Hive Camera rivals Nest Cam with audio and motion detection, will also bark like a dog

Hive, the British Gas-backed smart home company has announced the latest addition to its collection of smart home devices called the Hive Camera. 

Following the likes of Nest with the Nest Cam, the Hive Camera will let Hive users monitor their home using their smartphone, meaning 24/7 coverage. Like rival cameras, the Hive Camera can be set to trigger motion or audio alerts, with these triggers recording video that’s stored locally allowing smartphone access, so you can see what’s been happening.

There will also be a two-way audio function, allowing you to monitor your sleeping baby, for example, providing comfort when they are distressed.

The Hive Camera will also allow zooming to get in closer to the action, with the ability to trigger noises to scare off a potential interloper, including a barking dog, police siren or alarm noise.

The new Hive Camera will join in with Hive’s other home devices, meaning that building a smart home is now a little more straightforward. The Hive Camera will be available for £129 as a standalone device, or can be included in the Hive Home Check package for a monthly subscription. 

The Hive Camera will be available from 29 June 2017.

Hive teases future launches of Hive Leak Sensor and Hive Active Hub devices

Hive has announced the Hive Camera, adding video to its smart home system, but there’s more to come in 2017. 

The company has confirmed that it will be launching the Hive Leak Sensor and the Hive Active Hub to expand the offering of the growing system.

Initially launching with a smart thermostat and heating controls, the Hive system now encompasses motion and door sensors, lights and the new camera, giving a whole range of home monitoring and automation options.

• Hive review: The British Gas system that’s the hub of all things

The Hive Leak Detector follows the likes of Honeywell and Grohe, aiming to help you catch water leaks. The Leak Detector monitors the water flow coming into your home, so if the taps are all off and the water is still flowing, you know there’s a problem.

The Hive Active Hub is a little more unique. It replaces your existing Hive Hub with a more powerful unit with an intelligent audio sensor. This audio sensor can then alert you to thing happening in your home – for example a smoke alarm going off. 

These new additions to the Hive portfolio will be available in Autumn 2017 and we expect he hear more about them closer to launch.

Vertu signs deal with TCL to produce line of super advanced, super expensive smartphones

Vertu, the Paris-based, British phone manufacturer that specialises in super luxury, premium handsets, has signed a $40 million deal with TCL Communication, the company responsible for making BlackBerry devices.

• Vertu Constellation is a luxury handmade smartphone with a 5.5-inch sapphire crystal display
• Inside Vertu: Welcome to the world of luxury smartphones

It will be using advanced, innovative TCL technologies in a new line of phones. Each of the run of 30,000 will be handcrafted in the UK and cost upwards from £7,500 a pop.

Vertu was acquired by entrepreneur Hakan Uzan in mid-March of this year for £50 million, and the TCL deal is the first struck since his arrival. It should ensure Vertu phones are always as technology sound on the inside as they are opulent on the out.

Uzan hinted that the TCL partnership won’t be the last, either, saying that he plans to make many “considerable investments” in the future. He added: “TCL Communication is a valued partner of Vertu and we hope that this will be the start of a prosperous new chapter in our relationship”.

TCL is naturally pleased with the deal too, with Alain Lejeune, Senior Vice President saying: “Combining our advanced smartphone technology with Vertu’s superb craftsmanship and commitment to superior design and performance, it will help create an outstanding experience for its discerning customers”.

We can expect to see new products in the UK, France, China, Asia, Russia, Western Europe and the Middle East following the implementation of TCL tech around September this year.

AT&T offers state governments its emergency LTE network

FirstNet’s priority LTE network for first responders is a long time coming. Now that its deal with AT&T means the project is finally moving forward, some states’ firemen and EMTs might have a dedicated network for communication very, very soon. The partners have begun presenting US states and territories with individual State Plans detailing what they’ll get. Each State plan comes fully funded and won’t cost local governments additional financial resources, but governors can still choose to opt out if they want to build their own network and to conjure up their own plans.

In fact, there’s already a consortium of companies, including Intel, Fujitsu, Ericsson and Nokia, that’s offering to work with states that choose to opt out. Thus far, eight states have reportedly submitted a request to build their own alternative first responder network. The rest can spend up to 45 days reviewing their State plans.

AT&T will build the network for the states that choose to opt in and will maintain it for the next 25 years. If everything goes well, responders in those locations will have dedicate access to the network by the end of the year.

