Xiaomi Mi MIX 2 - best frameless Chinese flagship

Mi Mix of the first generation was impressive, and with its successor Xiaomi hopes to maintain this "wow" factor, making the device accessible to a wider audience.

Xiaomi took over the rest of the smartphone industry. A full-screen display of the phone with a screening factor of 91.3% and a ceramic design made of Xiaomi. on the Mi Mix.

Fortunately, this changes with the help of Mi Mix 2. The phone will be able to use it on most operators around the world. Xiaomi also made a few design tricks to make the phone more accessible, including cropping the screen size and switching to a speaker that really works.

The price is what makes Mi Mix 2 much more attractive: the base version with 6 GB of RAM and 64 GB of storage is sold for the equivalent of $ 500 in China, and Xiaomi will strive to present it. Let's find out if Mi Mix 2 can distinguish itself from other phones in this segment.

I (Harish Jonnalagadda) write this review after using Mi Mix 2 for two weeks, with the spread in Beijing and Hyderabad. I used the phone primarily on the 4G Airtel network and was roaming with China Mobile. The device launches the first global beta version of MIUI (build 7.8.24) and is picked up by a single update with stability fixes, increasing the build number to 7.9.21. The device was provided by Android Central for a review of Xiaomi.

Mi Mix 2 is very similar to its predecessor, and it's good. The first generation Mi Mix was stunning thanks to the widescreen display, and we treat it the same way. Mix 2 has knitted panels with three sides, which provides an exciting display that is ideal for multimedia consumption.


There is a 5-inch front camera and LED indicator, and Xiaomi notes that the bottom frame is now 12% thinner than the Mi Mix. Last year Xiaomi used a piezoelectric acoustic driver, but this time it switched to a standard speaker, which is just above the display. The speaker itself is decent enough, and you should not have problems with voice calls.

Mi Mix had a crazy 91.3% screen-to-case ratio, but a large 6.44-inch display made it difficult to use the phone alone. With Mi Mix 2, Xiaomi, the screen size to a more manageable 5.99 inches, making the phone more convenient to use alone. The fact that this is an 18: 9 display means that you are not high enough and you can not reach all the corners of the display.

While the Mi Mix was blocky at the back, its successor has smooth edges and rounded corners, which leads to a much better feel in the hand. The design on the back is relatively unchanged from Mi Mix: there is a gold accent on 18 carats around the camera, and the slogan "Mix, designed by Xiaomi" is still laser-printed on the back. Xiaomi again uses a ceramic back, but the middle of the frame is made of aluminum. At the bottom of the phone there is one speaker and a USB-C charging port next to it. The phone does not have an IR sensor, and you also will not find a 3.5mm jack.

Silent phones with main phone and iPhone. Xiaomi, meanwhile, decided to move the camera to the lower right corner of the phone, while the Mi Mix 2 is seamless and not overshadowed by any cutouts.


Mi Mix of the first generation is also an image sensor, and the area around the lens is obscured. However, the same problems that followed the Mi Mix 2 of the first generation: the position of the front camera makes it incredibly inconvenient to use, and more often than not you will get a strange chin - the first angle when taking over, the Camera tells you to take yourself that is not perfect . Although it works for the default application for the camera, there is no way to change the orientation in applications such as Duo.

The defining function on the phone is the screen on the whole screen, and although the Xiaomi will have the best quality with the QHD panel, the FHD + display with a resolution of 2160 x 1080 is really good. It is not as saturated as AMOLED panels on Samsung phones, but these are the best LCD displays that you will find on the market today.

Colors reproduction is accurate, and if you're looking for punchier colors, there's an option to adjust the color temperature in the settings. The phone gets sufficiently bright for outdoor usage, and you can reduce the brightness all the way down to 1nit for viewing the screen at night. There's also a dedicated reading mode that acts as a blue light filter.


The Mi Mix 2 is compatible with most carriers around the world.
The Mi Mix 2 is powered by the 10nm Snapdragon 835, and the base variant of the phone comes with 6GB of RAM. Xiaomi is making three storage configurations available: 64GB, 128GB, and 256GB (the model I'm reviewing). The 64GB model is available for what amounts to $500 in China, but you'll have to shell out close to $570 to get your hands on a unit from reseller sites.

As you'd imagine from a phone that has the latest hardware available today, the Mi Mix 2 absolutely blazes through anything you throw at it. I haven't noticed any slowdowns yet, and with MIUI 9 providing much-needed optimization for the UI elements, you won't feel like the interface is bloated (which was definitely the case with MIUI 8).

