MWC 2019: Xiaomi Mi 9 and the Mi LED Smart Bulb launched at €449 and €19 respectively

Xiaomi's Mi 9 looks quite different when it comes to design and overall look when compared to earlier Xiaomi flagships. The company settled for a sandwiched metal and glass design this time around with what Xiaomi likes to call a 'holographic' colour scheme. Xiaomi's head of the Product team, Donovan Sung while on stage mentions that the company uses an intricate three-layer process to make the curved back look and feel premium and attractive.The Mi 9 gets a 6.39-inch Samsung-made Super AMOLED panel with a resolution of 1080 x 2340 pixels and an aspect ratio of 19.5:9. There's no slider this time around and Xiaomi's taken a more conventional approach this time with a waterdrop notch. There's also an in-display fingerprint scanner in there, which has become a common feature on flagships over the past few days.Xiaomi's also baked in long-press shortcuts into the in-display fingerprint scanner which cannot be customised yet but does add additional functionality into the scanner. The Mi 9 also features a hardware shortcut key to pull up an AI voice assistant of choice.Inside, we have the top-of-the-line Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 SoC chugging things along which does make Xiaomi only one of the select few manufacturers to have a device running Qualcomm's more capable hardware. Thogh Xiaomi has yet to explicitly state it, the Mi 9 will not feature Qualcomm's Snapdragon X50 modem, which would make it the company's first 5G-ready smartphone instead of the Mi Mix 3 5G.The Mi 9 features a triple-camera setup for the first time with a 48 MP primary camera, a 12 MP telephoto lens with 2X optical zoom and a 16 MP ultra-wide angle camera with a field-of-view of 117 degrees. Xiaomi says it’s also using “AI ultra-wide angle distortion correction” to fix the edges of those super-wide shots and effectively deal with barrel distortion.On the front, we get a single 20 MP f/2.0 shooter along with a feature which has previously worked quite well on Xioami phones and that is the company's software-driven portrait mode. To boast a little, Xioami also had the Mi 9 benchmarked by DXOMark getting a score of 107 points. This total score puts it in third place, two points behind the Huawei Mate 20 Pro and P20 Pro.Xiaomi was even able to boast about the fact that the Mi 9 scored an overall 107 on DXOMark, which happens to be higher than the just-launched Samsung Galaxy S10 Plus.The Mi 9 also gets a 3,300 mAh battery along with a 27-Watt fast charging adapter supplied in the box.

Xiaomi's keynote at MWC surely wasn't all about smartphones. The company launched two types of affordable smart LED bulbs which can be controlled using Xiaomi's Mi Home app. There's the EUR 19.99 priced Mi LED Smart Bulb with support for 16 million colours and a regular Philips WiFi Bulb E27 Smart Bulb with a fixed white colour but with the dimming features.Both smart bulbs are also compatible with Google Assistant as well as Amazon Alexa, which means you will be able to shout at your phone to switch off or switch on the lights and also change the colours on the light by talking to your assistant on the phone.As always, you can head here if you wish to keep yourself apprised about the latest developments at MWC 2019