Review of the Xiaomi Mi6 smartphone: a new generation of mass flagship

Model description

Increasingly, it pleases its fans with new mobile devices. It is no longer surprising that many users prefer to purchase them as their own, preferring good quality and affordable smartphones from the Chinese brand.

2017 brought another surprise to consumers with the release of the cool Xiaomi Mi 6 phone, a review of which will help to better understand whether it is able to compete with smartphones from other well-known brands.

Frame

The body of Xiaomi Mi5 is made of metal and tempered glass, the body of Xiaomi Mi 5S in the basic version is made of metal and glass, and in the top version is made of ceramic.

The basic version of Xiaomi Mi6 is made of stainless steel with tempered glass. Compared to previous versions, this alloy is more durable and looks more solid. And the premium version has a ceramic case and gold-plated edging! Gorgeous bunch.

Design

The designers did not bring any surprises to users. The appearance is classic, it does not differ in anything outstanding. Everything was done within the traditions adhered to by the company. The sleek, glossy body of the phone is pleasant to the touch, its edges shimmer beautifully in the sunlight, but it doesn’t have the zest that many were expecting. The assembly is done at a high level. The smartphone weighs 168 grams, its dimensions are: 145x71x7.5 mm. Users can purchase the device in black, white and beautiful blue. Manufacturers chose glass to make the case. Along the perimeter there is a metal frame made of stainless steel, which the craftsmen polished to a shine. An oleophobic coating is applied to the front and back surfaces.

The buttons with which the owner of the Xiaomi Mi 6 device controls it remain in their usual places. The keys that allow you to lock the phone and adjust its volume are convenient. When they are pressed, a noticeable click is heard.

The SIM card slot, located on the left side, has a barely noticeable hole for a paperclip.

At the top end there is only an IR port and a microphone. There is no headphone input. They can be connected via USB Type-C, which is located on the bottom end along with a false grille for the speaker and microphone.

Above the display there is a front camera, a mesh for the earpiece, sensors and an LED indicator.

The advanced fingerprint scanner in this Xiaomi 6 or Xiaomi 6 (as users call devices of this brand) is located on the front panel under the display. It is faster, more accurate and able to recognize wet finger touches and touches from different angles. There are also touch control buttons here.

Dual flash and 2 main cameras are located on the back of the device.

The phone is ergonomic, its aesthetic properties have been improved due to the rounded top edges. It's nice and comfortable to hold in your hand.

Screen

The changes hardly affected the screen. In all three models it has:

• same size – 5.15 inches;
• same resolution - 1920x1080 pixels;
• same aspect ratio – 16:9;
• same pixel density - 428 ppi;
• Same brightness – up to 600 nits.

However, Mi6 offers slightly greater NTSC color coverage (94.4% instead of 94%). “Eye care” technology has appeared, which reduces harmful blue radiation and protects the eyes from overload.

Why doesn't Xiaomi offer Quad or Ultra HD technologies on the screen that support virtual reality? Because the company does not see any prospects in this direction. And for normal use, Full HD is the best option. This resolution does not consume much battery and provides a good level of pixels.

Technical characteristics of Xiaomi Mi 6

The Xiaomi Mi 6 smartphone has decent characteristics. The phone's software is powered by the Android 7 operating system, harmoniously supplemented by the 8th version of the MIUI shell, to which many users are already accustomed. The device does not have unnecessary unnecessary applications that only burden the OS. The phone supports the Russian language, it is integrated with Google services, so the owner of the device will not have problems downloading the required files.

I would like to draw users' attention to the presence of a number of options that make it easier to perform a number of tasks: create an additional desktop, control accounts and applications, manage themes and screensavers. I was pleasantly pleased with the built-in Bluetooth 5.0, with which you can listen to your favorite tunes on two speaker systems and simultaneously on headphones.

Autonomy

Each new flagship also grew in terms of autonomy. If Mi5 had a battery with a capacity of 3000 mAh, then Mi5s has 3200 mAh, and Mi6 already has 3350 mAh, but here the processor itself plays a big role.

According to independent sources, Mi6 is 50-70% better in terms of autonomy than Mi5. Xiaomi Mi5s is also good, but it also loses to Mi6. Each model has fast charging.

Camera

The Xiaomi Mi 6 smartphone is equipped with two main cameras, the resolution of each of them is 12 megapixels. Thanks to this, you can provide double magnification of a distant object, blur the background, getting a beautiful original photo. The device is capable of recording video in 4K format, resulting in excellent shooting quality even in bad weather conditions. The owner of the device can take advantage of numerous functions that operate in both automatic and manual modes.

Photos taken with this phone are bright, saturated, with good contrast and color reproduction. The front 8 megapixel camera does not have such capabilities, but selfies are of good quality.

