Xiaomi Mi 6 first look: So when will the phone come to India?

Previously, Xiaomi’s global director of product management Donovan Sung had earlier told IndianExpress.com that the strategy for the Indian market was one flagship only per year. Given that Redmi series seems to the volume driver in India, this is not surprising.

Last year, Xiaomi had launched the Mi 5 in India, which came with 3GB RAM+32GB storage at Rs 24,999, but the phone didn’t exactly set a sales record for the company. Xiaomi phones like Mi 5s, Mi5s Plus, Mi Note 2, Mi Mix have also not launched officially in India. The original Mi Note series also never made it to the Indian market.  But given that one Mi flagship phone is expected to make it to the Indian market, we’ll have to wait and see which one ends up coming to this market.

Now onto the Mi 6. So we got an early preview of the black colour variant of Mi 6, which looks quite similar to Mi 5 in terms of design. Xiaomi Mi 6 has a four sided 3D curved glass design at the back and dual rear camera setup.

Further, it has a 5.15-inch Full HD display with 600 nit maximum brightness. It features the same capsule-like home button that we saw in its predecessor. With the Mi 6, the fingerprint scanner is now embedded in the display.

Xiaomi Mi 6 has a four sided 3D curved glass design at the back and dual rear camera setup.

It features the same capsule-like home button that we saw in its predecessor. With the Mi 6, the fingerprint scanner is now embedded in the display.

For Xiaomi, the Mi 5 didn’t do very well in India. For starters, many were unhappy with the fact the company only brought the 32GB option here, and there was no 64GB variant. We faced major heating issues with the Mi 5 during our review period as well.

Xiaomi Mi 6, when launches in India, is likely to compete with OnePlus 3T in the same range. The Mi 6 packs with a Snapdragon 835 octa-core processor, dual rear camera setup with Portrait mode, etc; its higher storage could be priced somewhere in the range of Rs 25,000 to Rs 30,000 here. OnePlus 3T starts at Rs 29,999 for the 64GB variant, runs Snapdragon 821 processor and features 16MP camera on the front as well as rear.

Following on the footsteps of Apple and LeEco, Xiaomi has done away with headphone jack in the Mi 6.

Xiaomi Mi 6 is splash-resistant with its SIM tray protected against splashes as well.

Xiaomi Mi 6 gets a 12MP wide-angle lens+12MP telephoto lens at the rear. The new ‘Portrait Mode’ blurs background while focusing on subject. We tried out the camera, and some of the results, were not bad at all. Having said that, this is a China ROM version of the phone, and we didn’t spend much time with the phone, so it is hard to come to any final conclusions about the device just yet.

Other features of the camera are 2x optical lossless zoom and 4-axis OIS. Xiaomi Mi 6 is splash-resistant with its SIM tray protected against splashes as well. Just like Mi 5, Xiaomi’s new flagship has dual stereo speakers at the bottom as well.

Following on the footsteps of Apple and LeEco, Xiaomi has done away with headphone jack in the Mi 6. The smartphone is backed by a 3,350mAh battery which the company claims will easily last for up to a day with MIUI optimizations. It uses a Type-C USB port for charging.