Xiaomi, a popular Chinese handset maker has finally launched its next flagship smartphone - Mi 8 at an annual product event in Shenzhen, on Thursday. Priced at Yuan 2699 (around Rs. 28,456 approx) for 6GB RAM variant, the new Xiaomi Mi 8 smartphone will be pitted against the likes of OnePlus 6, Samsung Galaxy S9+ and iPhone X. The new Mi 8 smartphone is launched as a successor to last year's Mi 6 that was introduced in April. The bigger variant featuring 6GB RAM and 128GB on board storage gets a price tag of Yuan 2999, which is approximately Rs. 31,600.

On the other hand, the top-end variant of the newly launched Mi 8 with 6GB RAM and 256GB internal storage is priced at Yuan 3299 (Rs. 34,700). As far as the design of the new Xiaomi Mi 8 flagship smartphone is concerned, it gets quite different look from that of Mi Mix 2S featuring metal design and glass at the back.

It comes with an iPhone X like notch on the 6.21-inch FHD+ AMOLED display featuring an aspect ratio of 18:7:9. The new Mi 8 is the very first device from the Chinese smartphone maker to feature a notch design language.

The smartphone is seen fitted with a wider display notch that houses advanced Infrared face unlock system that instantly unlocks the device with a glance at it. Moreover, the company also claims that the Face Unlock system will function in the dark as well and it can't be fooled by masks. Moving to the rear section of the smartphone, the device sports a vertically aligned dual camera module along with a fingerprint reader.

Running on the Mi 8 runs MIUI 10 based on Android Oreo, the smartphone comes powered by a Qualcomm's Snapdragon 845 SoC which is coupled with 6GB of RAM and up to 256GB of onboard memory storage.

For photography, the new flagship device from Xiaomi gets a dual camera at the rear featuring two 12MP sensors wherein primary sensor is a wide-angle lens whereas the other is a telephoto lens. The rear camera module comes with bunch of features like phase detection autofocus (PDAF), 4-axis optical image stabilization (OIS) and an LED flash. On the other hand, a 20MP front-facing shooter is also on offer with AI beautification and 3D portrait lighting for selfies and video calling.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on May 31, 2018 04:12 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).