A device purporting to be the Xiaomi Mi 7 has been spotted on popular benchmarking site GFXBench. And the results are disappointing. For, while the Xiaomi Mi 6 comes with the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor, the Xiaomi Mi 7, the successor, has been spotted with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820, which is somewhat dated.
While it is still not known if the device is the actual Xiaomi Mi 7, if the reports are true, it will be a downgraded version of this year’s Xiaomi flagship, the Mi 6- which is a very powerful device. While the SD 820-powered Mi 7 has outscored the likes of the Galaxy S7 and HTC 10, both flagships from last year, it has not been able to perform some of the tests. For example, the ‘compute’ section has not been seen in the test. Also, the device was seen to sport a 5.1-inch display which has a 1080p resolution. Also on board is a 15-megapixel rear camera while a 5-megapixel front snapper is visible. Also, the device has been seen with 3GB of RAM besides 64GB of internal or native storage
This being a significant downgrade from the Xiaomi Mi 6, we believe that this device may not be the Mi 7. It is likely to be a testing device for the new MIUI 9. Android Headlines reports that it might also be a non-Xiaomi device running the MIUI custom ROM on its system. Either way, it looks less and less like an actual depiction of the next-generation Xiaomi Mi 7.
It is actually not very difficult to fake a device’s innards and then perform a benchmarking test. All one has to do is to edit the system file, which fakes the name of the device you want to benchmark. Also, a software called PatchROM will make it very easy to make the MIUI run on any AOSP-based custom ROM. Ultimately, while this device may eventually be a variant of the Xiaomi Mi 5X, which is a pretty decent device, we would ask you to take this news with a pinch of salt.