Xiaomi Mi 9 vs iPhone X: Which To Buy?

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MI 9	iPhone X
BUY NOW	BUY NOW
PROS	PROS
Affordable price. Impressive camera setup. Powerful chipset.	Great screen. Premium, strong design. TrueDepth camera is powerful.
CONS	CONS
Gets hot rather easily. Odd-looking UI. Low battery capacity.	The most expensive flagship phone around. Metal rim can scuff without case.

BASIC SPECS

DESIGN & BUILD

Mi 9:

The back has this holographic color that reflects different lights, I think it looks pretty cool. It’s made out of glass and it’s fully curved all the way around which feels really smooth but it also makes it really slippery so you might want to use a protective case.

One thing that actually bothered me the most about this phone is the protruding camera module. It protrudes way more than other phones I’ve seen.

Something that’s new with a Mi 9, it’s the button here on the left which is dedicated to the virtual assistant. In China, it uses Xiaomi assistant but in the global markets Google assistant is default.

iPhone X:

Build-wise, the iPhone 10 is pretty solid and it feels a bit heavier than the iPhone 7. Just remember that the phone is made of mostly glass on the outside so you might want to slap a case on. The power button has some new functionality on the iPhone 10, holding it down brings up Siri and a double press opens up Apple pay in certain markets.

DISPLAY

Mi 9:

The Mi 9 has a 6.39 inch AMOLED screen with a resolution of 2040×1080. Up top we get a teardrop notch that houses a 20 megapixel selfie camera.

With that sweet AMOLED screen, it’s an absolute treat to watch your videos on this thing as we get great contrast, deep blacks, and very vibrant colors. Even just swiping around the homescreen is pleasing to the eyes. On the note of protection, we get Gorilla Glass 6, so if you’re a clumsy person, you need not worry about breaking the screen immediately.

iPhone X:

It’s the first iPhone to have an OLED display and it comes with all the perks you would expect. Deep blacks, great contrast, HDR video support, and good color accuracy. Since, it’s OLED there is the risk of burnin in the screen over time.

It’s a 5.8 inch OLED panel with a classically weird Apple resolution of 2436 by 1125 and weird numbers aside it looks Really good. It’s super bright the colors are extremely accurate and honestly the display is one of the most enticing features of the iPhone X. There is a big notch which has cameras and sensors.

AUDIO

Mi 9:

The down firing speaker can get loud but lows are non-existent resulting in a higher tinny sound quality, especially, when you push the volume all the way to a hundred. So I would recommend you to use bluetooth headphones as there is no headphone jack.

iPhone X:

For audio, the iPhone 10 does bring stereo speakers and the sound is even louder and more clear than its siblings. Of course, there is no headphone jacks so be ready to carry a dongle.

SOFTWARE & PERFORMANCE

Mi 9:

Powering the Mi 9 is a snapdragon 835 chipset with an Adreno 640 GPU and 6 GB of RAM. Performance is ultra smooth whether it’s multitasking having several apps open all at once, playing games at the highest settings. For software, we get android 9 pie skin with MIUI 10 which is a simple, clean, and easy to navigate UI that isn’t for everyone. but a lot of people including me like it.

iPhone X:

iOS 11.1 does run pretty smoothly. It comes with apple A11 Bionic chipset and 3GB of RAM. The same is on the iphone 8 plus. In benchmarks, performance on the iphone 10 is even better than the 8 and in regular use we didn’t notice any lag.

When it comes to actually using the iOS interface without a home button, it could certainly be better. The home button has been replaced with navigation gestures.

CAMERA

Mi 9:

Moving on to cameras, up front, a 20 megapixel selfie camera and at the back we have a 12 megapixel telephoto camera, 48 megapixel, and a 16 megapixel ultra wide camera.

For the front camera, it produces strong, color accurate, and impressive selfies. It captures good skin tones and has a lot of detail. With beauty mode turned on, the post-processing give subjects smoother skin without making it look unnatural. And in portrait mode, it does a great job at isolating the subject from the background.

