As expected, Chinese phone maker Xiaomi is the first company to launch a smartphone powered by Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 888 processor.

The Xiaomi Mi 11 is up for pre-order in China with prices starting at 3,999 RMB, or about $610 US.

Aside from having Qualcomm’s fastest smartphone chip to date, the phone also has a 120 Hz display, an 108MP primary camera, and Harman Kardon audio. It’s also Xiaomi’s first flagship phone to ship without a charger in the box. Taking a page out of Apple’s playbook, the company expects you to either use an existing charger or pay separately for a new one.

That said, charging is hardly an afterthought. The phone supports 55W fast wired charging, 50W fast wireless charging, and 10W reverse wireless charging in case you want to use the Mi 11’s 4,600 mAh battery to charge other gadgets on the go.

A 55W wired fast charger with GaN technology (for a compact size), sells for about $15.

The Xiaomi Mi 11 has a 6.81 inch, WQHD+ AMOLED display with a 120 Hz refresh rate, 480 Hz touch sampling rate, and a 20:9 aspect ratio. It features LPDDR5-3200 memory, UFS 3.1 storage, and has three rear cameras:

  • 108MP wide-angle
  • 13MP ultra-wide angle
  • 5MP macro

On the front of the phone is a 20MP camera in a hole punch in the top left corner of the display. There’s an in-screen fingerprint sensor, stereo speakers, and the phone supports WiFi 6, NFC, and has an IR blaster allowing you to use it as a television remote.

The stand-out feature at launch is the phone’s Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 processor. It’s a 5nm, 8-core processor that Qualcomm says delivers 25 percent faster CPU performance and 35 percent faster graphics than the previous-gen Snapdragon 865 thanks, in part, to the chip being the first to feature a CPU core based on ARM’s new Cortex-X1 design.

We’ll likely see more phones with Snapdragon 888 chips announced in the coming weeks and months. And some will likely be more widely available than the Xiaomi Mi 11, which is only available in China so far… and which will eventually be sold in other markets, but will most likely never be widely available in the United States.

The Xiaomi Mi 11 is available in China at three prices/configurations:

  • 8GB RAM/128GB storage for RMB 3,999 (~$610)
  • 8GB RAM/256GB storage for RMB 4,299 (~$660)
  • 12GB RAM/256GB storage for RMB 4,699 (~$720)

 

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3 replies on “Xiaomi Mi 11 is the first Snapdragon 888 smartphone, available in China for $610”

  1. I hope Chinese buyers don’t boycott Qualcomm chipsets for the US kicking HiSilicon out of Taiwan. I look forward to seeing how these phones sell.

  2. So Xiaomi are hypocrites then – mock Apple for taking the charger out of the box, then follow them by doing the same.

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