Source: FirstNet

Nokia launches new digital health products as Withings name fades

Nokia is ready to be a consumer brand again. Of course, to many, it never stopped. Even as its phone business changed hands to Microsoft and then to HMD Global, the Nokia brand never really died. So much so that HMD Global’s latest line of phones still bear the Nokia name, despite having nothing to do with Nokia itself. But it was its purchase of Withings that signified Nokia’s eventual return to the consumer market. Now, that time is here. As of today, the Withings name will be replaced by Nokia. And, to go along with this transition, Nokia is announcing three new products: A BMI WiFi scale, a soft-cuff blood pressure monitor and a whole new app.

Let’s start with that scale. It’s called Nokia Body and is a new addition to the existing line of digital Withings scales, which now go under different names: Withings Body is now Nokia Body Plus (it measures body fat) while Withings Body Cardio is now Nokia Body Cardio (it measures body fat in addition to cardiovascular health). While the Body Cardio and the Body Plus cost more than $100 each, the new Nokia Body will retail for only $59.95 (£55), making it the cheapest scale in Nokia’s lineup. That’s because the Body only tracks your weight and nothing else. It does offer BMI (body mass index) insights and of course it still has WiFi and Bluetooth so you can sync your data easily with the app, but it doesn’t have the sensors of the higher-end products. Still, at under $60, that’s certainly one of the most affordable smart scales out there, and could prove to be a great entry-level product.

Next is the Nokia BPM+, which is a much softer and more portable version of Withings existing blood pressure monitor. While the older product has a hard plastic curve that you have to wrap around your arm, the new BPM+ has a cuff made of softer material. This not only makes it more comfortable to wear, it also rolls up into a more compact shape, allowing you to stash the BPM+ in your purse or bag for on-the-go monitoring. According to Nokia, the BPM+ measures systolic and diastolic blood pressure and heart rate, and is both FDA-cleared and medical CE approved. The BPM+ will be available for $129.95 (£115).

Last but not least is the brand new Health Mate app, which has been reimagined from the ground up to be the centerpiece in Nokia’s new digital health strategy. The app will work across all of Nokia’s new products as well as all of Withings’ existing lineup, which means that previous Withings customers won’t be left in the dust.

The first thing you’ll notice is that the app has a whole new minimalist user interface that is simpler and easier to use. Gone is the traditional menu system; instead, you navigate the app through five tabs at the bottom. You can view your timeline to see how you’ve progressed, your latest synced data, a list of your different devices and your personal Nokia profile. But the most important improvement to the app is the addition of new wellness programs that are tailored to your personal health goals.

At launch, the new Health Mate app will ship with five such programs: Sleep Smarter, Better Body, Pregnancy Tracker, Healthier Heart and the Leaderboard. According to Nokia, these programs were developed by recognized health professionals to help you sleep better, manage weight and fat mass, control blood pressure, control weight gain during pregnancy and simply get more active. Most of the programs last eight weeks, while others, like the pregnancy one for example, can take up to nine months.

With the addition of coaching programs, Nokia hopes to provide actionable insights, which has so far been the missing link with most activity tracking apps. For example, if you’re having trouble losing weight, the coach might ask you to start a food diary. Or it might give you a specific task that week, like taking the staircase instead of the elevator. “This helps users reach their very specific goals,” says Cedric Hutchings, Nokia’s VP of Digital Health, who also happens to be the former Withings CEO.

“Some people draw value from the feedback loop,” he says, referring to activities like step-counting and calorie-counting. “But we wanted to ask, what’s the next step?” He hopes that by adding these coaching programs, Nokia’s health products will reach a far wider audience than just techies who are obsessed with fitness tracking. “We’re building technology that fulfills human needs, not just for geeks or the health-obsessed,” he says.

It all adds up to a very important time for Nokia as it pivots into the digital health realm. Indeed, starting today, Withings as a brand is essentially gone. Withings.com will redirect to Nokia.com, and Withings products are now Nokia products. Every consumer-facing Withings touch point in the world will now have the Nokia name. The lone exception appears to be the Withings Aura sleep tracker, which is getting discontinued.

It’s a big change, but Hutchings is optimistic. “Nokia is already a widely known global brand,” he says. “The global awareness is hugely positive. We’re recognized for our trust and reliability.” According to Hutchings, when the company did consumer focus studies several months ago, 80 percent of those surveyed thought Nokia already had a digital health brand. “They didn’t even know about the Withings purchase; they just assumed Nokia was already in the space.”

