Xiaomi Mi Mix 3 Review

In the history of the smartphone industry's quest for 100% screen-to-body ratio, the Xiaomi Mi Mix 3 deserves a prominent entry. 

Not only has Xiaomi managed to fill 93.4% of its phone's front-facing body with screen, the company's done it using a design trick from yesteryear - sliding the display down to expose its selfie camera, and it works pretty well.

We've seen the Vivo Nex, Oppo Find X and Honor Magic 2 all implement mechanically moving parts which sees the front cameras rise up, out of the top of the handsets, but there are seriously questions over their durability.

With Xiaomi sticking with a far more old-school slider, the hope is reliability will increase, while still achieving that futuristic all-screen design.

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Specs:

Dimensions : 157.9 x 74.7 x 8.5 mm (6.22 x 2.94 x 0.33 in)

Weight : 218 g

Build : Front glass, aluminum frame (7000 series), ceramic back

Chipset : Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 (10 nm architecture)

CPU : Octa-core (4x2.8 GHz Kryo 385 Gold & 4x1.7 GHz Kryo 385 Silver)

GPU : Adreno 630

Operating System : MIUI 10, based on Android 9.0

Memory : 6/8GB or 8/10GB RAM

Storage : 128GB or 256GB ROM

Expandable storage : No

Display type : Super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors

Display size : 6.39 inches, 100.2 cm2 (~85.0% screen-to-body ratio)

Screen resolution : 1080 x 2340 pixels, 19.5:9 ratio (~403 ppi density)

Mobile network support: GSM / CDMA / HSPA / EVDO / LTE

Wi-Fi support : 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac

Bluetooth support : 5.0, A2DP, aptX HD, LE

GPS support : Yes, with dual-band A-GPS, GLONASS, BDS, GALILEO, QZSS

USB : Type-C 1.0

Rear camera : 12 MP (wide), f/1.8 with 12 MP (telephoto), 1/3.4"

Front camera : Mechanical pop-up 24 MP, 1/2.8" with 2 MP, depth sensor

Battery : Non-removable Li-Ion 3200 mAh battery

Color : Jade Green, Sapphire Blue, Onyx Black, Forbidden City Blue (10 GB variant only)

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This is the first phone Xiaomi did a smartphone with a slider function, which they hide the front facing camera underneath the screen, so they can achieve mostly bezel-less design of the front screen. Out of the box we get a Mi Mix 3 phone, a wireless charger in white that supports up to 10W of output, a power brick with QC3 spec, a Type-C cable, a Type-C to 3.5mm converter a SIM eject needle and also a plastic case. It actually supports Qualcomm Quick Charge 4 spec but the power adapter provided only supports QC3 spec.

On the back side it has a Sony IMX 363 that we've seen on another Xiaomi phones, it has an aperture of F1.8 and it does have Optical image stabilization support. It also has another sensor with two times optical zoom. The ceramic finish on it does feel really good but it is extremely slippery, you have to be careful when holding it with hands.

Take a look at the slider, we can see that it has a very slim top bezel. There's a little gap there and this is where the secondary loudspeaker located below the slider. The sound will transmit through it. It looks like it does have a sensor inside, so when i slide it down, we get a very satisfying click sound and the overall it does feel really good. When we put the phone inside the case provided, it does feel great, and it does cover all the buttons, which can protect those buttons from damage.

After powering it on, and we do have 116GB of free storage out of the box (12GB occupied by system), so if you need more storage then you have to buy the larger storage 256GB version, as it doesn't support microSD card expandable storage. Since we get the China ROM version instead of Global ROM, we do have many bloatware especially those apps are in Chinese. The new function called Xiao Ai, which is similar to Apple Siri, currently does only support language in Chinese. This could be problematic for those people who don't understand Chinese.

Since it is using Super AMOLED panel, yes of course it supports ambient display, so you can view informations like time and date without waking up the device (but it does't display notifications like Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus flagship phones did. You can schedule it when to display those informations, but remember this function will reduce your battery life. This panel can go up to 600 lux of brightness, which is very decent, so it is still visible even at outdoors. The black are really deep, thanks to the Super AMOLED panel that they're using. It has 1440p, 19:9 screen, so it looks really sharp in eyes.

Take a look of the DRM info, like other Xiaomi phones, this does not support Widevine Level 3, which means you can't get Netflix Full HD streaming but only standard definition. I think flagship phones like this should not have this kind of problem, it should support Level 1 like others do.

The speeds of UFS 2.1 storage is quite good. We did a benchmark test and it has sequential read of 690 MB/s and sequential write of around 200 MB/s. For the Antutu benchmark, thanks to the Snapdragon 845 chipset and 8GB of RAM, it can reach around 280000 score without problems. So far I haven't see any UI stutters in this ROM, it is really fast and smooth, and I think they fixed it in MIUI 10. The face unlocking is really quick, the only matter is you need to swipe down your slider to get the front facing camera getting your face data. The fingerprint unlocking, as always, really quick, like other Xiaomi phones did.

The audio quality output via Type-C to 3.5mm jack sounds good, good quality. There's a single firing speaker at the bottom, sadly they did not manage to place another speakers at the bottom, otherwise it would be nice.

In the camera app, it does have the manual camera mode, which allows you to adjust the White Balance, Aperture, ISO, and can choose between wide or tele lens mode. We also have the new night mode, something which doesn't have on MIUI 9. The video recording function support up to 4K 60fps recording, which is really great. It also has a 960fps slow-motion recording mode. For some reason, they still can't make EIS support on front facing camera video recording, something which is disappointed. But, the video quality still seems good. The dual phase detection autofocus seems really good like other did, the focus speed is really fast.

With the very powerful SD845 chipset and 8GB of RAM, it can handle heavy games at max resolution and max setting very well. We can get very high frame rates using this while playing PUBG. Since it only has 3200mAh battery, you can expect that the battery life will not be very good like other phones with 4000mAh battery, but in my test, I managed to get around 8 hours of screen on time with most of the time playing YouTube video and Chrome browsing, and during the test the screen brightness was 250 lux.

What's impressive is the wireless charging times and cable charging times. I managed to fully charge the phone from 5% with the wireless charger for 2 hours and 2 minutes, while using the cable charging, we can actually fully charge it in 1 hour 30 minutes. That's really quick!

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Pros:

a. Great build with ceramic used

b. Very quick UFS 2.1 storage

c. Very decent AMOLED storage from Samsung

d. Bright screen, good blacks

e. Always on display

f. Great GPS, locks on 30+ satellites

g. Very good audio via Type-C

h. Slider movement feels sturdy (up and down)

i. New night shot mode

j. New 4k 60fps recording options

k. Smooth and fast UI

l. Powerful chipset, games run great

m. 10W wireless charger included in the box, charges very fast

l. Support latest QC4, but QC4 charger not included

Cons:

a. A little thicker and heavier than other flagships

b. No microSD support, no 3.5mm jack, no IP rating

c. Very minor play in the slider mech

d. Only a single loudspeaker

e. Some UI bugs present

f. 60fps video recording has too many artifacts

g. EIS in video isn't working in 4k or on the front camera

h. Low light photos produced aren't at flagship level

i. Chinese Xiao Ai button and search (only on Chinese ROM)

j. 3200mAh battery, could be larger

k. Included case is cheaper than previous Mix models, a bit loose