The Xiaomi Mi 7 is one of the anticipated flagship smartphones that will arrive in the early months of 2018. According to the latest reports, the Mi 6 successor is set to rival the iPhone X's facial recognition technology with the Chinese handset maker's own take on the Face ID system. Moreover, the Mi 7 is expected to sport an organic light-emitting diode (OLED) panel with an Always On display feature.

It was tipped that the Xiaomi Mi 7 will boast an advanced facial recognition scanner that is capable of surpassing the iPhone X's facial scanner. Apparently, Xiaomi originally planned to launch the Mi 7 smartphone at an earlier date, or possibly at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2018 on Feb. 26th. Although, the company is not yet done with the procurement of the high-tech camera sensors for the advanced facial recognition technology, thus the release date will have to be postponed. It is not certain if the required hardware for this technology will be similar to Apple's TrueDepth camera sensors.

Speaking of the advanced facial recognition feature, the Xiaomi Mi 7 is likely to have its own set of animated emojis, in which the user can project his actual facial expressions to a 3D emoji character. It can be recalled that Xiaomi has already been working for a facial recognition hardware since last year, and it looks like that the feature will be ready just in time for the Mi 7 launch in the near future. Further supporting the handset's facial recognition capability is Qualcomm's latest high-end mobile chipset, the Snapdragon 845, which is expected to run the Xiaomi Mi 7.

Aside from the Snapdragon 845 processor, earlier leaks reveal that the Xiaomi Mi 7 is packed with a 5.65-inch display with FHD+ resolution of 2,160 x 1,080 pixels. The handset will receive 8 GB of random-access memory (RAM) and 128 GB built-in storage. It is possible that the Mi 7 will sport a dual-lens rear camera, along with wireless charging capabilities and the latest Android 8.0 Oreo update.

Meanwhile, it is rumored that the Mi 7 will make use of an OLED screen from Samsung. Based on the leaked firmware files for the smartphone, the OLED display panel will allow the device to use the Always on display feature. This will be the first handset from Xiaomi to use an OLED panel instead of LCD screens.