Most of Nokia’s new digital health line — including the newly announced BMI WiFi scale and the BPM+ — are available right now from Nokia.com, Best Buy, Amazon and Bed Bath & Beyond, and will be available in retailers such as Target, CVS and Apple stores later this year. The only exception is the Nokia Steel HR (previously known as the Withings Steel HR), which will launch later this fall.

Tech Hunters: Refreshing Casio’s classic calculator watch

Thanks to the rise of Fitbits, Apple Watches and other smart trackers, wearables are the new frontier of fashion, often mixing cutting-edge technology with the latest designer trends. However, they aren’t a new idea: companies like Casio have been doing the same since the 1980s.

Cast your mind back and try to remember the digital Casio watches of yesteryear. Chances are you’ll land on the Casio C-80, the original “calculator watch.” Billed as “the watch that replaces everything,” the C-80 — with its tiny rubber buttons — shunned the stylus prized by watch makers like Citizen and Seiko at the time. It also made way for newer Data Bank models that could convert currencies, store phone numbers and, like today’s Apple Watch, read your pulse.

In 1980, you’d pay $75 for the C-80, which is about £185 in today’s money. Fast forward to today and the vintage timepiece can fetch upwards of £400, if it’s been kept in mint condition. Casio has released a ton of other calculator watches since the C-80, but they’ve become a bit boring. Julia Hardy meets up with Jonah Ripley to see if we can make the retro smartwatch a little more 21st century.

‘The One Device’ Explores the Creation of the iPhone, the Technology That Went Into It, and More

As we noted last week, today marks the release of The One Device: The Secret History of the iPhone, a new book from Motherboard editor Brian Merchant chronicling the development of the original iPhone. I’ve had a chance to read through the book before its launch, and overall it’s an entertaining read, although it comes up a bit short in its promise to unveil the secret history of the landmark device.

The One Device is really a book in two parts, and the part directly covering the development of the original iPhone is actually only about 30 percent of the book, broken up into four chapters interspersed throughout. The remainder of the book covers topics that are related to the iPhone, but which are in most cases separate from the direct early iPhone history.

In the four chapters that cover the development of the iPhone, Merchant weaves together his own interviews with a number of engineers who worked on the original iPhone with tidbits and quotes pulled from other sources such as executives’ testimony in the Samsung trial, Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs, and Brett Schlender and Rick Tetzeli’s Becoming Steve Jobs. Many of the members of the original iPhone team have left Apple over the past ten years, so some of those key former employees including Bas Ording, Richard Williamson, Imran Chaudhri, and the colorful Andy Grignon were willing to talk to Merchant about their time working on the project.

There are some interesting details about early work on multi-touch inspired by Wayne Westerman’s FingerWorks technology that was eventually acquired by Apple, Steve Jobs’ obsession with secrecy on the project that led to the team winning an internal “innovation award” at Apple’s annual “Top 100” retreat even though the project they working on couldn’t be revealed to the those in attendance, and the trials and tribulations faced by the small initial team working under signifiant pressure.

“That project broke all of the rules of product management,” a member of the original iPhone group recalls. “It was the all-star team — it was clear they were picking the top people out of the org. We were just going full force. None of us had built a phone before; we were figuring it out as we went along. It was the one time it felt like design and engineering were working together to solve these problems. We’d sit together and figure it out. It’s the most influence over a product I’ve ever had or ever will have.”

The “secret history” outlined in these chapters feels a bit on the light side, and it left me wishing Merchant could have dug into more detail on it. That’s understandably a difficult task given Apple’s penchant for secrecy that keeps many of those with direct knowledge off limits and others who were able to talk still limited in what they felt comfortable disclosing, but I was still hoping for a bit more.

The bulk of the book covers topics that are more ancillary to the iPhone’s development, areas such as raw material mining in Bolivia and Chile, working conditions in Foxconn’s Chinese facilities, and some of the additional history on multi-touch. Background on ARM processors, lithium-ion battery technology, and Corning’s Gorilla Glass help to fill things out, while a fairly extensive interview with Tom Gruber, one of the founders of Siri, helps the reader understand where Apple’s personal assistant came from.

