When Xiaomi launched the Mi Mix smartphone, it challenged Google Android's Compatibility Definition Document(CDD) to allow screens with larger than 16:9 aspect ratios. In a way, Xiaomi was a pioneer in smartphone design development which is now widely popular among smartphone brands, especially with flagship devices. With Mi Mix being restricted to China only, rest of the world couldn't really experience what the phone had to offer.
With the launch of Mi Mix 2, Xiaomi is taking its latest smartphone global. So far, Xiaomi has restricted itself to the budget smartphone category. Mi Mix 2, however, has grand plans of changing the game as it is the most expensive Xiaomi handset launched till now. At Rs 35,999 you expect a powerful device that delivers and lives up to its price tag. We used the device for a few days and here's our take on it:
Design and display
When it comes to design and display, the Mi Mix 2 certainly has a lot going for it. Let's talk about the design first. The Mi Mix 2 comes with a ceramic back and has an aluminium frame with zero gaps. There is also a special edition full ceramic unibody version of the handset but that is only available in China.
The ceramic material used here is essentially a scratchproof material that is claimed to not get incised even when made prone to deliberate scratching. We tested this out as we scratched the back, first with a key and then a coin, and to our surprise nothing happened. It was as spic and span and as clean as new. Having said that, the premium material used here does make the handset a bit slippery and heavy. It does act as a fingerprint magnet which is a surprise as there's an anti-fingerprint coating layered on the phone.
On the rear side, the Mi Mix 2 houses the centrally placed 12MP rear camera in a gold plated protruding rim. It also has a fingerprint sensor right below it. The back also has the company branding and instead of having just the 'Mi' logo that we see in other Xiaomi handsets, here it says, "Mix designed by Xiaomi."
Moving on to the edges, on the bottom you will find a USB Type-C port that acts as charging port as well as the headphone jack as the Mi Mix 2 ditches the usual 3.5mm jack. Instead, the company gives an adapter to convert for you to use your regular earphones with the smartphone. Either side of the port has a speaker and a microphone. On the left side, there is dual nano SIM card slot and the right side houses the power button and volume rocker.
There's a 5.99-inch Full HD+ no-bezel display on three sides but just a tiny one at the chin, where it houses the front camera at the right corner and the notification LED light in the centre. The display has 18:9 aspect ratio with a resolution of 2160 x 1080p and 403ppi. Xiaomi allows users to choose the colours from warm, standard and cool and contrast from Automatic, increased and standard. Even though the display specifications might be less than the competition, the Mi Mix 2 won't disappoint you at all in this department. The colour reproduction is bang on and the viewing angles are super impressive. There is also a reading mode option to reduce the blue light emission.
To sum it up we can say that the Mi Mix 2 is a beautifully crafted, sturdily built handset with great touch and feel.
Performance and camera
The Mi Mix 2 is powered by a 2.45GHz octa-core Snapdragon 835 processor SoC, paired with 6GB of RAM. It also has 128GB of internal storage of which about 118GB is available to the users. Even though there is no external storage support, over 100GB storage should be enough for day-to-day use.
The Mi Mix 2 ships with Android 7.1.1 with Xiaomi's own MIUI 8.5.1.0 software on top. The interface is clean and user-friendly. But there is no app drawer and all apps are placed on multiple home-screens. The device offers a 'second space' which enables users to have different profiles with separate wallpapers, apps, files and photos.
The phone comes pre-loaded with third-party apps such as Amazon, Microsoft Office and WPS Office that can be uninstalled.
During our testing, we found the overall performance of Mi Mix 2 to be excellent. Conforming to its flagship status, the handset handled everything perfectly with no lags or heating issues even while playing graphic-heavy games such as Asphalt 8.
One thing you should know about the Mi Mix 2 is that it doesn't have support for 18:9 aspect ratio in apps like YouTube, Facebook and Instagram as either the notifications icons are present or there is a blank space.
As for the network reception, it was good during our testing. The phone handled calls even in areas of problematic coverage.
We ran Antutu and GeekBench 4 tests on our device. While the phone scored 1,67,276 in Antutu Benchmarks, the single-core and multi-core scores on GeekBench 4 were 1907 and 6303 respectively.
The Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 is backed by a 3400mAh battery that lasted us for slightly more than a day of average use that included playing games and browsing social media apps, with Wi-Fi turned on.
Coming to the cameras, the smartphone comes with a 12MP Sony IMX368 rear camera with 4-axis Optical Image Stabilization. The 5MP front camera, which comes with beatification feature, placed at the bottom does take some getting used to and becomes quite handful during video calls.
The camera app is pretty basic and supports HDR, burst mode, and face recognition and panorama, among others. The manual mode offers advanced features with controls for things like shutter speed and focus. Other features of the app include a Face Beauty mode for better selfies.
The unique thing about the Mi Mix 2's camera is its ability to capture images in 18:9 ratio, even though you can choose from other frames such as 4:3 and 16:9 or 18:9. The 18:9 frame shots were really wide and pretty cool. The colours of the images captured by the Mi Mix 2 were amazingly accurate, even in low-light conditions. But there is visible noise in the low-light shots and the front camera was also a disappointing. Overall, we can say that the camera experience could have been better.
Verdict
The Mi Mix 2 is a great device and has its strengths lying in areas such as aesthetic bezel-less design, strong built quality and vibrant display. Apart from that, it performed very well in all the everyday tasks without any hiccups. It is easily Xiaomi's best built smartphone.
However, it does fall short of a not so great camera experience and incompatibility of all apps to adopt the 18:9 ratio. At a price of Rs 35,999, Xiaomi is trying to create its position in the premium range of smartphones and Mi Mix 2 is a great first step towards that. The smartphone has major competition from the likes of OnePlus 5 and Nokia 8. While the former has already proven to be an all-rounder, Nokia 8 too comes across as a smartphone with massive potential.
