Advantages of Xiaomi Mi 9 Explorer

Elegant Design
Dual SIM Option
Great Cameras
NFC
Fingerprint Sensor
USB OTG

Disadvantages of Xiaomi Mi 9 Explorer

MIUI Skin may bother some users
No Water and Dust Resistance
No Stereo Speakers
No Expandable Storage
Lower Battery Capacity

Build and Design

The Xiaomi Mi 9 Explorer adds the cool but fake transparent back, which makes it seem you are seeing the phone's internals. The rear glass is made to look that it shows some components underneath but these aren't the real ones. The Mi 9 Explorer is probably the biggest smudge magnet we've seen so far, thanks to this faux-transparent glass back. But it looks really cool even when covered in fingerprints and we are sure many people will like the futuristic looks despite they are not the real deal.

Display

The Mi 9 Explorer has the same 6.39 inches 1080x2340 pixels AMOLED screen as the Mi 9. The screen to body ratio is 85.2% with an aspect ratio of 19.5:9 and 403 ppi density. Display quality is good, colors are sharp thanks to the AMOLED panel.

Cameras

The Mi 9 Explorer edition comes with a triple camera setup on back including a 48 MP main lens having f/1.5 (12GB RAM model) or f/1.8 (8GB RAM model) a 12 MP telephoto lens with f/2.2 and a 16 MP ultra-wide lens with f/2.2. The device has a special camera with f/1.47 aperture and a 7P lens. 7P means the lens will actually have 7 optical elements - typically high-end cameras have 5P or 6P lenses, but Xiaomi went a step further. The 48MP camera still uses the same Sony IMX586 sensor and everything else is the same. But the larger aperture would mean the Explorer edition's camera will let in much more light. The selfie camera is of 20MP with f/2.0 aperture. The phone is capable of recording videos at 4k@60fps.

Performance

Mi 9 Explorer comes with SDM 855 chipset which is an octa-core processor clocked at 2.84 GHz. The phone comes with Android 9.0 (Pie) with MIUI 10 on top. Moreover, we are getting two RAM variants of 8GB and 12GB with 256GB internal storage. There is no memory card slot for expandable storage which is a bit downside. Mi 9 Explorer is powered by 3300 mAh battery with Fast battery charging 27W (Quick Charge 4+) and Fast wireless charging of 20W.