Xiaomi Mi 6 Review

Cameras

The Camera app on Xiaomi Mi 6 has been customised to reflect the advanced capabilities of its cameras. The home screen contains the usual flash and HDR options in the top left and right corner, respectively, but in the centre between them is positioned a shortcut to a special depth-of-field mode for portraits. It lets you shoot portraits of people (they shouldn't stand more than 2 meters away from the camera) and blur the background in a similar fashion to the bokeh of DSLR cameras. It is coupled with improved beauty mode that even recognises male and female faces and beautifies them accordingly. The camera supports 2x digital lossless zoom and this is what you see as a circle with 1x written in it. A short tap on the circle and you double the zoom. Below it is the Modes shortcut. It opens a new screen with a total of 10 modes, including Panorama, Timer, Audio, Manual, Straighten, Beautify, GroupShot, Tilt-shift, Square, and HHT. The Manual mode lets you adjust the white balance, focus, exposure, ISO, and lens (wide or telephoto). The GroupShot is back and allows you to make a selfie of a large group of people by taking multiple photos, from each of which you can select the best expression for every person on it. The modes for the video include Time laps and Slow motion. From the Modes menu, you can access the camera settings, which besides all else include picture quality, video resolution, gridlines, QR code scanning, etc. There's a list of filters placed to the left of the Modes shortcut and to its right is the camera switch. The front-camera is combined with the latest Smart Beauty 3.0 app. It contains a Smart function that offers three degrees of beautification effects as well as a Pro, which lets you adjust the slimming of the face, tone of the complexion and skin defects. The available modes for the secondary camera include Timer, Audio, Magic mirror, and GroupShot. Of course, the front-camera settings include picture and video quality options. The camera performance is aided by the 14-bit Qualcomm Spectra 180 ISP, built in the Snapdragon 835 chipset, which supports zero shutter lag, and offers smooth zoom, fast autofocus and true-to-life colours for improved image quality. As long as it concerns photo editing, once you snap a photo you can apply a filter, adjust the frame, enhance the image (saturation, contrast, sharpness, brightness), add a sticker or doodle on it.

Primary camera

Xiaomi Mi 6 is equipped with two rear cameras. The first one is a 12-megapixel Sony IMX386 wide-angle shooter with a 6-element lens, f/1.8 aperture, 1.25 μm pixel size and focal length (35 mm equivalent) of 22 mm. The second rear camera is a telephoto (long-focus) one and features a 12-megapixel Samsung S5K3M3 sensor with a 1.0 μm pixel size, a 5-element lens with a f/2.6 aperture, and focal length (35 mm equivalent) of 52 mm. In a telephoto lens, its physical length is shorter than the focal length. The primary camera provides 2x optical lossless zoom, 10x digital zoom, using an ISP algorithm and utilises a 4-axis OIS (optical image stabilisation). The latter achieves image stability via the accelerometer and gyroscope built in the device and providing a high-speed detection of 8 directions of jitter with a real-time drive micro motor. The work of the rear shooters is aided by a dual-tone LED flash and phase-detection AF. They can shoot 4K videos at 30 fps, 720p videos at 120 fps, and photos with a resolution of up to 4032 x 3024 pixels.

Secondary camera

The front camera of Xiaomi Mi 6 sports an 8-megapixel Sony IMX268 sensor, which is coupled with an 80° wide-angle lens with a f/2.0 aperture. It takes photos with a resolution of 3264 x 2448 pixels and shoots FHD videos at 30 fps.