Xiaomi Mi 8 Lite

Xiaomi has released two mid-range smartphones in the Mi 8 lineup: first, the Mi 8 SE, and now the Mi 8 Lite. Let’s try to establish which one is better than the others.
From a design standpoint, the Mi 8 Lite is pretty much what you’d expect to see in a new smartphone – with glass panels on the front and back. The rounded corners create a sharp edge where the front glass meets the side glass panels. The fingerprint reader is rear mounted and, as you would expect from Xiaomi, it is blazing fast and consistent. One handed use is slightly difficult with the slippery glass, and Xiaomi provides a silicone cover to address this. There is no IP rating for water and dust resistance, which forces you to be on alert with your phone close to water.

The phone has a Front/rear glass and aluminium frame (7000 series) which is a stellar design choice.
The phone has its shortcomings though, having neither a 3.5mm jack nor an IP68 rating for dust and water resistance.

The phone has a lot going for it, with a 6.21 inch Super AMOLED screen which supports HDR10 display and DCI-P3 – it’ll certainly make looking at your phone a pleasurable experience.

For audio, the Mi 8 Lite has a bottom speaker which runs pretty loud against the competitors in the market. There is no audio jack and a type C adapter is required to plug in headphones.

The Mi8 Lite runs Android 8.1 Oreo with Xiaomi custom MIUI 9.6 on top. All apps are kept on the home screen, though without the option of an app-drawer. On the left is the panel for shortcuts to frequently visited apps, along with Mi notes and a calendar. Gesture-based navigation, which is comparable to the iPhone iOS, is also available for anyone wishing for a different experience.

The phone runs on a Qualcomm SDM660 Snapdragon 660 (14 nm) with either 4GB or 6GB RAM. It benchmarks the performance pretty well with the other phones running this chip.

The Mi 8 Lite has 12 MP f/1.9 aperture primary camera at the back without OIS. There is a 5 MP front camera as well with a depth sensor. The daylight shots on the Mi 8 Lite look similar to the Mi 8 SE which has a higher price point. Further, the dynamic range is limited – the HDR function helps with this quite a bit, despite not being absolutely reliable. In portrait mode, shots are a mixed bag, with some turning out well while others are abysmal. The primary reason for this is that the subject separation is not good enough to figure out disturbances in the background. In low light, there is quite a bit of noise and image stabilisation doesn’t necessarily get the best out of the picture. In this regard, switching on the AI helps with the noise suppression and get better results.

The Mi 8 Lite is able to capture video in 4K at 30fps, though the quality is definitely underwhelming; there is good sharpness but it lacks contrast, with there being visible noise. The EIS fails to help stabilise 4k videos as well as it does 1080p videos.

The non-removable Li-Po 3350 mAh battery is average and runs an endurance battery life of 77 hours. Support for quick charge 3.0 is available, however, the adapter being provided by Xiaomi with this model does not have that facility.

With the Xiaomi Mi 8 Lite, we get a solid glass build, good performance with the Snapdragon 660, and 4K video recording. Compared to more expensive Mi8 SE you do lose out on the AMOLED screen and the power of a Snapdragon 710 but you do get a bigger screen. In all honesty, the impression of this phone is about average and there are many other options in the market for this price, but this phone stands on its own with plenty of amazing features.