The phone is expected to show up at the company’s event on May 31st, tomorrow, alongside the flagship MI 8, the Mi Band 3 and MIUI 10 operating system skin.
To refresh your memory, the Snapdragon 710 comes in 10nm, has 2X AI performance of 660, X15 800 Mbps modem, Hexagon 685 DPS, Spectra 250 ISP, Quick Charging 4+ new two big and six small core CPUs and Adreno 616 - the key to mainstream/performance success.
High end and lite version of the phone strategy
Qualcomm enabled a lot of great technology to this new premium market tier that still comes at a lower price compared to the flagship, but enables a lot of performance at low battery life. Phones like Mi 8 SE will directly compete with phones such as the Huawei P20 lite that has similar looks to the flagship and comes at a fraction of the price. Samsung has this with its A series - again close to two times cheaper than the flagship Galaxy S9 phone.
Xiaomi is betting big on the AI performance of the platform. That is the buzz word for 2018 and it is betting big on it. The phone will support face unlocking and probably come with a more affordable rear fingerprint reader, leaving the flagship in display fingerprint unlocking feature for the Mi8.
The camera is likely to support 20 megapixels. More tomorrow.
