New Xiaomi Launches its First Smartphone With Waterdrop Notch

There has been a long wait for a gaming oriented phone by Xiaomi. Many were expecting the Xiaomi Mi Play to carry the specifications of its sub-brand phone, the Poco F1. However, after the launch of the Mi Play, those speculations have been trashed. This new debut by the Chinese OEM sports the MediaTek Helio P35 SoC, owing to which this device bears a much more affordable price tag than previously expected. Read ahead to know more about what the newly launched Mi Play has to offer across hardware, design, software and features.

Xiaomi Mi Play: Specifications and Features

By the launch of the Mi Play, Xiaomi has attempted to craft a gaming smartphone with an affordable price tag, and after taking a glance at the specifications of the phone, we can say that it is likely that Xiaomi has somewhat managed to deliver as per the expectations. Under the hood, the Mi Play sports a MediaTek Helio P35 chipset which has been built on a 12nm process and it clocks frequency up to 2.3GHz. Although this ensures the buyers that the phone is affordable in pricing, the gaming performance on this SoC will is left over for review later.

Paired with this SoC, is 4GB of RAM which should suffice when it comes to multitasking and gaming. For internal storage, the phone gets a 64GB memory which is also expandable with a microSD card of up to 256GB.

Talking about the other highlights of the phone, the Mi Play features a 5.84-inch LCD panel rendering a resolution of 1080 x 2280 pixels on a 19:9 aspect ratio screen. The display on the phone also boasts of a max brightness of 1500:1. The speculations of the Mi Play even come out to be correct about the waterdrop notch at the top, which makes it the first phone by Xiaomi to feature the same. The waterdrop notch houses an 8MP selfie camera, whereas the dual rear camera setup consists of a 12MP primary lens paired with a 2MP depth sensor. Not to miss, but the phone also comes with plenty of AI-based features like HDR and Electronic Image Stabilisation (EIS).

As for the software, the Mi Play boots Android 8.1 Oreo, but the company has ensured that the buyers get access to the MIUI 10 out of the box. The Chinese version of the phone will also come with Xiao AI assistant, and a 3000mAh battery backs the phone.

The connectivity options on the device include 4G VoLTE, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and GPS + GLONASS. Notably, the phone also comes with a 3.5mm headphone jack. For security, the phone features a rear-mounted fingerprint sensor, but the device also comes with face unlock capabilities.

Xiaomi Mi Play: Pricing and Availability

Currently, the phone has only been launched in China where it has debuted with a price tag of 1,099 Yuan, translating to about Rs 11,000. This price is for the 4GB RAM + 64GB storage configuration which is also the only storage configuration announced right now. Xiaomi has also debuted three colour options for this phone which include Fantasy Blue and Twilight Gold and a solid Black choice. The phone goes live for pre-ordering on December 25, i.e. today and as part of an initial offer, Chinese customers will also be receiving 10GB of data per month for up to a year upon the purchase of this phone.