Contents:
The phone also features a face unlock function, as it only has a standard camera on the front, it won't be as accurate or secure as the likes of the Mate 20 Pro with its depth sensor on the front. I did, however, find it worked well and generally prefer this unlock method over the in display fingerprint. Xiaomi appears to be quite proactive about releasing updates for their phone.
They have been particularly good with the Pocophone, and last years Mi 8 has received regular updates. However, even with our less favourable pricing, there is no denying that the Xiaomi Mi 9 is the most affordable flagship device available directly in the UK. It is worth noting that the Redmi K20 Pro has just been announced, its Chinese launch price is lower than the Mi 9 and is better specced in some areas, and less so in others.
If you want a flagship device on a budget then look no further than the Xiaomi Mi 9, it ticks nearly every box you would want from an affordable flagship. The biggest downside to it is the relatively small battery, a couple of years ago this would have been the standard size, but in the past year, we have seen a lot of companies jumping up to mAh options.
The inclusion of NFC is quite an essential addition for me and is something missing on the Pocophone. The current UK pricing is a little annoying, but it is what it is, and its still the cheapest flagship on the market, which is always going to guarantee a good review from me.
Last Updated on 29th May I am a UK tech blogger and have been in the industry for over 10 years now running Mighty Gadget, its sister sites and contributing to other sites around the web. I am passionate about all tech including mobile, wearable, and home automation. I am also a fitness fanatic so cover as much fitness tech as possible.
Follow me on Strava. Get the Mi 9 on contract from Vodafone.
Table of Contents. That's noticeable on the front camera particularly, where low-light selfies are a bit rubbish. Selfies from the megapixel camera do give you plenty of options though. Video is generous as Xiaomi hits major spec points. Good, clean 4K at either 30 or 60fps is offered, along with more conventional Full HD options, slow motion and timelapse.
There is video stabilisation, although it can't match the skills of Samsung of Sony in this regard, and it's not all that steady. Overall, you're getting a lot for your money in the cameras department.
There are phones just a little cheaper than the Mi 9 that don't get anywhere near this quality and that makes it really competitive. Most phones with this range of photography options cost at least a third more, so again, it's a highlight of the phone.
Xiaomi's biggest problem - and the biggest failing of the Mi 9 - is software. The company's first product was MIUI back in and it doggedly sticks to its Android skin , giving Android a huge makeover. That sees lots of bloatware, lots of apps you can uninstall, and a change to just about every facet of Google's Android.
A lot of this you can replace to make everything better. Using Google's own options will give you closer parity with your Google account - switching to Chrome, Messenger and Google Calendar is a start - but there's still a whole selection to round up into a folder called "junk", apps you can't delete. The experience is better than when we reviewed the Mi 8 as things get ironed out, but there are still bugs. It can't be removed and won't be used, so does leave you wondering who is actually making the decisions about what you have on your phone.
In the global version of MIUI, Mi Pay has been hidden because the payment service is not yet available in many global markets. The recent appearance of Mi Pay on some users' phones occurred erroneously as Xiaomi is preparing for its launch in India. We are working on the updates and will notify the users as soon as possible. We sincerely apologise for any inconvenience caused. At this price that's not too concerning, but there's no avoiding that, on the whole, the OnePlus software experience is better, and the OnePlus 7 will likely be a huge competitor.
The Xiaomi Mi 9 is one of the most compelling phones we've seen from Xiaomi. Although the design isn't a revolution from the Mi 8, it does feel like it's a lot more advanced. The camera offers more fun with that wide-angle lens, the in-display fingerprint scanner keeps up with the latest trends, and the display notch and handling is decent. Samsung has the better phone, but is that much better?
Furthermore, with the introduction of the bigger-battery Mi 9T Pro, the Mi 9 can be nabbed for an even better price, making it a potential bargain with little compromise.
Xiaomi's natural rival is OnePlus, which does go one step beyond in its handling of software. But if you don't want to buy a OnePlus 7T then Xiaomi's Mi 9 makes for a stellar and now slightly cheaper alternative that's worth considering. This article was originally published in March and has been updated to reflect its full review status. If you want the best phone out there at the moment, then you'll be hard-pressed to find anything better than the Huawei P30 Pro. Evolving the offering of the Mate 20 Pro, Huawei offers power with huge battery performance, as well as a camera that's hard to beat.
It offers excellent zoom and great low light shooting, but Huawei's prices now match the likes of Samsung - meaning it's a lot more expensive than the Mi 9.
The Honor 20 is likely to be more reasonable - but you'll have to wait until later in May for that. In outdoor images, noise is very well under control and there is very little luminance noise visible in areas of plain color, such as in the blue sky in the samples below. The situation is similar for the 5 lux low-light shots below. Most common artifacts, such as ringing, chromatic aberrations, and ghosting are very well under control on the Xiaomi Mi 9. The effect is very visible in the bright backgrounds in the images below.
We also observed a kind of dark halo along some high-contrast edges. In the Mi 9 sample below, the wall to the right of the window is very dark before it increases to a brighter tone. In the iPhone XS Max image on the right, which is much closer to the real scene, the tones of the wall are much more consistent. On the plus side, the Mi 9 controls flare much better than the iPhone in this particular scene. The Xiaomi Mi 9 achieves the best Flash score of all devices we have tested so far, thanks to good exposure with very little vignetting , excellent repeatability , well-controlled noise levels, and fairly accurate white balance when shooting both with flash only or when using the flash with 5 lux of ambient tungsten illumination.
The Xiaomi Mi 9 comes with a 2x optical zoom lens and uses a multi-frame super-resolution algorithm to optimize image quality for transitions between the 1x and 2x zoom settings. The result is one of the best scores for Zoom in our test database, albeit not quite on same the level as the class-leading Huawei Mate 20 Pro.
Overall, the Xiaomi zoom performs very well in all conditions, but images are noisier than on the Huawei and artifacts are sometimes visible.
In outdoor conditions, detail rendering is good even at medium- and long-range zoom settings, but some luminance noise is visible. The Huawei Mate 20 Pro is capable of capturing a much cleaner image in dim conditions, though. The Xiaomi Mi 9 triple-camera also works very well in Bokeh mode, achieving the second-best score to date. Results are very repeatable and the simulated bokeh has a good shape, along with very smooth blur transitions into the background, although on occasion the blur gradient in the foreground can change a little abruptly.
Foreground subject isolation from the background is generally very good, but some motion blur is visible on moving subjects in the scene. Spotlights in the background are rendered with good contrast, but the shape is not circular, resulting in a slightly unnatural effect. At 99 points, the Xiaomi Mi 9 achieves the best score for Video we have seen so far, making it the current go-to device for mobile videographers. The overall video score is derived from a number of sub-scores in the same way as the Photo score: Exposure 85 , Color 91 , Autofocus 94 , Texture 70 , Noise 78 , Artifacts 80 , and Stabilization This gives the device a distinct advantage in the texture and detail department.
As you can see in the graph below, in video mode the camera captures very good texture in bright light. Detail levels reduce with light levels, but the camera still captures good textures under interior lighting, and edge detail is consistently good down to low light.
Overall, the Mi 9 is the best phone for video texture we have tested so far. The camera not only manages to capture excellent video detail, it is also capable of keeping noise low across most illumination levels.