Xiaomi Mi 9 officially announced

The highly anticipated Xiaomi Mi 9 Android flagship was officially announced today alongside a special Transparent Edition model. Xiaomi's newer smartphones have been creating a niche for themselves, cleverly differentiating themselves from the competition, and the Xiaomi Mi 9 is no exception.

The handset features a new 6.39-inch AMOLED display from Samsung, with thin bezels and a slim chin. It also employs the waterdrop style design for its notch which houses a 20MP front-facing camera. The design allows the phone to achieve an impressive 90.7% screen-to-body ratio.

The rear of the smartphone is made up of a new glass panel with subtle curves along its sides. This is coupled with an all-new laser engraved holographic design which creates a unique reflective finish.

You get a triple-camera setup on the top rear, protected by sapphire glass. The trio is made up of a 48-megapixel sensor with an f/1.75 aperture, an improved 12-megapixel telephoto camera which supports 2x optical zoom, and a new 16-megapixel sensor which is coupled with a wide-angle lens to capture even more in your photos.

While Xiaomi offered 3D facial recognition on the Mi 8 Pro, the redesigned smaller notch has resulted in this feature being removed. Instead, customers will have to make use of the optical in-display fingerprint sensor for security.

The Xiaomi Mi 9 comes with either 64GB or 128GB of internal storage with optional microSD, 4G LTE, Bluetooth 5.0, NFC, and an IR Blaster and a Snapdragon 855 chipset with 6GB of RAM. You have a 3300mAh battery which supports fast charging and you get wireless charging up to 20W. Xiaomi even includes an 18W charger inside the box.

On the software side, you get Android 9.0 Pie with the MIUI 10 customization.

The Xiaomi Mi 9 Transparent Edition

the regular Xiaomi Mi 9 is accompanied by a Transparent Edition. This design comes with a transparent glass panel on the rear that provides a glimpse at some of the key internals. However, it's worth pointing out that the components on display aren't actually the real ones. In actual fact, it's simply an aluminum plate covering the real, less photogenic parts.

Aside from the aesthetic change, the Transparent Edition comes with 12GB of RAM and also boosts the expandable internal storage to 256GB.

Release and Availability

The Xiaomi Mi 9 with 64GB of storage and 6GB of RAM will retail for 2,999 yuan (around $446), while the 128GB version with 6GB of RAM will retail for 3,299 yuan (~$491). Meanwhile, the Xiaomi Mi 9 Transparent Edition will cost 3,999 yuan (around $595).