Xiaomi is the first company who stole the spotlight, with it's real life concept phone, the MIX. Though the phone looks incredible, with it's near bezel-less body of 91.3\% screen to body ratio😍, it's still a phone and needs to function like one. And does it? Well, my opinions are MIXed😅. This is my review of the Xiaomi mi MIX.
Design: That's the screaming awesomeness about this phone, it's design. The awesome ceramic body is accompanied by a metal frame. The entire body is super glossy, more glossy than the jet black iPhone 7. It's pretty slippery and prone to fingerprints, but it's very scratch resistant thanks to that awesome ceramic back. Even the buttons are made out of ceramic and are super clicky and durable. The phone is 7.9 mm thick and 209 gm in weight. There are a few nice touches, like real 18k hold ring around the camera and the fingerprint sensor on the back😎!
The only downside to this gorgeous design is that, there isn't much protective accessories out there. There's only one case as of now, available in the retail package. Structurally, there's no shock proofing between the metal body and the bezel-less display😐. So, if the phone falls down from a significant height, the impact will be passed on from the soft ceramic, onto the brittle gorilla glass. It will definitely shatter. So if you're clumsy with regular phones, you can bet you're gonna drop this guy sooner or later🙂. Good thing Xiaomi provides that clean leather case with it.
Performance: Talk about a beast! This phone has 2 varinats. Both run on the powerful Snapdragon 821 CPU clocked at 2.3 GHz and either 4/6 GB of DDR4 RAM. There's the Adreno 530 GPU and either 128/256 GB of flash storage, non expandable. It runs on Android 6.0 marshmallow with of course, MIUI on top. That's pretty much the only non-awesome thing about this phone, it's old UI. Sure, it has something for the fans. But for clean Google lovers, that's far end of the spectrum I'm afraid. It's the same MIUI 6 experience over here.
There's also a fingerprint sensor on the back. It works amazingly well. It's fast and buttery smooth in unlocking your device, with a slick animation. There are a few things to appreciate with this UI, but I still prefer somewhat stock like android interface.
Camera: The biggest downside of this phone, is it's camera! This is only place where this phone feels ordinary and mediocre😒. The camera is a 16 mp rear sensor at f/2.0 aperture and a 5 mp selfie snapper. It's good enough, but only for outdoors. Any lighting below ideal, it starts to lose it's grip. The camera produces some blurry and grainy images in artificial and low light. Even the selfies aren't too great.
They're definitely decent, don't get me wrong. But it's just, we've been spoiled with some excellent optics at incredible prices, since last year. I mean, this thing is supposed to be a flagship. Cameras should be atleast something decent, like the HTC 10 or the Axon 7. So yeah, it's not gonna win any Nat Geo cover shot awards😅. Don't expect wonders, judging by it's dope look.
Battery: The battery on the MIX is a 4400 mAh unit. Yes, it's fast charge compatible. Battery life is just amazing as expected. You'll easily get about 6 to 7 hours of moderate to heavy usage out of this guy. Good news here, thank god.
Price: The Xiaomi mi MIX is on sale at China for about $520 for 128 GB/4 GB variant and $590 for the 266 GB/6 GB variant. Look, it's cool to have this around and I'm really glad that Xiaomi actually pulled it off. This is a fully fledged, working concept phone! That's exciting😀, even for a non Xiaomi fan like me. But there are a few shortcomings. Like the calling method for instance. There is no earpiece. There's a piezo electric vibrator that conducts sound through the frame of the phone. Sure, you can hear the calls fine, but it's like a tiny loudspeaker, so privacy isn't a strong point here. Also, the phone's camera is a disappointment, as I said earlier. So it's not the perfect dream phone, yet.
Can I recommend this to anyone? Sure. If you got the money to spend and need to get the most eye catching phone ever? The Xiaomi mi MIX might be the one for you 😎👍.
