Xiaomi Mi MIX 3 reviews: Very special, especially practical

Then there is the weight. The distinction between a phone too heavy and a phone just heavy enough to make us feel expensive The flagship smartphone Xiaomi is absolutely necessary for this balance. Ceramic also gives this smartphone a very difficult appearance to reproduce with glass. But that's not all that hardware does for the phone, it's also amazing durability. I like to use my smartphones without a case, as it's a good way for me to discern the effectiveness of a phone's body over time.

As a rule of thumb, at the end of my review, smartphones with glass that I'm used to handling would be covered with micro-scratches and even two deep furrows, if I was not careful. But not the Mi MIX 3. This ceramic case is still as impeccable as the first day and I am really impressed.

I'm also glad that Xiaomi decided this time to choose a shiny aluminum group, instead of an anodized group like on the MIX 2. Yes, it's not entirely ceramic like the MIX original, but it's really as if it was the case. For a phone to feel expensive, I always thought it must be as durable as it is fragile. It may seem confusing at first, but I think you will understand what I mean when you understand it. Xiaomi has found a good balance which, in my opinion, is only the second after the Nokia 8 Sirocco – and it's really a eulogy.

Despite the amazing quality of manufacture, there is a flaw in the armor of the handset, flawless, well built quality. But this particular vulnerability also turns out to be the highlight of the handset.

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To date, you probably already know that the Xiaomi Mi MIX 3 is one of the few modern smartphones with a magnetic slip mechanism. I explain why this was necessary in the first place in my practical message, but the bottom line is that it is Xiaomi's solution to what I like to call it. Riddle of the camera. In their quest to eliminate all the facade effects of the device, manufacturers had to come up with innovative solutions to integrate all the elements that you usually find on the front of the device.

The most popular method we have seen is the famous hack. However, Xiaomi's Mi MIX never had a notch: the MIX and MIX 2 chose to hide their selfie camera at the bottom of the handset's chin. Then, they either piled the earpiece into a slot at the top of the device, or opted for a piezoelectric loudspeaker (vibrating the screen to produce sound) and an ultrasonic proximity sensor.

Then there's the Mi MIX 3, which has opted for an old school approach to solving a new global problem – something that, in retrospect, should have been so obvious: slide the screen as if you were an old phone.

By doing this you open up a world of screen size possibilities. I mean, just look at the display on the Mi MIX 3. It's the immensity of the viewing experience that is immersive. The 6.39-inch Full HD + AMOLED panel is absolutely stunning and offers excellent viewing angles for an AMOLED display.

The lack of supervision and the ratio screen / body to the limit of 93.4% (0.934: 1) always look so special, even if I look at it every day for more than a week. However, I will say that the 19.5: 9 aspect ratio of this phone is one of the highest I've used on a smartphone, so the mailbox for the 16: 9 content (which is most videos) is real. But the advantage is that the fingerprint of the phone is very manageable for a screen of this size.

Oh, and as icing on the cake, the sliding front panel of Xiaomi is not only there when you have to access the selfie cameras. In fact, the company allows you to customize the operation of the slider. So you can set it up to launch specific applications or tools, or you can just leave the default setting that automatically launches the selfie camera. But my favorite part is that you can now answer phone calls with a slide down (but you can not hang up with a slide).

Of course, moving a moving part on a smartphone is risky. If our handsets are already going bad for all sorts of reasons when they have almost no moving parts, we can imagine the multitude of problems that a slippery display would cause.

Well, according to Xiaomi, the Mi MIX 3's magnetic slip mechanism is supposed to be very strong. They rank it for about 300,000 slides, which is about 150 slides a day for a little under five and a half years, which is very impressive. And, on that note, I think they also did a fantastic job with the feel and quality of the sliding mechanism. When you pull or push the front panel, it engages very satisfactorily and does not move accidentally as you scroll through Web pages. It's beautiful and safe. Better yet, when the cursor is closed, it does not seem to affect the structural rigidity of Mi MIX 3.

However, even if the gap between the screen and the rest of the chassis is something you can not really feel in the hand, there is still a gap. And when there is a gap, he becomes vulnerable to the things that go into it.

Dust, for example, remains stuck to the slots between the screen and in the headset and camera section at the top of the phone. But real problems arise when something a little bigger – and harder – gets stuck between pieces. During my examination period, I spent a whole day with something small, sharp and hard, wedged between the two panels. When that happened, every time I slid the screen down, a painful scratch sound greeted me instead of a satisfying click. That said, the grain of sand or other material trapped between the cracks was gone the next day and I did not notice any visible damage to the chassis of the Mi MIX 3.

But, something like that has also made me understand that some of the common flagship features should give up owning a smartphone like this.

