A new shot of what is said to be the Xiaomi Mi 8 phone appeared on Chinese social network Weibo and it looks like the phone in question will be sporting a 3D facial recognition solution just like what previous reports suggested. The leaked image seen above also shows a wide notch, which seems to be in line with the speculation that the depth-sensing module will be sitting side-by-side with the selfie camera, motion sensor, and the earpiece of the Android flagship.
Based on the spotted image, the Xiaomi Mi 8 handset looks similar to Apple’s iPhone X, but zooming in closer will reveal what seems like a 3D emoji icon, suggesting that the device will likely have a 3D facial recognition technology after all. If that’s the case, Xiaomi will be the first Android phone manufacturer to commercialize such a solution. This is not the first time that rumors about Xiaomi working on a 3D facial recognition platform emerged, with those claims dating as far back as late 2017. Early last week, one report talked about “3D Structured Light”, a loose translation of Xiaomi’s rumored three-dimensional facial recognition module. But days after that, a video surfaced online showing what was said to be the next Xiaomi flagship with the much-anticipated in-display fingerprint scanner in action similar to that on the Vivo X21 UD whose. The device was first expected to debut as the Mi 7 but more recent reports are pointing to the Mi 8 moniker.
The Xiaomi Mi 8 is said to be equipped with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 845 SoC, 8GB of RAM, and 64GB of storage. A 5.45-inch OLED display and a 4,000mAh battery are also said to be part of the package. The phone is now rumored to be scheduled for an announcement on Wednesday, May 23, though previous rumors claimed Xiaomi pushed its release back to the third quarter of the year.