The Xiaomi Mi 9T is arguably the best midrange smartphone in the market at the moment, all thanks to the top range hardware among other high specifications packed into a $400 premium body. Following the success of the PocoPhone F1, which saw the company embed high end specs in a smartphone on the midrange budget, the Mi 9T, also called Xiaomi K20 depending on your region is one that tops the list of the budget flagship.
Most budget phones are known to lack in areas like build materials, design, terrible cameras and display but the Mi 9T dispels all of those with the pretty glass and aluminium frame with curved tapered edges, all making up the premium design. The 3.5mm headphone jack is present at the top alongside a catchy pop up front camera with LED strip. The pop up camera is also embedded with the face unlock. This feature is pretty slow as you sometimes have to tap the phone before it works so I didn’t really use this and stuck to the fingerprint unlock.
If you missed the unboxing video, you can watch it below..
Screen size is 6.39-inch. The absence of a notch and front camera on the display offers an 86.1% screen-to- body ratio resulting to an almost bezel less 1080p AMOLD display. The display, which is a major highlight of the Mi 9T is sharp and bright, has small chin and provides an immersive viewing experience for great multimedia consumption. Located on the lower part of the display is the under-display fingerprint sensor beneath the screen. This works well, however you need to be place your finger correctly and at a specific pressure to unlock
Another feature of the Xiaomi Mi 9T is the 48MP AI triple camera set up which includes the telephoto lens and ultra wide lens. By default, the camera is set at 12MP and can be changed to 48MP if you choose to take pictures at a higher resolution. The camera modes include night mode, portrait mode, panorama, Pro mode where you can adjust ISO, white balance and slo mo recording. Pictures taken with the back camera are pretty decent especially under normal lighting conditions but you can sometimes experience a little bit of inconsistency under low light. Portrait mode has excellent subject separation and a very detailed selfies.
The Xiaomi Mi 9T runs on Xiaomi’s proprietary MUI over Android 9 Pie with a few customization option. From my experience with MUI, I can say that this is a very improved version and users can enjoy the experience. The MUI gestures are also pretty good, they allow you use the display in full screen mode thereby eliminating the standard navigation button below. Swiping up from within an app will take you home, swiping up and hold will open the recent tabs while a swipe from either the left or righ side of the screen wors as the back button. It is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 730 Soc, 6GB of RAM making app stays longer in memory and an internal storage of 128GB (64GB version is also available). Opening and switching between apps is fluid without lag, heavy games like Asphalt 9 runs smoothly without any hassle.
Battery life on the Mi 9T is great, the 4,000mAh gives me a full day normal or close to heavy use and still have up to about 30% left at the end of the day. The software optimization also helps to reduce power usage.
Amidst all of these impressive specifications, there are a few cons that need be mentioned, first is the fact that the phone is quite slippery, the speaker position too makes it easy to cover and sometimes the audio sounds muffled which doesn’t complement the great full screen video experience. There is no wireless charging, no water resistant feature but this doesn’t seem to take away the goodness in the device. So if you are looking to get a decent budget smartphone that still looks expensive and has features of a flagship, you might want to consider the Xiaomi Mi 9T.