Battery life and performance

Xiaomi flagships have always been equipped with the most advanced single-chip systems. Mi6 was no exception in this regard and received the newest chip at that time called Qualcomm Snapdragon 835. However, even today this chipset remains the most advanced, since the Snapdragon 845 that is being prepared to replace it has not yet been released. And this, in turn, means that the Mi6 is even more relevant and in terms of performance it will delight its owners for a long time.

Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 is an eight-core processor built according to the Big/Little scheme. The high-performance processor unit is equipped with four Kryo 280 cores operating at 2.45 GHz. It is used in cases where the load on the system is maximum and it is necessary to use more computing power. The second unit is built on four Cortex A-53 cores with a clock frequency of 1.9 GHz. It is used in cases where the device is mostly idle, and saving battery power comes to the fore at the expense of maximum performance. When the processor needs to provide greater multi-threaded performance, both blocks can work simultaneously and effectively parallelize incoming tasks.

In terms of performance, the Snapdragon 835 simply has no equal. Therefore, a phrase like “this processor will be enough for most modern tasks” would sound very banal. This processor is capable of providing you with tremendous performance and at the same time working without straining at all and saving battery power. Many will say that such excess performance is simply not needed. They are partly right, of course, but once you use such a smartphone for a little while, feel all its speed and smoothness, your opinion can change radically in the other direction.

Let's present some data from popular benchmarks to demonstrate the performance of the single-chip system installed in Xiaomi Mi6 in numbers:

In terms of gaming performance, the Snapdragon 835 also has no equal. The graphics accelerator used here is Adreno 540, which operates at a frequency of 710 MHz. This accelerator is enough to play most modern games with Quad HD resolution, and with the Full HD display of the Xiaomi Mi6 there are no problems in this regard at all. Thus, all the games we tested, for example, Asphalt 8 or NFS, worked without a hint of any frame drops. And in the popular World of Tanks, the counter froze at 59 frames at maximum graphics settings and only occasionally dropped to 55 frames in the most intense battle scenes. In addition, the phone remains quite cool throughout several hours of gaming; there is no need to talk about throttling in such conditions at all.

With moderate use, the smartphone easily lasts for a full day until the evening. A 3350 milliampere-hour battery is responsible for this. Xiaomi is far from setting a record in its class for battery capacity, but even these indicators are quite enough for comfortable use without the fear of completely draining the smartphone before returning home. With not too active use, you can even count on several days without recharging, however, few people focus on such indicators. I’m also very pleased with the fact that the Mi6 has fast charging. So, the phone accumulates the first half of its battery charge within half an hour. The phone is fully charged after a little more than an hour and a half. When testing the smartphone using our method, it managed to work: 14 hours in reading mode, 8 hours 30 minutes when watching videos, 4 hours 30 minutes in games.

Results

The Xiaomi Mi smartphone is a worthy representative of the line of mobile devices and a successor to the unchanging traditions of the brand. If you decide to purchase XiaomiMi 6, user reviews available on the sites will help you make the right choice.

Like every phone, it has its positive and negative sides.

pros

The advantages include the following criteria:

• excellent display quality;
• slot for 2 SIM cards;
• a decent amount of RAM;
• housing reliably protected from moisture;
• adapter included;
• good quality camera.

Memory and memory card

The hardware part is one of the strongest points of the Xiaomi Mi6, and this rule also applies to the smartphone’s memory. The phone is equipped with 6 gigabytes of LPDDR4 class memory with a clock frequency of 1866 MHz, as well as modern, fast UFS 2.1 permanent memory, which can be provided with 64 or 128 gigabytes. More recently, Xiaomi also released a slightly cheaper version, which combines the usual 64 gigabytes of permanent memory, but the RAM in it was cut by 2 gigabytes, leaving only 4gb. This move is quite understandable, since today 4 gigabytes of RAM is still quite enough. This means that many people would prefer to buy a cheaper smartphone here and now rather than think about a reserve for the future, which may not be useful to them in the end.

Xiaomi Mi6 does not support memory cards at all. However, in our opinion, this is not a serious problem, since even the minimum 64 gigabytes should be enough for most users in most usage scenarios. If this doesn’t seem enough, you can always choose the version with a 128 GB drive. There is not much room for maneuver, but there is a positive aspect, since UFS 2.1 is much faster in operation than any removable memory card.

Conclusion

Xiaomi Redmi 6 looks like a good upgrade from the last generation, except for the design because Redmi 5 has thinner bezels around the screen and a metal body. However, Redmi 6 received a new Helio P22 processor, which provides good performance, a separate slot for a second SIM card, a 3.5 mm audio jack and a slot for a microSD memory card. The main problem, in my opinion, is the outdated design, as well as the microUSB port with a power of 5V/1A.

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