Xiaomi rolled out its first global phone last year in the Mi Note 2, with the phone featuring support for 37 LTE bands in total. The company is doing the same once again with the Mi Mix 2, offering 42 bands in total. That means that you'll be able to use the Mi Mix 2 on most carriers around the world, making it a much more enticing option for those looking to import the device.

Aside from the annoyances with the front camera, the Mi Mix 2 is a well-thought-out phone that certainly looks much better when compared to the likes of the OnePlus 5. Xiaomi is also offering a limited edition model crafted out of unibody ceramic that comes with 8GB of RAM and 128GB storage. The phone will be available in black and white color options, and it looks absolutely stunning. You can clearly make out the difference between the ceramic and the aluminum mid-frame on the regular version, but the ceramic unibody edition has a seamless design that's evocative, particularly in the white color option.

If you're looking for a phone that stands out, then the unibody ceramic edition is the one to get. The phone will be incredibly hard to get a hold of, however, and at $720 it costs considerably more than the regular version.

Xiaomi phones are known for their battery longevity, and the Mi Mix 2 is no different. I easily got a day's worth of usage out of the 3400mAh battery consistently, even on days when I was using cellular data throughout. I routinely averaged screen-on-time in excess of five hours. And when you do need to top up, the phone has Quick Charge 3.0.

The Mi Mix 2 runs the latest version of MIUI 9, which is based on Android 7.1.2 Nougat. MIUI 9 has a lot of new additions, but the user-facing ones are (for now) limited to the Chinese ROM. If you're buying the phone from a reseller like GearBest, you'll get the global ROM pre-installed, which comes with the Play Store and Google's suite of apps out of the box.


Xiaomi was one of the first brands to fully embrace a theming engine, and in MIUI 9 the engine is much better. You'll be able to change every facet of the user interface with themes, and there are hundreds of different theming options available from the Mi Store. Then there are the MIUI mainstays: an easy-to-use one-handed mode, Quick Ball shortcuts on the screen, Second Space, Dual Apps for running two instances of an app simultaneously. Xiaomi also introduced a split-screen mode, and it works just as you'd imagine — select Split Screen from the multitasking pane, and drag apps into the top and bottom halves of the screen.


There's a lot to like in MIUI 9, but it is very buggy in its current iteration.
One of the main highlights in MIUI 9 is system-wide optimization, which makes the UI feel much more responsive. If you're used a Xiaomi device running MIUI 8, you'll immediately notice the difference. That said, MIUI 9 does not bring any visual changes, and the notification shade in particular needs to be overhauled. Although the new panel with the integrated toggles made its debut in MIUI 8 (Xiaomi had a ghastly two-pane layout in MIUI 7), it looks dated. And although the phone is running Nougat, you lose out on features like inline replies and actionable notifications.

Then there's the issue of receiving notifications. For some reason, the Mi Mix 2 would not show incoming Slack notifications, and there's no way to expand notifications in the lock screen. The global ROM is still in beta, and there's a long way to go before we get to a finished build. However, with a global launch slated for next month, these issues should be resolved in forthcoming updates.

Xiaomi continues to deliver weekly updates with bug fixes and stability tweaks, and hopefully notification-related problems will be ironed out before the phone makes its way outside of China. I'll update the review once a stable version of MIUI 9 is available for the Mi Mix 2.


This year was defined by dual cameras making their way into phones across price points, and while Xiaomi rolled out dual rear cameras in the Mi 6, the company is sticking to a single shooter with the

The primary 12MP imaging sensor itself is the same as what we've seen on the Mi 6, and it similarly offers 4-axis OIS and the ability to record 4K video at 30fps. And like the Mi 6, the camera on the Mi Mix 2 does a great job in daylight conditions, but it loses out on detail in low-light scenarios.

The Mi Mix 2 has the same fundamentals as its predecessor: an all-screen front with virtually no bezels on three sides, and a ceramic body. By shrinking the screen size down to 5.99 inches, Xiaomi has created a device that's easier to use on a day-to-day basis.

For now, the Mi Mix 2 is limited to the Chinese market, but Xiaomi will be rolling it out in other Asian countries shortly. The company has announced that it will launch the phone in India sometime next month, and with Indonesia also becoming a key market for the brand, an eventual launch in that country is also likely in the coming months.

The fact that the Mi Mix 2 has global LTE bands makes it an easy recommendation if you're looking for a sub-$600 phone that manages to stand out. The same caveats as before apply though: you're not going to see any after-sales support in markets where Xiaomi doesn't sell phones, and if this is your first Xiaomi purchase, it'll take you awhile to get used to MIUI. If you're willing to put up with that, the Mi Mix 2 is a fantastic phone for the price.