Xiaomi Copies Apple iPhone X with Mi8

Chinese smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi has launched three new smartphones, the Mi8, Mi8 SE and the Mi 8 Explorer edition flagship. 

The new devices launched on Thursday looks strikingly similar to Apple’s iPhone X with the notch at the top of the screen and horizontal dual cameras.

The Mi8 Explorer has a 6.21-inch 2,248 x 1,080 AMOLED screen with 600-nit brightness.

It sports dual-12-megapixel f/1.8 main cameras with large 1.4um pixel sites, along with a 20-megapixel f/2.4 front camera.  

Qualcomm’s powerful Snapdragon 845 chipset powers the Mi8 Explorer and it packs 8GB of RAM with128GB of space and a 3D face scanner to unlock the device. 

While the highlight of the Mi8 Explorer is its fully transparent back, which is used to reveal the phone’s various chips, electrical components, rectangular NFC coil and 3,000 mAh battery, it emerged that the clear back may not be real. 

However, in a statement to The Verge, Xiaomi commented that “The transparent back on Mi 8 Explorer Edition is indeed made of transparent glass, and there isn’t a sticker with a picture on it. The parts that you see on the back upper half, for example, are parts of the actual mainboard.”

The Mi8 Explorer is priced at 3,699 yuan or about R 7,300.