From the Chinese smartphone make Xiaomi comes yet another unique outstanding high-end device the Xiaomi Mi Mix 3. The Mi line from Xiaomi is known for showcasing the best the company has done to achieve a near bezel-less display while maintaining the design as elegant as possible, packing the latest high-end internal parts and interestingly keep the prices unbelievably lower than the competition.
The Mi Mix 3 comes after the Mi Mix 2s released in April this year and brings a whole different design and camera implementation. The Mi Mix 3 unlike previous Mix phones is a slider phone. And not the typical slider phones to slide out buttons but front-facing cameras. We’ve covered the Oppo Find X that uses a slightly similar implementation but a motorized one. The Mi Mix 3 uses a mechanical one meaning the user has to slide the entire back part of the phone up to reveal the cameras, facial recognition sensor and a second speaker.
You may wonder why such implementation. The purpose is to increase screen space on the front and in so doing eliminate the notch many manufacturers have used. The phone therefore is left to have slim bezels around giving off a modern and futuristic bezel-less look.
One the front the Xiaomi Mi Mix 3 has 6.4 inch Super AMOLED display with a 1080 x 2340 screen resolution and a 403 pixels-per-inch density. It has a huge 85% screen-to-body ratio. The front facing speaker is crammed in the upper part of the phone.
The front-facing cameras are housed inside the part moving part, revealed when slid out. They are two front-facing cameras with the main camera a 24 mega-pixel sensor front Sony with an f/2.2 aperture and a second 2 mega-pixel sensor for capturing depth information for portrait mode.
There are also two cameras at the back both 12 mega-pixel sensors one from Sony with f/1.8 aperture with dual auto-focus and the second from Samsung that offers 2x Optical Zoom with f/2.4 aperture.
The slide out portion of the phone also houses the facial recognition sensor used to unlock the phone with a use’s face on addition to the fingerprint scanner located at the back of the phone.
The Mi Mix 3 is powered Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 845 processor backed by 6GB RAM for the 128GB storage variant, 8GB RAM for the other 128GB storage variant and 8GB RAM for the 256GB storage variant. It is also powered by Xiaomi’s MIUI 10 on top of the latest Android 9.0 Pie. The slider mechanism unfortunately affected the battery capacity coming in at only 3200mAh.
The phone uses reversible USB Type-C with support for Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 4.0+ for fast charging and also supports Wireless Charging. As many flagships released this year, the Mi Mix 3 also has no headphone jack but comes with a Type-C to 3mm headphone jack connector.
With all the high-end parts used in this phone, Xiaomi maintains the phone cheap compared to other high-end phones with similar parts with the 6GB RAM 128GB storage variant at $475, 8GB RAM 128GB storage variant at $520 and 8GB RAM 128GB storage variant at $575.
The Mi Mix 3 is currently only available in China with a global version to be launched soon.
