Xiaomi and Huawei CEOs argue over whose flagship phones have the best camera specs

Xiaomi and Huawei in recent times have surged their dominance in the smartphone market, especially in Asia. The Chinese-tech giants have a massive rivalry between them and if one pokes the other, a reply is mandatory. Something similar to this happened recently when during the Mi Mix 3 launch Lei Jun, CEI of Xiaomi provoked Huawei’s CEO by asserting the fact that Xioamim’s latest flagship has a better camera configuration and has the potential to surpass the Huawei P20 Pro. Currently, the camera benchmarking website, DXO has crowned Huawei P20 to have the best smartphone camera.

To Xioami’s dismay, the Mi Mix 3’s DXOMark score fell short of beating the P20 Pro’s score. The primary camera scored 103 points on DXO Mark, which is equivalent as of the Samsung Galaxy Note 9 and two points behind Apple iPhone XS Max. But, this didn’t prevent Lei Jun for claiming to offer a better camera performance compared to Huawei’s flagship. This, of course, prompted a retort from Richard Yu Chengdong, chief executive of the Huawei Consumer Business Group:

“Any smartphone maker cannot surpass Huawei’s P20 Pro in a short period of time. Only we can surpass ourselves,” Yu said in a social media posting.

This may sound like a trivial social media quarrel but it underscores the fact that there is a growing rivalry among the Chinese smartphone makers. Huawei has successfully maintained a lead and has dominated the Chinese market while Xiaomi currently stands on the fourth spot, according to the shipping estimates from the third quarter. The Huawei P20 Pro, which touts at offering professional-level photo shooting at night, is also the first smartphone in the world market to offer a triple camera set-up, all of this for $760. The recently announced Mate 20 Pro keeps up with the triple camera setup, powered by an even powerful chipset.

As for the specifications, the Mi Mix 3 sports a 6.39-inch OLED display with a resolution of 2340 x 1080p, protected by 2.5D curved tempered glass. It has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 SoC at its heart backed by 6/8/10 GB of RAM and 128/256 GB of internal storage sans the micro SD card slot.

During the Xiaomi launch, held at the famed Forbidden City, Lei spent most of his time talking about the camera functions of the new phone. “Some people say we don’t have fancy functions this time. Indeed we don’t because we’re strengthening the fundamentals,” he said.

In a reference to Huawei, Lei also said the competitor’s pricing was too high, adding: “The most expensive ones are not best.” The Mi MIX 3, with a dual-camera on the back, is priced under $500.