Merchant spices up these chapters with his own first-hand experiences gained by traveling to many of the locations, offering not only vivid descriptions of the locations themselves but also in-person interviews with some of the innovators responsible for the technological leaps that eventually enabled the development of the iPhone.

Overall, the book reveals only a few new tidbits and insights on the actual creation of the iPhone, but it’s still interesting to hear some of these details shared directly by those who were there. Combine those stories with the background chapters on many of the components and technologies that have made their way into the iPhone, and for those reasons alone The One Device is a worthy read. It’s a nice overview for those who may not be steeped in the history of Apple and its devices, but it left me wishing for more depth in the areas that mattered most.

The One Device: The Secret History of the iPhone launches today and is available from Amazon, the iBooks Store [Direct Link], and other retailers.
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40% Discount on Audeze SINE Headphones With DAC Lightning Cable Ends June 21

High-end audio maker Audeze is currently offering 40 percent off the suggested retail price of its SINE closed-back on-ear headphones, including the company’s own all-digital CIPHER Lightning cable.

The award-winning Audeze SINE cans feature proprietary planar magnetic drivers for improved dynamics and frequency response, are lightweight (300 grams), and fold flat for travel use.

The premium leather headphones also carry Apple’s Made for iPhone specification, which means users can plug them in with a Lightning connector for higher quality audio than offered by a 3.5mm jack or a Bluetooth connection.

With that in mind, Audeze’s discount on its SINE headphones includes the optional CIPHER Lightning cable, which houses a digital signal processor, digital-to-analog converter (DAC), microphone, and headphone amplifier.

Using the promo code SUMMER17 during checkout, customers can pick up a pair of SINE headphones with CIPHER Lightning cable for $299 (usually $499), or SINE with standard cable for $249 (usually $449).

The offer ends June 21 and the promo code only works on the Audeze website. Free standard shipping is included on all orders for customers in the U.S., including Hawaii and Alaska.

Tags: discounts, Audeze
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Nokia Completes Withings Rebrand With Two New Connected Health Products

Withings on Tuesday completed its rebrand to the Nokia label, following news of the buyout last spring, and as part of the transition two new connected health products have been released under the Nokia name.

The Nokia Body ($60) is a new connected Wi-Fi scale featuring readouts for weight, BMI, body fat and water percentage plus bone and mass, while the Nokia BPM+ ($130) is a small blood pressure cuff with Bluetooth. Both products appear to be slight variations on Withings devices, but with lower price tags.

The Withings Body Cardio scale is still available under the new Nokia branding, as are the Withings Steel watch and Withings Go fitness trackers, now called the Nokia Steel and Nokia Go. Older products like the Aura sleep monitor alarm clock and the Thermo thermometer will also remain available.

Other Withings products like the Steel HR will return later in the year under the Nokia rebrand, with some of the portfolio discontinued. Nokia health products can be purchased at health.nokia.com.

Nokia has also refreshed the Withings Health Mate app, which communicates with the devices to offer users detailed analytics on their weight, activity, sleep, and blood pressure. New app sections include eight-week wellness programs such as Sleep Smarter, Pregnancy Tracker, and Healthier Heart.

Nokia announced the rebrand earlier this year at the Mobile World Congress, after the company acquired the French health tracking firm in 2015 for an estimated $192 million.

Tags: Withings, Nokia
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Xiaomi Mi 6 review: A new beginning

If you’re willing to look past the lack of a 3.5mm jack, the Mi 6 is a fantastic phone.

Quick take:

The Mi 6 gets a lot of things right — powerful hardware in the form of a Snapdragon 835, dual rear cameras with 2x optical zoom, and a gorgeous metal-and-glass design, all at a price that’s nearly half that of the Galaxy S8. The phone isn’t without its drawbacks: availability is limited to China, and there’s no 3.5mm jack. That said, the Mi 6 is Xiaomi’s best showing yet.

The good

• Snapdragon 835
• Excellent display
• Great design
• Exciting dual cameras
• Android 7.1.1 Nougat

The bad

• No 3.5mm jack
• Availability
• No microSD slot
• Limited LTE bands

Xiaomi Mi 6 Full review

Xiaomi saw a resurgence in 2016 on the back of strong sales in India and China from its entry-level Redmi series. Eager to continue the momentum, the manufacturer course-corrected its strategy at the end of last year, now focusing on offline sales to boost growth.

