Besides the Xiaomi Mi 6 Ceramic Edition, the Chinese company also had plans for another special edition variant. In fact, a huge chunk of the Mi 6 launch event was to discuss a model that ultimately will not be sold: the Xiaomi Mi 6 Silver Edition.
CEO Lei Jun took a good twenty minutes or so of the launch event to describe the challenges in making the Xiaomi Mi 6 Silver Edition. This variant features a silver reflective, mirror finish not dissimilar to Sony’s Xperia Z5 Premium and XZ Premium models.
However, bearing in mind that the Mi 6 sports a curved back (versus the flat ones on the Sony smartphones), the mirror finish was supposedly really tough to produce without scratching the surface.
In fact, Lei Jun claimed that the yield rate for the back panels were only around 10-20 units for every 1,000 produced – just 1-2% – making it absolutely impossible to mass produce without wasting significant resources.
In real life, the Xiaomi Mi 6 Silver Edition does indeed look a step above the regular models. The mirror finish definitely is a fingerprint magnet, and will eventually be prone to scratches, but aesthetically, it’s a beautifully-machined device.
Given the exceptionally low yield, Lei Jun eventually scrapped plans to sell the Xiaomi Mi 6 Silver Edition; there are currently only a few dozen of these models in existence. However, he promises that if and when Xiaomi’s engineers devise a more efficient manufacturing process, we might be seeing Silver Editions on the Mi 6 – and maybe future Xiaomi flagships.
