On May 31st, Chinese manufacturing giant, Xiaomi, released its new flagship device, Xiaomi Mi 8 in commemoration of its 8th anniversary. This smartphone has three variants – Xiaomi Mi 8, Xiaomi Mi 8 SE, and Xiaomi Mi 8 Explorer Edition. Of the three, the Explorer edition comes with the most attractive features and while the Mi 8 and Mi 8 SE has been in the market for a couple of weeks, the Explorer Edition is set to commence official sales on July 24th and it comes with a 3699 Yuan ($553) price tag.
Xiaomi Mi 8 (Explorer Edition) is designed from premium materials and it comes with a translucent back and metal frame. Its high screen-to-body ratio comes from its notched display which leaves at least five sensors on the front. It is powered by the flagship Snapdragon 845 octa-core processor clocking 2.8 GHz coupled with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of internal storage. The Mi 8 Explorer Edition is equipped with a 6.21-inch S-AMOLED display with a resolution of 2248 x 1080 pixel and an 18.7:9 aspect ratio. In the camera department, Xiaomi Mi 8 Explorer Edition comes with a dual rear camera setup which has 12MP + 12MP configuration with f/1.8 + f/2.4. This is assisted by a 20MP f/2.0 front camera. It runs on MIUI 10 based Android 8.1 Oreo. depth customizations and its lights are kept on by a 3000 mAh battery with 20W Fast charging (Quick Charge 4+).
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The Xiaomi Mi 8 Explorer Edition is the only 8th-anniversary edition phone to come with a proper 3D Face ID technology just like Apple’s iPhone X. This means it utilizes a dot projector and a flood illuminator to precisely register and recognize a face, making it much more accurate than other Face recognition technologies. Another exclusive feature on the EE is the presence of an on-screen fingerprint scanner, which according to Xiaomi is much faster than what we find on the VIVO phones, thus drastically reducing the difference between “old” style fingerprint scanner and the new UD. The Xiaomi Mi 8 and its EE variant are the first phones to ever pack a dual-frequency GPS system. This technology allows for much more accurate tracking with a precision of around 30 centimeters, thanks to the simultaneous reception of L1 / L5 GPS signals. Far better than the 5 meters range we have on current phones.
The Xiaomi Mi 8 Explorer Edition supports two nano-SIM cards and dual-card VoLTE HD voice 2.
Supported frequency bands are:
- GSM B2 / B3 / B5 / B8
- CDMA 1X / EVDO BC0
- WCDMA B1 / B2 / B4 / B5 / B8
- TD-SCDMA B34 / B39
- TD-LTE B34 / B38 / B39 / B40 / B41 (120MHz)
- FDD-LTE B1 / B2 / B3 / B4 / B5 / B7 / B8 / B12 / B17 / B20
Thanks to the LTE B41 4 antenna technology the phone also supports 4×4 MIMO. Other features include 802.11a/b/g/n/ac WiFi, WiFi Direct, 2×2 MIMO Technology, MU-MIMO, WiFi Display and Bluetooth 5.0.
