XiaomiUnveilsSnapdragon845-PoweredNotch-lessMIMIX2S

(Chinese Version)

Xiaomi officially unveiled its new dual-camera flagship smartphone MI MIX 2S on March 27th. With Kris Wu as the brand ambassador, MI MIX 2S prices at RMB 3,299 (around USD 525) and eyes on the high-end smartphone market.

Lei Jun, founder of Xiaomi, stated at the beginning of the press release that 2017 was a key year for Xiaomi. In fact, Xiaomi was under great performance pressure. However, the situation got better in Q2. According to Strategy Analytics’ “2017 Q2 Global Smartphone Shipment and Market Share Report”, Xiaomi’s Q2 shipment reached 23.3 million and accounted for 6.4% of the entire market, making Xiaomi again the fifth biggest smartphone manufacturer in the world.

Compared with the previous version, MI MIX 2S features with dual camera system and a near bezel-less design in ceramic black and white color. Xiaomi didn’t follow the trend and adopted the “notch” design, so did many other Chinese smartphone makers. Instead, Xiaomi continued the design of the previous version with a 5.99-inch full-screen 18:9 display as well as a 5-mega-pixel front camera in the bottom and two vertical 12-mega-pixel rear cameras in the upper back.

As to its specs, MI MIX 2S is the first smartphone made by Chinese smartphone makers which is powered by Qualcomm"s Snapdragon 845. Thanks to the updated system, MI MIX 2S’s AI performance had been increased by three times. Besides, MI MIX 2S comes with a 3,400mAh battery and supports wireless charging.

The Xiaomi Mi MIX 2S starts at RMB 3,299 (roughly $505) for the 6GB RAM and 64GB inbuilt storage variant, going up to RMB 3,599 (roughly $549) for the 6GB RAM and 128GB inbuilt storage, and RMB 3,999 (roughly $635) for the top-end model with 8GB RAM and 256GB inbuilt storage.

It’s worth mentioning that MI MIX 2S is for the first time imbedded with Xiaomi’s own voice assistant “Xiao Ai Tong Xue” (which means a student named “Little Ai”, and “Ai” looks similar to the abbreviation of artificial intelligence, that is, AI). To demonstrate the capability of “Xiao Ai Tong Xue”, Lei compared it to iPhone’s Siri. The result is obvious: “Xiao Ai Tong Xue” defeated Siri in terms of both recognition speed and recognition accuracy.

“What we are trying to do is turn complicated and repetitive operations on the screen into just a line,” Lei said.

At the same time, the camera is also powered by AI, so that user experience is significantly improved when taking pictures. For example, the camera can recognize the scenario, automatically adjust the filter and edit the picture. Besides, functions such as simultaneous translation, object recognition and currency exchange are also enabled through the camera.

Specifically, MIX 2S’s camera can recognize 206 specific scenarios and 25 types of labels and automatically adjust filters and post-editing methods. At the same time, the camera is improved specifically for business purposes. For example, when users take a picture of a PPT slide, the camera will recognize the scenario (PPT), leave the unnecessary margins and keep only the contents on the slide. When travelling abroad, users can take a picture of a menu and the camera will immediately translate the menu into their native language and convert the currency.

Lei pointed out that MIX 2S was graded 101 by global camera quality evaluation organization DxOMark, the highest among all Xiaomi’s smartphones.

MI MIX 2S is the second time the AI technology is fully implemented on Xiaomi’s smartphones since Mi Note 5. During the press release, Lei reiterated that Xiaomi will continue to expand its R&D on AI and develop more smart home products.

Another  big announcement is Xiaomi’s own gaming laptop at the press release. In terms of raw specs, Xiaomi"s gaming laptop comes with a 15.6-inch Full HD display and NVIDIA Geforce GTX 1060 mobile GPU. It starts with Intel Core i5 processor, 8GB of RAM AND 128GB of SSD storage (entry version, RMB 5,999, or $956) and goes all the way up to7th gen Intel Core i7 processor, 16GB of RAM and 256GB of SSD storage (advanced version, RMB 8,999, or $1,434).

One more thing, Xiaomi also released a mini version of MI AI Speaker that fits better in bedrooms. The speaker is powered by Xiaomi’s own AI smart assistant and can help users complete some voice control operations. For example, users can control Xiaomi’s smartphone devices, search for audio contents and information, add voice notes, manage alarms and set reminders, etc.  While the previous standard version was priced at RMB 299 (roughly $47.6), the mini version costs only RMB 169 (roughly $26.9).

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The article is published with authorization from the author @Cao Tianpeng, please note source and hyperlink when reproduce.]

 Translated by Levin Feng (Senior Translator atPAGE TO PAGE), working for TMTpost.

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