Thursday 24 January 2019 1:16 pm | Updated: Monday 03 June 2019 3:02 am

Xiaomi Mi 8 Pro review, specs, price and details: The Mi 8 Pro marks the Chinese phone company’s UK debut

At the end of last year, Chinese phone giant Xiaomi finally launched its first products in the UK. A household name in its home nation, the company is the fourth biggest phone manufacturer in the world after heavyweights Huawei and Samsung, and just a hare’s fart behind Apple.

Xiaomi introduced itself to Britain with four shiny new devices: a fitness wearable called the Band 3, a sub-£100 phone called the Redmi 6A, the probably-about-to-be-made-illegal Mi Electric Scooter, and the premium flagship Mi 8 Pro.

At £499 it takes aim at the mid-market range, but takes all of its design cues from the top dogs. At a glance it resembles the iPhone, with a wide and shallow notch across the top housing a speaker and cameras. Everything else shouts high-end Android, with curved glass, a bright red lock button and a transparent backplate that lets you see the phone’s insides, like an old Game Boy Color. The visible innards are just for show though. The real guts of the phone are safely kept inside and away from prying eyes.

Notably absent from the phone’s back or front is a fingerprint scanner. Like the OnePlus 6T, the Mi 8 Pro’s fingerprint scanner is hidden underneath the display. Press your thumb against the screen and it springs into life, a glowing outline of your thumbprint rippling outwards as the screen unlocks. It feels like magic the first few times you do it (like the very first time you used Touch ID all over again) but soon begins to feel slower, a little less reliable and less smooth than regular fingerprint scanners. It’s early days for this new tech though, and the Mi 8 Pro is heading in the right direction.

The dual 12 megapixel cameras deliver decent photography, though it’s in this respect that the Mi 8 Pro is most clearly a mid-range device. You don’t get the kind of low-light shots of the single-lens Pixel 3, or the wide-aperture portrait mode of the iPhone XS, but in decent lighting conditions it puts on a good enough show.

Also ‘good enough’ is the battery, which won’t be winning any awards for stamina, but will comfortably get you through a full day’s use without falling into the red. Throw in the lack of waterproofing and wireless charging and you begin to see where compromises were made to get the price this low.

But no such corners are cut when it comes to the quality of the display and the performance of the software. The Mi 8 Pro is a cheapish flagship that hits all the right notes, and a newcomer that will turn the heads of industry rivals.