It’s getting harder and harder to justify the utility of tablets, especially 7 to 8-inchers, when rising mobile industry stars like Xiaomi keep releasing bigger and bigger phones. The Chinese company’s latest sports an almost ridiculous 6.9-inch screen, and to prove how far it’s come in the war against bezels, the gargantuan Mi Max 3 is illustrated alongside an old 4.7-incher. Next time you complain there’s still a "chin" on your new device, take a look at that side-by-side picture, and marvel.

SPECS

Display

6.9-inch Full HD+ (2160 x 1080)

Processor

Qualcomm Snapdragon 636

Memory

4 or 6GB

Storage

64 or 128GB (microSD expandable up to 256GB)

Rear camera

12 + 5MP, f/1.9

Front camera

8MP, f/2.0

Battery

5500mAh

Connectivity

WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 5.0, GPS, AGPS, GLONASS

Dimensions

176.15 x 87.4 x 7.99mm

Colors

Black, blue, gold

Headphone jack

Yes

Obviously, we wouldn’t exactly call the Xiaomi Mi Max 3 compact or easily pocketable, at a 221 grams weight, and a 176mm height. But you can probably excuse the big guy’s corpulence, seeing as how it packs a ginormous 5500mAh battery. And to think people are excited about Samsung’s possible upgrade to a 4000mAh cell on the Galaxy Note9. The Mi Max 3’s no-notch IPS LCD screen comes with a Full HD+ resolution (2160 x 1080 pixels), and a resulting 18:9 (or 2:1) aspect ratio, which seems to have become the industry’s new normal, even as far as budget-friendly mid-rangers are concerned.

Unsurprisingly, there are also two cameras mounted on the 6.9-incher’s metal back, with a pretty standard set of AI enhancements, and a respectable combination of 12 and 5MP sensors. Perhaps Xiaomi could have done better than a Snapdragon 636 processor (the Mi 6X features a 660), but with 6GB of RAM and 128GB internal storage space, you certainly get plenty of bang for your buck yuan. That particular configuration fetches the rough equivalent of $295 in China, with an entry-level 4/64GB variant priced at CNY 1699, or $250. Too bad there are no words on international availability... yet. The pre-installed OS is also a question mark, although the phone is likely to run Android 8.1 Oreo out the box with a MIUI skin on top.

Source: Xiaomi