In its homeland, Xiaomi sells them for about $43 - for a headset with active noise reduction, this is an acceptable price, unless you remember that its wire cannot be inserted into ordinary computers and smartphones without USB Type-C.
Although the Mi 6 has a larger battery than the iPhone 7 Plus and Galaxy S8 (3350 mAh versus 2900 and 3000 mAh, respectively), it still drains quickly - it feels like it lasts less than the iPhone 7 Plus. But thanks to USB Type-C, the Mi 6 has the ability to quickly charge: when the smartphone sat down to 25% by the middle of the day, I charged it to 80% in about half an hour.
The Home button has a built-in fingerprint scanner: it works flawlessly and has never failed during use. It is convenient to unlock the screen with it, it takes up little space: a good solution, but not new. In addition to the fingerprint scanner, there are standard unlocking methods such as entering a password, but, for example, there is no entry using facial recognition or retinal scanning (as in the Galaxy S8).
Xiaomi has a huge amount of RAM by smartphone standards - 6 GB, or one and a half times more than on the computer from which I am writing this text. I can’t say that it justifies itself: yes, you don’t have to think about loading the memory with applications, but for most of the time I used the Mi 6, it didn’t clog up more than 2 GB.
Case included
The case is not only easily soiled, but also very slippery. In the first hour of use, I placed the smartphone on top of a leather wallet: the phone slipped off it on its own, fell to the floor from a height of half a meter, but did not break.
Unlike other manufacturers, Xiaomi solves this problem in a rather unusual way: a silicone translucent bumper case comes right in the box with the Mi 6. It looks very cheap, but only at first glance: when the bumper is put on the smartphone, it merges with the dark body and looks aesthetically pleasing.
But it only looks: to the touch the cover is quite flimsy and loose. If you touch it beyond its edges, after six months it will become loose and become unusable, and simply the scratches remain quite noticeable on it.
The fact that the case is included is proof that even the manufacturer recognizes the need to protect the case he created. But unlike, say, official Apple cases, Xiaomi’s is thin and does not greatly increase the volume of the smartphone: it is much more comfortable to carry it in jeans pockets, and it does not turn them inside out when removed.
Dual camera
Like Apple, Xiaomi is focusing on the camera when marketing its new smartphone. At the same time, its marketing is so aggressive that by default a huge watermark “Shot on Xiaomi Mi 6 with Dual Camera” is placed on the pictures. The terrible thing here is that not all owners will know about the ability to disable the application of watermark (this can be done in the settings).
Like the iPhone 7 Plus (these comparisons are repeated indecently often in the review, but what can you do), the Mi 6 has a dual camera - telescopic plus wide-angle. The range of applications is the same: telescopic is an actual 2x zoom, wide-angle is suitable for close-up shooting.
By combining two cameras, the Mi 6 can take photos with a bokeh effect - yes, just like the iPhone 7 Plus with the Galaxy S8. Unlike the Galaxy S8, you don’t need to go into the settings to do this, just click on the portrait icon at the top of the screen.
The photo quality is fully consistent with what you would expect from a flagship. I specifically shot in a variety of conditions, and it seems that the quality of the Mi 6 images is almost completely identical to the iPhone 7 Plus (I didn’t have another one at hand) - so much so that it will not be easy to understand from the gallery below which ones were taken on the twice more expensive flagship from Apple.
Hint: iPhone 7 Plus pictures are on the left, Mi 6 pictures are on the right. First, there is a comparison of two photographs in full size, then in close-up, where details are visible.
Android Pay and MIUI features
Android Pay did not start on my device: company representatives explained this by saying that I was given a developer sample imported from China. The company claims that Mi 6 sold in Russian retail should work with Android Pay.
However, on the official Xiaomi forum there are several threads dedicated to the problem of Android Pay not working, where they did not find any clear answer to the question of what to do for users who encounter this.
Xiaomi Mi 6 runs on Android 7.1.1 Nougat, but with its own MIUI shell. It has a rather nice, laconic design that can (as is customary in Android) be endlessly customized. There is no dominance of third-party applications, and the key feature of MIUI is the “second bottom”.
Inside the smartphone system, you can create a parallel copy of it, where other applications will be installed or other data will be stored: for example, a second address book with mistress numbers, a gallery of photos from secret parties, documents that the employer should not see. A similar function is available for individual applications: they can contain several non-overlapping profiles that cannot be accessed by others. Rich opportunities for deception and leading a double life - this is probably in demand in the Chinese market.
Summary
In China, Mi 6 costs about $360, and in Russia the official price is almost 30 thousand rubles. The difference when translating at the exchange rate seems significant, but we must not forget that importation also requires costs for logistics and additional marketing.
Xiaomi distributors in Russia officially allow you to buy a smartphone on AliExpress: judging by the store prices, this will save only 2-3 thousand rubles, but there is a risk of running into technical features of Chinese certification. But, apparently, the demand in Russia for official retail is significant: the first batch was sold on July 4 through pre-orders, while only the black version of Mi 6 with 64 GB of internal memory is available in the country - there are many more options in China.
Morally, Mi 6 will not replace the iPhone or Samsung: it still has a weak brand in Russia and does not have a developed ecosystem in the form of cloud services, although steps in this direction are already taking place. But it manages to be beneficial from a practical point of view: in some technical characteristics, such as the amount of RAM or battery capacity, it outperforms the flagships of major market players.
At the same time, there really are no differences left for the consumer in appearance: top-end smartphones have become confusingly similar. Such mimicry along with dumping are two prohibited techniques that work for Xiaomi. If the company does not burn out on offline marketing expenses ( like LeEco ) and concentrates around its fans, of which there are many in Russia, it has a chance to gain a foothold in the future and from the moral side of the brand.
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