With the launch of Mi Mix 2, Xiaomi is taking its latest smartphone global. So far, Xiaomi has restricted itself to the budget smartphone category. Mi Mix 2, however, has grand plans of changing the game as it is the most expensive Xiaomi handset launched till now. At Rs 35,999 you expect a powerful device that delivers and lives up to its price tag. We used the device for a few days and here's our take on it:
Design and display
When it comes to design and display, the Mi Mix 2 certainly has a lot going for it. Let's talk about the design first. The Mi Mix 2 comes with a ceramic back and has an aluminium frame with zero gaps. There is also a special edition full ceramic unibody version of the handset but that is only available in China.
The ceramic material used here is essentially a scratchproof material that is claimed to not get incised even when made prone to deliberate scratching. We tested this out as we scratched the back, first with a key and then a coin, and to our surprise nothing happened. It was as spic and span and as clean as new. Having said that, the premium material used here does make the handset a bit slippery and heavy. It does act as a fingerprint magnet which is a surprise as there's an anti-fingerprint coating layered on the phone.
On the rear side, the Mi Mix 2 houses the centrally placed 12MP rear camera in a gold plated protruding rim. It also has a fingerprint sensor right below it. The back also has the company branding and instead of having just the 'Mi' logo that we see in other Xiaomi handsets, here it says, "Mix designed by Xiaomi."
Moving on to the edges, on the bottom you will find a USB Type-C port that acts as charging port as well as the headphone jack as the Mi Mix 2 ditches the usual 3.5mm jack. Instead, the company gives an adapter to convert for you to use your regular earphones with the smartphone. Either side of the port has a speaker and a microphone. On the left side, there is dual nano SIM card slot and the right side houses the power button and volume rocker.
There's a 5.99-inch Full HD+ no-bezel display on three sides but just a tiny one at the chin, where it houses the front camera at the right corner and the notification LED light in the centre. The display has 18:9 aspect ratio with a resolution of 2160 x 1080p and 403ppi. Xiaomi allows users to choose the colours from warm, standard and cool and contrast from Automatic, increased and standard. Even though the display specifications might be less than the competition, the Mi Mix 2 won't disappoint you at all in this department. The colour reproduction is bang on and the viewing angles are super impressive. There is also a reading mode option to reduce the blue light emission.
To sum it up we can say that the Mi Mix 2 is a beautifully crafted, sturdily built handset with great touch and feel.
Performance and camera
The Mi Mix 2 is powered by a 2.45GHz octa-core Snapdragon 835 processor SoC, paired with 6GB of RAM. It also has 128GB of internal storage of which about 118GB is available to the users. Even though there is no external storage support, over 100GB storage should be enough for day-to-day use.
The Mi Mix 2 ships with Android 7.1.1 with Xiaomi's own MIUI 8.5.1.0 software on top. The interface is clean and user-friendly. But there is no app drawer and all apps are placed on multiple home-screens. The device offers a 'second space' which enables users to have different profiles with separate wallpapers, apps, files and photos.
The phone comes pre-loaded with third-party apps such as Amazon, Microsoft Office and WPS Office that can be uninstalled.
During our testing, we found the overall performance of Mi Mix 2 to be excellent. Conforming to its flagship status, the handset handled everything perfectly with no lags or heating issues even while playing graphic-heavy games such as Asphalt 8.
One thing you should know about the Mi Mix 2 is that it doesn't have support for 18:9 aspect ratio in apps like YouTube, Facebook and Instagram as either the notifications icons are present or there is a blank space.
As for the network reception, it was good during our testing. The phone handled calls even in areas of problematic coverage.
We ran Antutu and GeekBench 4 tests on our device. While the phone scored 1,67,276 in Antutu Benchmarks, the single-core and multi-core scores on GeekBench 4 were 1907 and 6303 respectively.
The Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 is backed by a 3400mAh battery that lasted us for slightly more than a day of average use that included playing games and browsing social media apps, with Wi-Fi turned on.
Coming to the cameras, the smartphone comes with a 12MP Sony IMX368 rear camera with 4-axis Optical Image Stabilization. The 5MP front camera, which comes with beatification feature, placed at the bottom does take some getting used to and becomes quite handful during video calls.
The camera app is pretty basic and supports HDR, burst mode, and face recognition and panorama, among others. The manual mode offers advanced features with controls for things like shutter speed and focus. Other features of the app include a Face Beauty mode for better selfies.
The unique thing about the Mi Mix 2's camera is its ability to capture images in 18:9 ratio, even though you can choose from other frames such as 4:3 and 16:9 or 18:9. The 18:9 frame shots were really wide and pretty cool. The colours of the images captured by the Mi Mix 2 were amazingly accurate, even in low-light conditions. But there is visible noise in the low-light shots and the front camera was also a disappointing. Overall, we can say that the camera experience could have been better.
Verdict
The Mi Mix 2 is a great device and has its strengths lying in areas such as aesthetic bezel-less design, strong built quality and vibrant display. Apart from that, it performed very well in all the everyday tasks without any hiccups. It is easily Xiaomi's best built smartphone.
However, it does fall short of a not so great camera experience and incompatibility of all apps to adopt the 18:9 ratio. At a price of Rs 35,999, Xiaomi is trying to create its position in the premium range of smartphones and Mi Mix 2 is a great first step towards that. The smartphone has major competition from the likes of OnePlus 5 and Nokia 8. While the former has already proven to be an all-rounder, Nokia 8 too comes across as a smartphone with massive potential.
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