ISSUE 67 • ANDROID ADVISOR 95BUYING GUIDEsome of today’s top smartphones. Unsurprisingly,
it is significantly faster than Mi 8 and the 4G Mi Mix
3 with its newer processor, but the fact it was able
to smash Galaxy S10 and S10+ out of the park is
something to be proud of for a phone that is little
more than half the price.
We also ran the Geekbench battery life test on the
Mi 9, in which it recorded 9 hours, 57 minutes. That’s
significantly higher than Mi 8 (7 hours, 10 minutes)
and also above competitors such as OnePlus 6T
(7 hours, 26 minutes) and Galaxy S10 (4 hours, 47
minutes). In the real world, this means getting a full
day’s life from Mi 9 shouldn’t be a problem.
When the battery is depleted the Mi 9 supports up
to 27-watt wired or 20-watt wireless charging, but
Xiaomi supplies only an 18-watt European (two-pin)
plug in the box so we did not test this. The company
claims you’ll get up to 40 percent in 30 minutes
wirelessly, or up to 100 percent in 90 minutes.
Mi9 alsocoversallconnectivitybaseswith
dual-frequency GPS, the aforementioned IR blaster,
NFC, OTG, Bluetooth 5.0 and Wi-Fi. It’s a dual-
SIM, dual-standby phone, with both SIMs able to
connect to 4G networks.
Cameras
In common with Mi 8 there’s a 20Mp selfie camera
at the front of the Mi 9, though we were kind of
expecting the 24Mp selfie camera from Mi 8 Lite to
make an appearance. No bother – it’s a great camera,
and good for selfies and video chat, though as on
previous models the various beautifying features