Xiaomi Mi Mix 2S to get Mi 8-like camera performance
What's the story
With an overall score of 99, Xiaomi's latest flagship, the Mi 8, surpassed the DxOMark camera scores of iPhone X and matched the results of Galaxy S9+. And now, according to Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun, the company's bezel-less Mi Mix 2S smartphone will get the same camera performance as the latest Mi 8 via an upcoming firmware update. Here's more.
Technicality
First things first, what are DxOMark ratings?
DxOMark is a rating website owned by DxOMark, an image processing software company based in France. Like Geekbench is a platform that rates chipset performance, DxOMark tests smartphones' camera (also dedicated cameras) on several parameters of photography and videography. Thus, an overall photo or video score is a representation of DxOMark's weighted score system that converts a number of sub-scores into a single number.
Information
Mi Mix 2S and Mi 8 have same rear-camera hardware
Interestingly, both the phones sport a vertical dual rear-camera setup comprising two 12-megapixel sensors with 1.4-micron pixel size. One of the sensors comes with an f/1.8 aperture, wide-angle lens, and four-axis OIS, the other sensor offers an f/2.4 aperture, telephoto lens and support for optical zoom.
Why the difference?
Same hardware but differently optimized software
The Mi Mix 2S received an overall score of 97 as against Mi 8's score of 99. However, what's surprising is that Mi 8 sports the same rear camera hardware that the Mix 2S debuted in March. Then why is there a difference in the scores? The answer lies in software optimization and how Xiaomi has tweaked the camera performance on both the devices.
Slight improvements
What is different on the software front?
The default camera app on Mix 2S offers artificial intelligence (AI) based scene recognition feature, dynamic Bokeh, smart artifact, and face recognition. With these features, the Mix 2S got a photo score of 101 - same as the iPhone X. However, DxOMark noted that the Mi 8 offers some improvements over Mix 2S, including better low-light photography and an enhanced optical zooming experience.
Rankings
How do other phones perform on the DxO benchmark?
With an optimized camera software, the Xiaomi Mi 8 bags a photo score of 105 and a video recording score of 88 on the DxOMark scale. Interestingly, with its triple-camera setup, Huawei P20 Pro received a photo score of 114 and video score of 98 to lead the DxOMark charts. Coming in second is the HTC U12+ with 106 (photo) and 95 (video) scores.