OPPO and Vivo relied on a similar strategy to amass millions of customers over the last two years, with the two manufacturers accounting for over 13% of the global handset market. Xiaomi doesn’t have the production line facilities or the resources to make its phones available at thousands of retail stores, so the brand is being smart about its offline strategy. Over the next two years, Xiaomi is looking to establish over 100 Mi Home stores in China, exclusive storefronts showcasing the best the brand has to offer.

One of the reasons Xiaomi can sell its devices for so low is because of its manufacturing process. Instead of making millions of devices at a time, it makes phones in smaller production runs, giving the brand the ability to eke out more profits over the course of a phone’s lifecycle as component costs come down.

While this strategy has paid dividends in the budget segment with the Redmi series, Xiaomi hasn’t fared so well in the mid-range tier with the Mi and Mi Note devices. The manufacturer is looking to change that with the Mi 6, a phone that according to the brand is a culmination of over seven years’ worth of effort. Has it paid off? It’s time to find out.

Xiaomi Mi 6 Specs

Operating System	MIUI 8.2 based on Android 7.1.1 Nougat
Display	5.15-inch 1080p (1920×1080) IPS LCD panel3D curved glass428ppi pixel density
SoC	Octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 835Four Kryo 280 cores at 2.45GHzFour Kryo280 cores at 1.90GHz10nm
GPU	Adreno 540
RAM	6GB
Storage	128GB/256GB
Rear camera	12MP camera with 4-axis OIS and f/1.8 lensSecond 12MP camera with f/2.6 lens and 2x zoomdual-tone LED flash, PDAF4K video recording
Front shooter	8MP1080p video recording
Connectivity	LTE with VoLTEWi-Fi 802.11 ac, Bluetooth 5.0, NFC, GPS, GLONASSUSB-C, IR blaster
Battery	3350mAh batteryFast charging (5V/2A)
Fingerprint	Front fingerprint sensorQualcomm Sense ID
Dimensions	145.2 x 70.5 x 7.5mm
Weight	168g
Colors	Black, Ceramic Black, Blue, White

About this review

I (Harish Jonnalagadda) am writing this review after using the Xiaomi Mi 6 for two weeks in Hyderabad, India. The phone is a Chinese retail unit provided for review by Xiaomi and comes with the requisite LTE bands for India.

I relied on Jio’s 4G network for cellular connectivity throughout the duration of the review. The phone came with the Chinese ROM out of the box, and I flashed the global beta MIUI 8 ROM — based on Android 7.1.1 Nougat — as soon as it became available. Xiaomi rolled out several updates over the course of the review period, with the latest build (MIUI 8 7.6.8) bringing several stability fixes.

Xiaomi Mi 6 Hardware

From the back, the Mi 6 looks stunning. Xiaomi switched to a glass back last year with the Mi 5 — and then moved to a metal finish with the Mi 5s — but the design aesthetic of the Mi 6 is the most polished yet from the manufacturer. The 3D glass curves on all sides, merging with the stainless steel frame to create a seamless transition. The effect is more pronounced on the ceramic edition, but the black color variant I’m using also looks great.

The 5.15-inch screen, placement of the power and volume buttons, and the rounded edges make it easy to hold and use the Mi 6 one-handed. An interesting addition with the Mi 6 is a speaker that’s embedded in the earpiece. As is common on most Xiaomi phones, there’s an IR blaster located at the top of the device.

The Mi 6 finally has a decent amount of heft to it, and it feels great to hold. The one downside of the glass finish is that the phone is prone to sliding off surfaces. Three days after I started using it, the phone slid right off my nightstand and fell to the floor f4 feet below. Thankfully, it came away without any damage to the glass back — Gorilla Glass 5 hard at work there.

While the glass itself is fairly resilient to tumbles, it doesn’t weather scratches the same way. Over the course of the last month, the phone managed to pick up a litany of microscratches, both on the back and front. The standard color variant hides the scratches fairly well, but you’ll need to buy a case if you want your Mi 6 to continue looking pristine.

The Mi 6 is Xiaomi’s best design to date.

While more and more vendors are switching to QHD panels on their flagships as a way of differentiation, Xiaomi is more than content using Full HD screens. We’ve seen that last year on the Mi 5, Mi 5s, and the 5.7-inch Mi Note 2, and the situation is no different this time around with the Mi 6. For a device with a 5.15-inch screen, Full HD is more than adequate — a QHD panel would have created undue strain on the chipset and would ultimately be detrimental to battery life.

