XIAOMI MI MIX 3
Xiaomi’s new flagship brings the brand into Australia’s mid-range phone selection with a bang
Does this Android contender have the goods to take on Honor and OnePlus? Well, that cool sliding mechanism for the selfie camera is a good start
From $749 mi.com
When it comes to the big Chinese phone makers trying to get their wares sold in Australia, what started as a trickle has now become a flood: we’re up to our knees in handsets from the likes of Huawei, Xiaomi, Oppo and others.
As time has gone on, the buying propositions have become more and more compelling. The Xiaomi Mi Mix 3 is a case in point, bringing with it some top-level specs at a mid-range price. If you’re in the market for an Android phone, you have to place this one on your shortlist, no matter what your budget or needs are.
Specs-wise, we’re looking at a spacious 6.39-inch, 1080x2340-pixel OLED display, with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor inside and 6GB of RAM to keep the phone’s software moving along swiftly. That processor has been topped by the Snapdragon 855 this year, but you’ve still got a very nippy phone here.
For storage there’s 128GB of space on board but no memory card slot, so you can’t extend that any further.
Around the back of the phone there’s a dual-lens 12MP+12MP rear-facing camera, and a fingerprint sensor (which isn’t situated under the screen, as it is on some of the other flagship phones of 2019).
Pop goes the camera
As far as unique selling points go, the major one with the Mi Mix 3 is the sliding mechanism you use to reveal the front-facing selfie camera – the whole screen snaps down a little to reveal a dual-lens, 24MP+24MP camera. It’s not the first phone to do this, but it’s one of the best.
It might sound gimmicky, but it does mean there’s no need for a notch – the display is a truly gorgeous one, unblemished by any black holes or rectangles protruding in from the edges. With minimal bezels, it’s one of the very best screens we’ve set eyes on lately.
Are the notch-free aesthetics worth the effort of sliding out the camera every time? We admit it’s mostly a personal preference, but in truth we like it more than we thought we would. In fact, it’s kind of cool to have that tactile mechanism to call on whenever you need to take a selfie or make a video call, and it also means the camera gets launched instantly, without any fiddling within apps or menus. The mechanism itself is smooth and satisfying – whether it’ll stay that way over years of use we can’t say, but the early signs are good.
The sliding mechanism also means that Xiaomi can fit in a dual-lens 24MP+2MP configuration for the front-facing camera, unhampered by the restrictions of a notch. The extra lens doesn’t really translate to extra quality though, as we’ll get to further on in this review.
Design chops
Xiaomi has put together a sleeklooking polished phone with the Mi Mix 3, particularly if you’re peering at it from the front. Around the back it’s a pleasingly minimal design – the Mi Mix 3 isn’t going to win any awards for originality, but we like the way it’s been put together. Colour choices are Sapphire Blue and Onyx Black.
Perhaps because of that slider, the phone is slightly thicker (8.5mm) and slightly heavier (218g) than a lot of its rivals. To clarify, it doesn’t feel like a thick or heavy phone in the hand, but it carries a bit more bulk than most handsets at the top end of the market.
Add in that large 6.39-inch display (using a very tall 19.5:9 aspect ratio) and this isn’t a phone we would recommend for people with particularly small hands (or small pockets for that matter). The Mi Mix 3 is just about usable with one hand, but most of the time you’re going to need two hands to properly get stuff done on this handset.
Another consequence of the slider mechanism is that the phone has no IP rating for waterproofing or dustproofing, so this might be one phone that absolutely needs a protective case to go with it. It’s one of those trade-offs you often see with smartphones at a mid-range price, and it’s one that may or may not bother you.
Wireless charging is available, which means you can pop this down
on a charging mat and forget about it for a while. As with many phones these days though, the 3.5mm headphone jack has been thoroughly ditched, so you’ll need an adapter (or a new pair of headphones) if you want to listen to your playlists and podcasts and the like on this handset.
Hitting the mark
The Mi Mix 3 mostly impresses on paper, and it’s the same story when in action: it’s a pleasure to use, and it’s a phone that your friends and family will be peering over in admiration. Xiaomi has managed to put together a polished phone for a decent price, and we definitely enjoyed our time with it.
Software can often be a drawback with phones from Chinese firms, as they often tend to clutter up Android with a number of unnecessary apps and flourishes. Xiaomi’s own take on Android isn’t too bad, but we found the custom graphics a bit dull, and the app drawer gets removed, so all your app icons have to be somewhere on the home screens.
You can always install a thirdparty Android launcher to revamp the interface, but most people won’t want to go to the effort of having to do that. The software is based on Android 9 Pie, which is a plus point, but it’s a bit fiddly and frustrating otherwise. In fact, it’s certainly no match for the OSes on board phones from Google, Samsung and OnePlus.
Thankfully, once you get into the apps everything runs smoothly. We tested the Mi Mix 3 with all our regular apps and games, and it coped well with everything we threw at it. Other 2019 phones might beat it in terms of benchmarks, but in day-today use it blazes through tasks.
Camera performance is usually a key concern for potential phone
buyers, and we’re pleased to report that the Mi Mix 3 does well in this regard. The shutter response is fast and the pictures are very good – as you’d expect, noise creeps in in lower light, but Xiaomi’s handset managed to do well in most conditions. It’s not the Pixel 3, but then it costs a lot less, so take your choice.
The 2x optical zoom available on the rear-facing camera really comes in handy for getting closer to the action, and we found the optional HDR mode does a good job of keeping dark and light areas of a picture visible. There’s also an AI mode that will choose the best scene setting for whatever your phone is pointing at, though we didn’t really use that mode as it didn’t seem to make much of a useful difference.
When it comes to the selfie camera, the results weren’t quite as sharp or as eye-catching, but then you won’t be shooting landscapes with this phone camera. Considering that the front-facing camera is housed in a separate section of the Mi Mix 3, we thought the quality might be a little better, but in reality it’s really nothing special.
As for battery life, you can expect the usual day of use out of the Mi Mix 3: during our testing, we usually had around 15-20% battery left by bedtime, and that’s with a reasonable amount of mixed use during the day. Watching Netflix knocked the battery level down by about 10% per hour, so think 10 hours of video watching.
That’s about par for the course with modern-day smartphones – the battery won’t let you down, but it isn’t going to stretch to a second day either. Remember that we’re testing a brand new phone here, too, so that battery performance may well degrade over time. It’s just something to keep in mind.
The whole package
Every smartphone is a balance between its price and everything else, and we’d say the Mi Mix 3 manages that balance better than most of its rivals. For a relatively affordable price (at least in smartphone terms), you get a stylish, fast and capable handset that’s going to last you for years to come.
If you’re keen on picking up this phone, we certainly wouldn’t loose any sleep worrying about the camera quality, the performance, battery life or the screen, as they’re all very good. The trade-offs occur in more minor areas. For example, there’s a lack of waterproofing, and there’s a few software niggles that might not be to your liking.
With so much competition at this particular price range, it’s perhaps that sliding camera – and the notch-free screen you get as a result – which is going to tempt you into buying the Mi Mix 3 for yourself. For now, it’s something refreshingly different in a very busy smartphone market where handsets are finding it difficult to stand out.