The Mi 8 launch event may also see the Mi Band 3 being unveiled
The Mi 8 is officially debuting as the new Mi series flagship next week. Xiaomi has scheduled the Mi 8 launch event for May 31. With the confirmation on the upcoming launch, it is also presumed that the Chinese company has no plans to bring the Mi 7 as the successor to its last year's Mi 6 - instead, it appears to be skipping an iteration by launching the Mi 8 to celebrate its eighth anniversary. A box package and a screen protector tipping the launch of the smartphone had already surfaced on the Web. The Beijing-headquartered company is also rumoured to be building its proprietary 3D facial sensing technology to take on Apple's Face ID.
As confirmed by a teaser image posted on Weibo, the Xiaomi Mi 8 launch is taking place in Shenzhen, China. Xiaomi Global spokesperson Donovan Sung, in a separate tweet on Tuesday, highlighted that the new launch is aimed to mark the company's eighth anniversary. "To celebrate our 8th year anniversary, we'll be launching Mi 8 at our annual flagship product launch in Shenzhen on May 31," Sung tweeted.
Photo Credit: Weibo
As per a previous report, Xiaomi already sold tickets of the annual launch event that is also likely to be the place for devices other than the Mi 8, including the Mi Band 3 fitness tracker. Further, it is expected to have around 5,000 attendees.
Considering the past rumours, the Xiaomi Mi 8 is speculated to come with a notch design and have a Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 SoC along with 8GB of RAM and up to 256GB of onboard storage. The handset is also expected to run Android Oreo on top of a new MIUI version and might have an under display fingerprint sensor. An image leaked recently suggested that Xiaomi is also set to include a dedicated camera unit on the front to enable advanced facial recognition that will be in line with Apple's Face ID that debuted on the iPhone X last year. Moreover, the Mi 8 is expected to counter the OnePlus 6 with its all-new build and a bunch of custom features.
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