Xiaomi has formally taken the wraps off its latest flagship smartphone today, the Mi 9, after spoon-feeding its fans with some of the device"s key specs and features over the past couple of days. While that drip-feed of information seems to have left little for the public to see before the official unveiling, today"s announcement in Beijing adds some other important details about the phone.
The Mi 9 sports a 6.39-inch AMOLED display with Full HD+ resolution and 90.7% screen-to-body ratio. The screen is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 6 and punctuated by a waterdrop notch at the top. One of the highlights of the handset is its native support for dark mode, which Xiaomi claims can help reduce the display power usage by 83% under maximum brightness.
With regard to its design, the Mi 9 has a holographic appearance on the back that shows different colors depending on the angle of light. This is courtesy of the nano-level laser engraving holographic technology and dual layer nano-coating that Xiaomi used to build the device.
Additionally, there"s a cheaper Mi 9 SE model, which sports a 5.97-inch AMOLED display, a 48MP camera, and an under-display fingerprint sensor. It was also confirmed earlier this week that the Mi 9 will have a special edition which will include 12GB of RAM and feature a seemingly transparent back showing off a replica of its internals just like the Mi 8 Explorer Edition.
Other specs of the device are its under-display fingerprint sensor and game turbo mode for optimizing resources based on a particular game scene. It also shares the same dual-GPS capability as its predecessor and a dedicated Google Assistant button, though this will only be available to the western market.
As recently confirmed by the company, the Mi 9 is powered by Qualcomm"s Snapdragon 855 SoC with two Kryo 485 cores clocked at 2.84GHz and two Kryo 485 cores clocked at 2.42GHz. It packs a 3,500mAh battery with support for 20W fast charging.
The company also previously revealed that the phone will boast a triple-camera setup on the back with a 48MP main lens. Today, Xiaomi provided more details about the phone"s camera specs including its 16MP ultra-wide sensor and 12MP 2x optical zoom lens. The camera technology uses the Sony IMX586 sensor. On the front sits a 20MP selfie snapper. Video-wise, the device supports 4K video recording at 30fps and super slow motion at 960fps, the same feature that was added to the Mi 8 as part of the MIUI 10.1.2.0 update released in December 2018.
The Mi 9 will come in three color variants: Lavender Violet, Ocean Blue, and Piano Black. It will be available starting at 2999 Yuan (~$446) for the 6GB/128GB variant. The special edition will retail for 3999 Yuan (~$595).