Xiaomi Mi 8 announced: Infrared Face Unlock technology, notch-style display and more

The phone, celebrating the 8th anniversary of the Chinese tech giant, comes with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 845, dual cameras and dual GPS.

The Mi 8 has a notch style display with advanced 3D facial recognition system like Apple iPhone X.

Mi 8 has a notch on top and an 18.7: 9 aspect ratio. Xiaomi has already indicated the Mi 8 will come to global markets and India will likely be on the list.


In India, the starting price is likely to be Rs 28,000 plus for the 64GB variant, Rs 31,000 for the 128GB variant is Rs 31,000, while the 256GB variant will cost Rs 34,000 plus.

Explorer Edition

Xiaomi is going all-out with the Mi 8 Explorer Edition which has an in-display fingerprint sensor for the first time in a phone.

The company also claims that the Explorer Edition is the first Android phone in the world to use 3D face recognition technology, like the iPhone X’s Face ID — and of course there’s an Animoji equivalent on board.

Specs & Features
The device sports a 6.21-inches AMOLED display and has a dual 12MP+12MP rear camera and comes with AI features for photos.

It brings AI features enhancement for over 200 scenes and does 4-in-1 pixel binning for better low-light shots. The primary sensor is IMX363 by Sony, while the secondary is S5K3M3 by Samsung.

It has an Infrared sensor for Face unlocking as well. There's also a Mi 8 Explorer edition which has a transparent back, 8GB RAM and 128GB storage, an in-display fingerprint scanner, coupled with a 3D face recognition feature for unlocking.

The 3.5 mm audio jack was ditched back in 2017 with the announcement of the predecessor Xiaomi Mi 6, but there is USB-C for all the connections.

This is the first phone ever to use dual-frequency GPS, which is supposed to give more accurate location data.