Xiaomi Mi 9
Price: £tbc (around £450)
Go back a couple of years and few people in the UK had heard of Xiaomi, but looking into our imaginary crystal ball we’re convinced that in a couple more years it is going to have completely transformed the smartphone market.
Xiaomi is a huge – but still pretty young – Chinese mega-brand and its smartphones, which are now officially available in the UK and Europe, undercut the global leaders in a way with which they simply cannot hope to compete. The only company that comes even remotely close is OnePlus, with its 6T, but that phone is still not a patch on Mi 9.
Mi 9 is Xiaomi’s brand-new flagship phone for 2019. It undercuts the Samsung Galaxy S10 by more than £300 – the iPhone XS by more than £500. And what do you really lose – waterproofing? A few extra pixels that you can’t actually perceive? No one of sane mind has any business overlooking the Mi 9 in the search for their next smartphone. It’s not only one of the best Chinese phones, but the best phones period.
New features
The most obvious difference when you pick up Mi 9 is the display, which is now larger and taller than on Mi 8 and covers a greater surface area, with a reduced chin and a significantly smaller notch. It builds in an in-display fingerprint sensor, previously seen only on the Mi 8 Pro, and adds some customization options to the Always-on Display.
Naturally this means the previous sensor has been removed from the