The bad side of the practical medal

Obviously, with 100% more moving parts than your typical flagship smartphone, the Mi MIX 3 does not have any IP67 / IP68 water resistance. In fact, I would not even want to be caught in the rain with this smartphone because I'm so scared that any amount of water kills it. While I generally place the water resistance high enough in my list of smartphone needs flagship, I recently switched to Mi MIX 3 since a mid ranger who had no resistance to it. Neither water, so it was not a shocking change for me. But, your mileage may vary.

What was particularly disappointing for me is the fact that the Mi MIX 3 speakers are downright atrocious. They are bad even with mono speaker setups, but I guess in such a phone, Xiaomi did not really have space to put big drivers or echo chambers to improve speaker quality . To make matters worse, this phone also does not have a 3.5mm headphone jack, but you know it's not something very unusual in the high-end, so I'm a little numb now.

Finally, we have the greatest sacrifice that Xiaomi had to make: the battery. In the Mi MIX 3, you will find a small battery at the limit of 3,200 mAh. With its flagship products exceeding the 4000 mAh mark, this tiny battery was the most disappointing problem with the Mi MIX 3 when I first saw the spec sheet. But the small cell that could actually display better numbers than expected.

With moderate usage (a lot of Netflix, YouTube and social media with a handful of camera), the device has lasted more than 18 hours on a single charge with about five hours of time with the screen. That's what I consider the "average" battery life for a smartphone in 2019. That said, can you imagine how long I could get out of this phone if it had room for a larger cell 4000 mAh? However, since this is not the case, I guess I should not give it that much trouble.

The good news is that Xiaomi had enough space for a few extra products that, in my opinion, really complement the device.

Complete the experience

One of the most important aspects of a flagship smartphone is its camera. Unlike mid-range phones, high-end phones need to perform well because you often pay them a lot more. But on the Mi MIX 3, I would say that this camera is definitely OK. Yes, I know DxOMark says it's as good as the Samsung Galaxy Note9 in terms of photography, but I really would not go that far.

In fact, to see if I was alone in this situation, I quickly took a picture side by side in a typical daylight scene with the Mi MIX 3 and Galaxy Note9. Then my colleagues chose between the two and a majority of them chose the Galaxy Note9. Of course, choosing a prettier picture is a deeply subjective one, but there are also objective ways of judging a handset.

Xiaomi Mi MIX 3 takes pictures that often hold a lot of detail, but the details are clipped from time to time. There is also an artificial intelligence mode, but it's much more subtle than what you'll find on other competing Chinese smartphones.

On top of that, Xiaomi has also added a "Night Mode" that seems to work like the Google Pixel's Sight Night Mode and the Mate 20 Pro Night Mode, but it's not close to producing the kind of quality images that the two others can produce.

And frankly, I was deeply impressed by the selfie camera.

I would call this camera a B + thanks to its fast shooting and correct images, but I do not personally think it can compete in the high-end market.

What I liked about Mi MIX 3 and I have not mentioned yet is the fact that Xiaomi did not impose a fingerprint scanner on display on the MIX 3. These scanners tend to to be much slower – and much more imprecise – than its traditional counterparts, so I am never a fan of them.

Instead, what you have left on the Mi MIX 3 is only a damn good thing to ride in the back that I would take all day compared to the current crop of on-screen scanners. If you do not want to scan your finger, you can also unlock the face, but you must also slide the front panel to activate it, which is simply the coolest.

A little bit of both goes a long way

My biggest complaint about Mi MIX 2 was the feeling that Xiaomi was trying to sell. And when they started giving up the magic of practicality, all he did was expose the faults of Mi MIX 2 compared to other flagship smartphones that you can buy. That said, even though I liked the original Mi MIX, I never felt it was a device that was practical enough for everyone to use on a daily basis. It tore me apart because I did not want to be forced to choose one or the other. I wanted both.

And in a way, I found that with the Mi MIX 3.

Yes, it's not as practical as your typical high-end flagship smartphone and I do not think it can really compete on each of these flagship features. But the beauty of MIX 3 is that it does not have to because it does not have anything special. It has this really special feature that is both cool and impractical, but also quite awesome. It's a bit like the original MIX, and I really like that with this handset.

However, I think the best thing about MIX 3 is its price. Like the MIX 2, the Mi MIX 3 will be sold – at launch – for only 2199 RM. This is a great price for a flagship smartphone meeting these specifications, and even less for a flagship smartphone with a function as unique as the magnetic slider. And although I do not like that, you have to pay 100 RMR more for the Jade Green and Sapphire Blue variants because they are exactly the same smartphone, but the asking price is even more than reasonable for such a phone.

Photograph of Rory Lee, with Sony A7 III.