With the launch of the phone just a week away, it would be interesting to see which markets Xiaomi will take this smartphone to outside of China. The company skipped launching the Mi6 in India and over a period of time, has doubled down on its efforts in the budget segment, which is where the company has gained massive amounts of loyalty. Given that the company didn’t launch their flagship in India before, it remains to be seen if Xiaomi will bring it to India. Xiaomi had not launched the Xiaomi Mi Mix in India, but the company did bring the Mi Mix 2 to the country. For now, however, we will have to just settle for the China launch to see what features the phone will finally have and what price it will be launched at.
If Xiaomi is indeed celebrating its 8th anniversary, it would seem like an odd choice of year at first. Typically, the milestone for such celebration is 10 years, like Apple did with the iPhone X. However, during the rumour build-up of Apple’s iPhone X, features like the in-display fingerprint sensor were plenty talked about and then removed. FaceID ended up being a part of the phone, giving birth to the trend of the Notch. It is entirely possible the Xiaomi is trying its hand at giving the consumers something that Apple wasn’t able to deliver. Calling this the Mi 8 Anniversary Edition would make sense culturally as the number 8 is regarded as the luckiest number in china. This is because pronunciation of the number 8, 'Ba' in Chinese, sounds similar to the word 'Fa', which means to make a fortune. It contains meanings of prosperity, success and high social status too, so all businesses favor it very much.