In Summary
- Mi MIX Fold is Xiaomi’s first commercially-available foldable smartphone in the market.
- With the Mi MIX Fold, Xiaomi aims to take on the offerings from Samsung and Huawei.
- Xiaomi Mi MIX Fold features dual displays, triple rear cameras, and dual battery.
- Mi MIX Fold features world’s first “liquid lens technology” that allows a lens to cover two functions.
Xiaomi has unveiled its first commercially-available foldable smartphone in the market, the Mi MIX Fold, at an event today in China. The MIX Fold appears to be an attempt from Xiaomi towards democratizing the foldable-display smartphones that, until now, carried an exorbitant price tag, and therefore, was an expensive affair. So it should not come as a surprise that Xiaomi wants to compete with the likes of Samsung and Huawei, which have their offerings, namely the Galaxy Fold 2 and the Mate X, respectively, available in the market for quite some time now.
What exactly does the Mi MIX Fold have to offer? Here’s a quick overview of Xiaomi’s all-new foldable smartphone.
Table of Contents
Xiaomi Mi MIX Fold Highlights
1. Design
In terms of design, the Mi MIX Fold appears somewhat similar to the Samsung Galaxy Fold — at least in the images — with a folding mechanism that folds inwards. Speaking about the folding mechanism, the hinge, in particular, Xiaomi claims that the smartphone’s hinge can sustain over a million folds without causing issues.
To add to the device’s protection, the back on the standard edition MIX Fold comes with Corning’s Gorilla Glass 5 on top, while that on the ceramic variant is, well, ceramic (with laser engraving).
2. Display
Being a foldable device, the MIX Fold features two displays: one on the outside, which measures 6.52-inch, and the second on the inside, coming in at 8.01-inch. The outer display is an OLED, and it comes at a 27:9 aspect ratio with a 2520 x 840 resolution and a 90Hz refresh rate. It is also HDR10+ certified. On the other hand, the bigger, internal display comes in at a 4:3 aspect ratio with a WQHD+ resolution and a 60Hz refresh rate. The internal display also gets support for HDR10+, Dolby Vision, and MEMC.
3. Performance
Talking about performance, the Mi MIX Fold runs on Snapdragon 888, which is the latest flagship chipset from Qualcomm. The Snapdragon 888 delivers up to 2.84GHz of clock speed with 5G connectivity and has the Adreno 660 GPU to handle all the graphics processing. Assisting the processor is up to 16GB of RAM and up to 512GB of onboard storage. And to power the internals, there is a massive 5020mAh battery (dual — 2460mAh + 2560mAh) on the device. As for charging, the MIX Fold comes with the 67W fast-charging system, which, according to Xiaomi, can fully charge the battery in just 37 minutes.
4. Camera
In the camera department, Xiaomi has employed a triple-camera system on the Mi MIX Fold. This setup includes a 108MP primary (Samsung HM2) camera accompanied by a 13MP ultra-wide-angle lens and an 8MP tertiary lens. According to Xiaomi, the third sensor on the device uses the “liquid lens technology” that allows it to double as both a macro lens and a 30x optical zoom lens. The liquid lens technology allows the tertiary camera on the MIX Fold to cover functions of two lenses, so you can shoot micro details of subjects up close and also capture far-off objects from a distance. On the front, the phone gets a single, 20MP shooter.
The camera experience on the Mi MIX Fold is delivered by Xiaomi’s in-house Surge C1 ISP — the company’s first self-developed ISP. Xiaomi says the addition of the new chip improves the 3A algorithm and provides better low-light focus capabilities to improve the overall image quality.
5. Audio
With the Mi MIX Fold, Xiaomi is bringing a quad-speaker setup from Harmon Kardon along with what the company is calling a 3D panoramic sound. Additionally, the device also gets Hi-Res Audio Certification. But unfortunately, there is no 3.5mm audio jack.
6. Connectivity
Being powered by the Snapdragon 888, the Mi MIX Fold offers dual 5G standby and support for Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.2, and NFC. Besides, the phone has a USB Type-C port.
7. Cooling system
The Mi MIX Fold adopts what Xiaomi is calling a “butterfly cooling system” that integrates large-are VC liquid cooling thermal gel with multilayer graphics sheets and other heat dissipation methods to cut down on the heat at high-load computing operations, 5G transfer speeds, and fast charging.
8. Security
In terms of security, the smartphone comes equipped with a side-mounted fingerprint scanner on the right-hand side for authentication.
9. Software
On the software front, the Mi MIX Fold will run on MIUI 12 based on Android 10 out of the box.
Speaking of software, Xiaomi is offering a PC mode on the MIX Fold that will bring a desktop-like UI with support for multiple windowed apps. However, besides offering a short demo of its accessibility, which showcased how the mode is accessed, the company did not share any more information.
10. Colors
Xiaomi Mi MIX Fold is available in two colors: Black and Ceramic (Special Edition).
Xiaomi Mi MIX Fold: Pricing and Availability
The Mi MIX Fold comes in two configurations: 12GB + 256GB, 12GB + 512GB, and 16GB + 512GB, priced at CNY 9999, CNY 10999, and CNY 12999 respectively. It will be available for pre-order in China starting today and will ship from April 16.
Xiaomi is currently offering the Mi MIX Fold only in China, so there is no word on its release outside of China.