Xiaomi Mi 8 SE review

The Xiaomi Mi 8 Explorer edition clearly and quite justifiably soaked up all the spotlight within Xiaomi's latest flagship lineup. However, as the smoke clears, the value Mi 8 SE is the one gathering fan gazes, left and right. Indeed, on paper, it offers quite the package, without breaking the bank. In some ways, it's almost too good to be true.

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Full Specification

Whether you like Xiaomi or not, it's hard to deny the Chinese OEM's rise to prominence over its relatively short eight-year lifespan. As far as celebrations go, the number-skipping Mi 8 lineup is pretty impressive, for more than a few reasons.
The top-tier Explorer edition, with its under-display fingerprint reader and advanced laser facial scanning tech, sadly hasn't made a visit to the office, thus far. Still, we got to review its vanilla Mi 8 sibling, which left a pretty good overall impression.

Enter the Mi 8 SE - the proverbial "Lite" variant in the lineup, with a pretty heavy punch.

Xiaomi Mi 8 SE specs
Body: Metal frame, glass back, Corning Gorilla Glass back; 147.3x73.1x7.5mm, 164g.
Display: 5.88" Super AMOLED, 2,244x1,080px resolution, 18.7:9 aspect ratio, 423ppi; HDR 10 and DCI-P3 compliant.
Rear camera: Primary 12MP, 1.4µm pixel size, f/1.9 aperture, dual pixel PDAF, gyro-EIS; Secondary 5MP, f/2.0 aperture, 1.12µm pixel size, no autofocus, depth sensor. 2160p/30fps, 1080p/120fps slow motion.
Front camera: 20MP, 1.0µm pixel size, f/2.0 aperture; 1080p/30fps video recording.
OS: Android 8.1 Oreo; MIUI 9.5 custom overlay.
Chipset: Qualcomm Snapdragon 710: octa-core CPU (2x2.2 GHz Cortex-A75 & 6x1.7 GHz Cortex-A55), Adreno 616 GPU.
Memory: 4GB/6GB of RAM; 64GB storage; no microSD slot.
Battery: 3,120mAh Li-Po (sealed); QuickCharge 3.0 fast charging.
Connectivity:Dual-SIM; LTE-A, Cat.15/13 (800Mbps/150Mbps); USB-C; Wi-Fi a/b/g/n/ac; GPS; Bluetooth 5.0, IR blaster
Misc: Rear-mounted fingerprint reader; single down-firing speaker; no 3.5mm jack.