Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun has been rousing fans on his Weibo account with post after post teasing every little feature of the upcoming Xiaomi Mi 9, set for launch this Wednesday.
From special edition cases to the Samsung AMOLED display, Game Turbo overclocking for the Snapdragon 855 chipset, a strong, resonant speaker and a lot more — even a special transparent variant of the Mi 8 Explorer Edition’s ilk.
But the big manifesto we’re taking note of was Jun’s announcement that the company wouldn’t be afraid of “removing the shackles of cost efficiency” to live up to its fans’ best expectations of its hardware. You can take a look at the full feed at the links below this story.
Here’s our interpretation of a machine-translated passage:
For example, the Mi 9’s three cameras have lots of material in them: six-piece lenses, closed-loop autofocus motors. And all versions of the Mi 9 use 5th-generation in-display fingerprint sensors.
The manufacturing and R&D costs of Mi 9 are definitely not cheap. We were looking forward to selling them at a particularly cheap price, but that’s completely out of the question now. Mi 9 is definitely a lot more expensive than Mi 8, so I hope everyone understands.
Reaction to the manifesto was mixed, though some did justify the move by noting the establishment of budget brand Redmi as a standalone company.
Jun later clarified to some disappointed readers that the company still intends to “move people’s hearts at a fair price” and that the Mi 9’s expensiveness will be strictly relative to the Mi 8. That said, Mi flagships don’t look to be getting cheaper from this point.