The LCD panels Xiaomi uses are some of the best currently available, boasting excellent brightness (it hits 600nits in Auto mode) and color accuracy. However, it just doesn’t match the latest AMOLED panels from Samsung when it comes to color saturation.

The screen also manages to get sufficiently dim for night-time reading — there’s a blue light filter included to prevent strain on your eyes, and you can configure the feature to work on selected apps. As is always the case with Xiaomi phones, you get plenty of options to customize the display to your liking — there are three modes to choose from for the color saturation and contrast levels.

You can also set up a double tap gesture to power up the screen. One issue with the display is the lack of polarization — if you’re using the phone outdoors with sunglasses on, you won’t be able to see the screen.

Xiaomi was the first to roll out Qualcomm’s Sense ID last year in the Mi 5s, and the Mi 6 continues that trend. Unlike a traditional fingerprint sensor — which scans in 2D — Qualcomm’s implementation utilizes ultrasound to take a 3D map of your fingerprints, leading to a higher degree of accuracy.

The system had its quirks on the Mi 5s, but there were no such issues on the Mi 6. The always-on sensor was always quick to authenticate, and the benefit with Sense ID is that it works even when your fingers are wet or moist.

Performance

Running Qualcomm’s latest chipset under the hood, the Mi 6 has no issues when it comes to everyday performance. The phone blazes through everyday tasks with ease, and there’s more than enough power available for even the most demanding games. The phone comes with 6GB of RAM as standard, and while you don’t necessarily need that much memory, it helps in making the phone future-proof.

You’ll be able to pick up the Mi 6 with either 64GB or 128GB of internal storage, and the options available should make up for the fact that there isn’t a microSD slot on the phone. That means you do get slots for two SIM card slots. You also get Wi-Fi ac with 2×2 MIMO, with a maximum throughput of 867Mbit.

Read: Xiaomi Mi 6 benchmarks

The Mi 6 has Qualcomm’s Category 16 LTE modem, paving the way for Gigabit LTE speeds on mobile. The Mi Note 2 was the first Xiaomi phone to offer global LTE bands — over 37 bands for worldwide LTE coverage. While it would have been great to see the Mi 6 offer similar connectivity, that isn’t the case. The phone has just nine LTE bands — 1/3/5/7/8/38/39/40/41 — so if you’re interested in using the Mi 6 outside of China, make sure the phone supports your carrier before making a purchase.

It looks like global LTE bands will be limited to the Mi Note series, as Xiaomi revealed that it would launch another device later this year with global LTE coverage.

USB-C audio

And now for the elephant in the room — the Mi 6 doesn’t have a 3.5mm jack. Xiaomi says that it got rid of the jack to make room for a larger battery and to make the device splash-resistant. Samsung and LG have managed to offer IP68 water resistance with their phones with the 3.5mm jack intact, whereas the Mi 6 doesn’t even have an IP rating in spite of the removal of the audio jack.

To make matters worse, the brand doesn’t make any USB-C headphones yet. At least when LeEco ditched the headphone jack last year in the Le Max 2, it offered a pair of decent quality USB-C earbuds. With the Mi 6, all you get is a USB-to-3.5mm adapter that you’ll lose in about 3 seconds if you’re not careful.

The issue isn’t as dire if you’ve already moved to wireless audio, but if you have a lot of wired audio products lying around, get ready to use a dongle to enjoy your tunes. It’s not an elegant workaround, and the removal of the 3.5mm jack is the one major drawback in an otherwise great phone.

Battery life

I had a lot of issues with the battery life on the Mi 5 last year, but thankfully that isn’t an issue on the Mi 6. The phone manages to last a day on a full charge, with usage spread across a few hours of web browsing, streaming music and videos, and navigation on cellular data.

I routinely saw over four hours of screen-on time from the Mi 6, a considerable improvement over both the Mi 5 and Mi 5s. Of course, the uptick in battery life is directly attributable to a larger 3,350mAh battery, 150mAh more than that of the Mi 5s. When you do need to top up, you’ll be able to leverage Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 3.0 to get a 50% charge in just over 45 minutes.

Xiaomi Mi 6 Software

Xiaomi doesn’t have the best track record when it comes to platform updates, but in the case of the Mi 6, the manufacturer is offering Android 7.1.1 Nougat out of the box — a noticeable improvement from the Mi 5.