For the rear cameras in good natural lighting, we get awesome photos with a lot of detail, great color, and excellent contrast. Though, it should be noted that greens and reds come out looking particularly vivd.

Low-light photos however are a different story, while the images seem bright, saturation takes a dip and the overall quality just isn’t up to par with the daylight shots. Even using the dedicated night mode, we still get muddy shots.

Mi 9 can definitely get some good images with its ultra wide lens. There’s a slight fisheye effect in the shots but personally I think it adds character and consider you get a 117 degree field of view, I think it’s forgivable.

With the telephoto lens, you get up to 2x optical zoom, as you zoom in of course you can expect quality to dip.

For videos, you can shoot up to 4k at 60fps. Quality is impressive with sharp detail and good colors just like the still photos and stabilization is present. You also get options for slow motion and time-lapse, so overall for the Mi 9’s cameras, you can get some pretty good shots but for low-light even with the night mode, I try to avoid it.

iPhone X:

When it comes to camera, there is 1 wide-angle and 1 telephoto camera, both at 12 megapixels. On the iPhone 10, the telephoto has a new lens with a brighter F/2.4 aperture and it also has OIS just like the wide-angle camera. But even with OIS, the telephoto camera is still not used for low-light photos. The iPhone sticks with a crop from the wide-angle camera but wide-angle low-light photos were excellent with low noise and sharpness.

In daylight images, again the iPhone 10 brings the best Apple has to offer. There’s great dynamic range, loads of detail, and the colors are pleasant and not oversaturated.

Portrait mode produces an artistic looking shot with a blurred background behind your subject. Apple’s flagships are bringing some of the best software bokeh effects, we’ve seen on a phone.

The shots from the 7 megapixel front camera are not as high-quality as those on the main camera but still great to have.

As for video, the iPhones is able to shoot in 4k at 60 frames per second. And 1080p videos are good too with quality rivaling as competitors.

SECURITY

Mi 9:

There is in-display fingerprint reader, a big update from Mi 8. I have to say that this fingerprint sensor is extreamly fast as OnePlus 6T. And I know it sometimes dosen’t work properly but at this price range you will get the best in-display fingerprint reader. There is also faceunlock with no infrared component, so it might not work quite as well as in the dark.

iPhone X:

On the iPhone 10 Apple has done away with touch ID going instead with face ID. The facial recognition uses numerous infrared beams to map the shape of your face. It even works in the dark. Face ID is surprisingly accurate, recognizing you with sunglasses or a hat on and it will adapt to gradual changes like hair growth.

BATTERY

Mi 9:

Keeping the device running is a 3300 milliamp hour battery. The PC mark worked 2.0 battery test rates it up 12 hours and 44 minutes. And our standard video loop test, we got 18 hours and 20 minutes of playback which is great but moving on from numbers they don’t really translate that well to real-world usage. If you’re a light user than fine, you should be able to go the whole day but with our moderate to heavy usage we did find the need to plug it in for a charge at least once a day.

Speaking of charging, it only takes an hour to get from 0% to 100% using the included fast charger. It also has 20 watts wireless charging.

iPhone X:

Battery life is decent on the iPhone 10 of a 2716mAh battery, it won’t win any awards but in our proprietary tests that are in a respectable 74 hours. It’s better than the iPhone 8 but not quite as good as the 8 plus.

Charging speed is not the fastest. With the included charger, we got a measly 20% in 30 minutes. You can get quick charging but you’d have to use something like an iPad or a macbook charger.

At least you get wireless charging. Using a charging pad, we got 17% in 30 min.

WHICH ONE YOU SHOULD BUY?

There is a huge difference in price of both the smartphones. Apple is way more expensive than Mi. In this comparison, there is no winner, it all depends on your choice. If you want a phone with good performance, average display, and premium design then you should go for MI 9. But if you have extra money to spend then I think you should go for iPhone X.

Jaskaran Singh

Jaskaran, a tech enthusiast from childhood, inspired by his father, began his tech journey by rooting Android phones. He now writes on various tech topics, aiming to simplify complex ideas for a broad audience. His writing is direct, concise, and flows effortlessly, making tech topics accessible and engaging.