So here comes the Mi Mix, which kills almost every other phone in terms of innovation. Even though the bezels are not that thin like xiaomi claimed earlier, but still it looks and feels impressive. I got the smartphone from https://tradingshenzhen.com/ and here you can find my full video review:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiRuZpADV6g
Its the basic model with 128GB of ROM and 4GB of RAM, but there is also a better version with even 256GB of ROM and 6GB of RAM. Also it got a snapdragon 821 SoC and a massive
4400mAh battery. Inside of the box you will find the smartphone, a type C cable , a quickcharger with up to 18Watts, a nice premium leather cover and a user manual. The cover is definitly needed, because the phone is so slippery. It was even gliding once from my table, but luckily I could catch it. With the cover it really just looks like a screen in a case.
The Mi Mix with the ceramic body is a real fingerprint magnet, the backside can be used as a mirror and there is even an 18k gold version which has a real golden ring around the camera and fingerpint scanner. The bezels are really small but still visible. It comes with a 6.4″ display, but its not bigger than my mate 9 with a 5,9 Display, due to the almost bezel-less design.
It just has a sleek chin at the bottom with the 5 megapixel front facing camera placed in the right bottom corner. They had to round the corners of the display to achieve even thinner bezels and also they have a new earpiece and proximity sensor technology. They now use ultrasonic technology, which can measure the distance trough the display and also they use a cantilever piezoelectronic cermaic driver, which translates the electric speaker signal in mechanical waves, and the sound is traveling trough the ceramic body into your ear. I didnt like it on the gigaset me, but on the xiaomi, the call quality is just great. The earpiece is very loud and the proximity sensor works fine. There is also a tiny notification led at the bottom right under the software home button, and yes its multi color.
The display is huge, and reaching all edges of the display with my thumb was not possible. Luckily there is one handed mode which makes it easier to use the smartphone. The display of the mi mix also uses amoled technology which provides great colors and viewing angles. The maximum brightness is definitly enough to use it under sunlight conditions. 1080p may does not sound alot on 6.4″, but I’m pretty sure 80% of the people won’t notice a difference to a QHD screen, and also less resoultion helps to save battery.
For me its really sharp enough,even though it’s maybe not so impressive like a 2K screen. The frame is really solid but also kinda slipeery. At the top there is a 3.5mm headphone jack, two holes for microphones, at the bottom a single speaker inside of the right speaker grid and a type C port with quickcharge 3.0 support. The buttons feel great and they are placed on the right side of the frame, on the opposite side we have a dual sim slot, but no microSD card slot. I actually think 128GB in the smaller version is enough for 99% of the people.
On the backside we got a really fast and accurate fingerprint scanner and the 16mp camera plus a really really strong led flash that really hurts in my eyes. The phone got on-screen buttons right over the very small chin of the display. There is a smart ball that is like assistive touch on the iphone which helps you to use the huge display. The phone runs MIUI 8, which is right now based on Android 6 and gets updates really fast. You really need to like it or hate it, I personally now like it, because there is less bloat and more options. Still it comes only in english and chinese, but i can live with that. Also usually there is no playstore on it, but it’s easy to install and tradingshenzen can install it for you. The UI is really fast,but its a massive ram eater. Usually I have less than 1 to 1.2gb of free ram, MIUI seems to cache alot of stuff.
There is no app drawer, but well if you dont like it, get a different launcher. Also you got the ability to install different themes from the MI-store, but you need a MI-account for it. There are several other cool options like multi app mode and so on, so if you are interested checkout MIUI 8 on youtube. Straight out of the box I had around 110gigs of free space which is good. Also the battery is insane, 6-7 hours of screen on time until I got 10-15% in my tests. I’m a heavy user, I took alot of pictures , played some games and had the brighntess on 70%. So the battery life is really enough for me. And if you run out of battery, you can recharge it with up to 18W with quickcharge.
The speaker of the Mi Mix is okay and sounds for me even better than the s7 edge. The display is also a 17:9 form factor and when you watch movies on youtube in fullscreen there is a black bar on the side, but nothing that worries me and watching movies is a pleasure due to the nice display.
While the Mi Mix is a beast for consuming media, creating media is a different story. The Mi Mix comes with a 16-megapixel, f/2.0 shooter and to be honest it’s not among the best cameras. Under daylight conditions the camera is decent but in low light it gets very grainy. Also if there is enough light, way less details compared to my mate9, iphone 7 or samsung s7 edge. Colors, whitebalance and dynamic range are okay, but pictures lack of details especially when you zoom in. Also the front facing camera can’t really impress.
It can also record in 4k, 1080p with high framerate and also supports slow motion, but there is no optical image stabilization, so videos do not look really smooth. Especially compared to the iphone 7, it looks very very shaky. Anyway it’s still above average, but i think on such a premium smartphone, they could have implemented a better camera, or maybe even a second lens. Luckily there is a really strong led flash that helps you shooting pictures at night, but its still not very good. The camera app is simple and has alot of features which is great, but I couldn’t find any kind of stabilization feature in the settings.
The wifi signal is awesome, as you can see it’s even better than the wifi of my mate 9 and already the mate 9 had a 2times better wifi signal than my p9 plus. Also GPS just incredible, a fix indoors after seconds and outdoors only green bars, on a cloudy winter day. The antennas of the MI Mix are great, even through the ceramic body.
Regarding performance, the snapdragon 821 performs great and scores over 130k in Antutu. Even though the ram is almost full most of the time, gaming is a pleasure and asphalt extreme runs super smooth. Also world of tanks blitz is great, i could play it on maximum details without a single lagg which is really important in such a multiplayer game.
The phone also comes with all kind of sensors you need for VR, could be interesting with that display to body ratio.
All in all, I really love the Xiaomi Mi Mix, I personally think Xiaomi really did the first step and now alot of other smartphone manufacturers will follow.
