During the recent launch of the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6, the word we used most was “iterative.” And now Xiaomi’s first foldable phone promises to make its Samsung rival look rather conservative and boring, with a combination of bold design and promising specs.
Ahead of the Xiaomi Mix Flip's official launch on July 19, Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun has posted a series of teasers on X (formerly Twitter) and Weibo to give us a taste of what the phone can do. And on paper, it certainly looks like a contender for our guide to the best foldable phones, if it launches globally.
The Mix Flip’s most obvious calling card is its 4.01-inch display, which stretches across the entire back cover and makes the Z Flip 6’s 3.4-inch equivalent look a little last-gen. That screen is similar to the one we’ve seen on the Motorola Razr Plus, which we found quite usable, and it also has a built-in earpiece speaker so you can take private calls without opening the phone.
Xiaomi’s new foldable phone also has a couple more big specs. Like the Z Flip 6, the Mix Flip has a high-end Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset with a vapor chamber for cooling. And it also has an impressively large 4,780mAh battery – we don’t yet know how that will translate to real-world battery life, but it’s a lot bigger than the 4,000mAh cell in its Samsung rival.
Does anyone know what it's called? I'm asking through a friend. #XiaomiMIXFlip pic.twitter.com/dyriQc0rRtJuly 17, 2024
As for the cameras, it looks like the Mix Flip could once again have the edge, with a 50MP main camera, a 60MP telephoto camera, and a 32MP selfie camera, though we don't know anything about sensor sizes yet, and megapixels aren't necessarily an indicator of quality.
Meanwhile, the Mix Flip’s internal 6.9-inch AMOLED display is slightly larger than the Z Flip 6’s 6.7-inch equivalent, and has a 120Hz refresh rate. On paper, then, Xiaomi’s foldable phone looks like a hardware successor to rival Samsung, even though the Z Flip 6 launched just a week ago. We’re no doubt eager to see more on July 19, and also hear when it might – as rumoured – launch outside of China.
Mixing it with Samsung
There's a lot more to the foldable phone experience than just specs, so it's hard to draw any firm conclusions about the Xiaomi Mix Flip, particularly since HyperOS, which runs on top of Android 14, may be an acquired taste.
On previous phones like the Xiaomi 14, we found HyperOS to be a bit clunky and had some confusing quirks, even for seasoned Xiaomi users. It can also be a bit cluttered out of the box, with various unwanted third-party apps clogging up menus.
Still, Xiaomi’s software experience is pretty fluid and versatile. And there’s no doubt that the Xiaomi Mix Flip, like the Mix Fold 4 that will be announced alongside it, has a lot to offer in terms of hardware — particularly that cover display, which looks at least as good as the one on the Motorola Razr Plus.
We liked the latter so much that it made our list of the best tech of 2024 so far, so it's another promising sign for its similar rival from Xiaomi. At the very least, the Mix Flip seems likely to be one of the best Xiaomi phones around, and we'll be interested to hear about pricing and more on July 19, particularly as Samsung's latest foldables have received slight price increases.
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