Xiaomi Mi 9 UNBOXING!

The Xiaomi Me 9 is a smartphone that has been designed with a sleek and modern aesthetic. The device's design gives a really positive first impression, extending to the software. The new UI experience is slick and features animations, such as the blurring of the background when pulling down the notification bar, and the animation of icons when exiting applications. Additionally, holding down after unlocking allows for quick access to other shortcuts.

The Me 9 also boasts a six-point-three-nine-inch AMOLED display, which is good but colors can get a little funny at extreme angles. However, this improvement shows that Xiaomi has taken steps in the right direction, particularly with the second-generation display fingerprint scanner. This feature is a significant upgrade over its predecessor.

The main event of the Me 9 is its camera system, which marks Xiaomi's first foray into the triple-camera market. For the most part, it seems like it was worth the effort. At the top of the camera setup is a 12-megapixel telephoto lens, which allows for two times zoom. Below that is the primary 48-megapixel sensor and at the bottom, there's a 16-megapixel super wide-angle camera. What's cool about this camera portion is that it's coated with sapphire glass, which stops it from scratching when inevitably scraped along a table.

Standard photos come out in 12 megapixels, which is the mode I'd recommend keeping in HDR looks good and colors are balanced. In good lighting, full 48-megapixel shots can be taken, resulting in more detail than if you zoomed all the way in to the primary lens. However, at high zoom levels, the standard photos become slightly noisy due to sensor limitations.

The Me 9 also features a night mode that leaps and bounds ahead of just taking a normal photo in the dark. It doesn't take much motion to cause the picture to blur though, and the detail isn't quite what we've seen on the Pixel 3 but the colors are really nice and contrast is on point.

The ultra-wide lens on the Me 9 is also a welcome feature for those who enjoyed it on the Mate 20 Pro. The quality of shots taken with this lens aren't as good as those taken using the main lens, but they're close enough that switching lenses doesn't feel disjointed. On the flip side of having an ultra-wide lens is that you can get much closer to subjects. This camera actually doubles as a macro camera, which is pretty cool.

One potential drawback to the Me 9's camera system is the lack of optical image stabilization. However, electronic image stabilization is okay and it can shoot 4k video at 60 frames per second. The front camera also gets an improvement with a 20-megapixel sensor that delivers amazing HDR in broad daylight. Even when the light starts to dip, detail is retained surprisingly well.

The Me 9 is powered by the Snapdragon 805 chip, which is one of the most powerful phones in the world. This chip's effects extend far beyond just having a responsive UI. Wi-Fi speeds are awesome, app load times are fast, and even when playing top-tier games, there's often still a spare 20% of unused headroom.

The Me 9 also supports superfast wireless charging and comes with a 27-watt charger that can fully charge the phone in just over an hour. This is faster than oneplus charging but not quite as fast as their new WalkCharge 30. The phone's capacity, however, is on the lower end at 3300 milliamps.

The exact price of the Me 9 will be announced roughly when this video drops, so I'll leave that as a comment below. My opinions here are based on the expected price of about 500 to 600 pounds in the UK, which is a fair bit cheaper than the likes of Huawei and Samsung if you enjoy the video, a subscription would be massively appreciated.