MIUI 8 has a ton of enhancements from last year, and while the version number hasn’t changed, it feels much more fluid and stable. That’s mainly due to the slew of updates Xiaomi continues to roll out on a bi-weekly basis. For all of its advantages, MIUI doesn’t have an app drawer, and Xiaomi isn’t likely to add one any time soon.

MIUI has picked up a lot of polish over the course of the last 12 months.

That said, there are a ton of features that augment the core Android experience, like the spam protection for calls and messages that’s built into the dialer and messaging apps. Usage models in Asia vary wildly from those in Western countries, and as a result you’ll see a lot of stuff in MIUI that won’t make a lot of sense if you’re using the phone in the U.S.

One such instance is the camera app, which tries to guess your gender and age in selfie mode. The feature has been present for several years, and while it doesn’t work all that well outside of China — it offered wildly varying estimates for me — it is baked into the camera app.

As for features that do work well, there’s a one-handed mode that you can easily access with a left-to-right swipe across the navigation keys, the ability to switch out the position of the back and overview buttons, scrolling screenshots, and more. A key utility is Dual Apps, which lets you run two instances of the same app. With the phone offering dual-SIM support, you’ll be able to use two WhatsApp or Facebook accounts from the same device.

Second Space offers similar functionality, but the feature allows you to set up a secondary profile with its own cache of data, allowing you to separate your work and private data. Overall, the user interface has picked up a ton of stability fixes, and all the issues I had with the Redmi Note 4 and last year’s Mi 5 have been fixed. Gmail notifications actually show up, and while MIUI continues to aggressively manage the memory, you can easily whitelist apps to run in the background. In short, this is the best iteration of MIUI in years.

Xiaomi Mi 6 Camera

The Mi 6’s biggest improvement over its predecessor is in the imaging department. The primary shooter holds its own next to the best cameras available today, and the secondary telephoto lens delivers 2x optical zoom.

The primary shooter is a 12-megapixel Sony IMX386 sensor with f/1.8 lens,1.25-micron pixels, and 4-axis OIS — the same that was used in last year’s Mi 5. The secondary 12MP camera uses Samsung’s S5K3M3 ISOCELL sensor, and offers an f/2.6 lens along with 1.0-micron pixels — there’s no OIS here.

The camera interface has toggles for HDR, 2x zoom, Portrait Mode, flash, and switching between still and video shooting modes. You get 12 live filters with live previews, and a bevy of shooting modes — Panorama, Beautify, Tilt Shift, Group mode, and Selfie. There’s also a manual mode that allows you to adjust the white balance, focus, exposure, and ISO.

Like the Mi 5, the Mi 6 takes detailed images in bright conditions. Where the camera on Xiaomi’s latest flagship differs is when shooting in low-light conditions — it’s no longer a hit-or-miss affair. The Portrait Mode is particularly interesting, as it allows you to leverage the dual camera system to blur the background, putting the subject in focus.

Xiaomi Mi 6 Bottom line

Simply put, the Mi 6 offers incredible value for its price. The phone has a stunning metal-and-glass design, along with build quality rivaling the best that Samsung and LG have to offer. It has powerful internals that outmatch flagships twice its price, and 6GB of RAM along with 128GB storage should be more than enough for most customers. The dual cameras add a new dimension, and the uptick in battery life is a welcome addition.

However, the same issues that plagued the Mi 5 also affect its successor — the Mi 6 won’t be available in Western markets, and the limited LTE bands make it a non-starter in the U.S. That said, the phone should be heading to India later this year — Xiaomi’s largest market outside of China. The lack of a 3.5mm jack is going to be a dealbreaker for potential customers, but as an overall package, the Mi 6 is one of the best Xiaomi phones to date.

Should you buy it Yes!

The Mi 6 is a well-designed phone with top-notch internals and a capable dual camera system. Combine that with the best iteration of MIUI we’ve seen in years and all-day battery life, and the Mi 6 continues Xiaomi’s tradition of offering great value-for-money phones.

The phone retails for the equivalent of $360 for the 64GB model and $420 in China for the 128GB model, but with sales limited to Xiaomi’s home market, you’ll have to rely on a third-party retailer to get your hands on one outside the country. Thankfully, GearBest is running a sale, where you can pick up the 64GB variant for $406 by using the code EGMI64.

See at GearBest