The Xiaomi Mi Mix 3 slides into the bezel-less phone market, featuring 960 fps slow motion and a neat way to get rid of the notch by housing the front facing cameras via a non-motorized sliding mechanism that hides a dual-lens selfie cameras and led flash between two the halves of the phone.
Opening and closing the Mi Mix 3 non-motorized magnetic mechanism is rated for 300,000+ times, and it's activated by literary sliding the front display downwards. No notch display means no bathtub notch or teardrop notch so, you get a full display.
Other bezel less phones without a notch use a motorized mechanism to bring the selfie camera via a motorized pop-up or motorized chassis.
The Mi Mix 3 manual sliding mechanism feels more natural and coolest because every time you do the sliding motion you get a neat sound effect, which include a drawn sword and zippo lighter. There is a total of five sliding sound effects to choose from.
The Mi Mix 3 sliding mechanism, definitely, feels like the better selfie housing implementation as there is no motors or software needed to activate it like with a motorized selfie pop up camera, which has a greater chance of failure than a non-motorized mechanism.
With that said, a sliding mechanism is still a moving part so, debris could potentially get inside the Mi Mix 3 phone. Luckily, the sliding mechanism does not contain springs, only magnets to secure the slide into place so, there is even less chance of failure.
The dual-lens front-facing selfie camera feature an led flash for low light selfie. The first selfie camera is a 24 megapixel camera, while the second front facing camera on the Mi Mix 3 is a 2 megapixel depth sensor capable of portrait mode (blurry background) even while recording a selfie video.
There is a protective case that comes with the Mi Mix 3, which is designed differently to most cases to accommodate the sliding mechanism; hence the bottom part of the case has a cut out exposing the bottom part of the phone.
The Mi Mix 3 has one earpiece even though there are two earpiece metal grills: one on the display half and a second earpiece on the body of the phone. The earpiece grill on the front display is actually hollow, acting as a pass through for the real earpiece on the body.
The Mi Mix 3 notchless 6.4-inch display is made of amoled and protected by tempered glass, which is the same material covering the front facing cameras. Smartphone screen displays can be oled, capacitive touchscreen lcd, ips lcd or super amoled, which is the latest on smartphone display technology.
Second to super amoled, it's amoled which is better than oled because pixels can be individually turned on and off with amoled displays; hence better refresh rate, better dark contrasts and better power consumption.
Speaking of power, the Mi Mix 3 comes equipped with a 3,200mAh battery, which can get you through a good 16 hours of normal usage or 8 hours of heavy usage in 1080p display resolution. When scaling down the display resolution to 720p, you get better battery performance. Clearing the cache of apps (Google play store cache particularly) does also seem to improve battery performance.
The Mi Mix 3 full HD plus display is bright and responsive with nice color contrast and good amount of color saturation, which you can tune down from the display settings.
The almost edge to edge display and no notch gives you a full, uninterrupted watching experience when playing games, watching YouTube videos and Netflix movies. There is support for aptX HD, which is nice for higher resolution audio. Bluetooth version 5.0 is integrated in the Mi Mix 3, which provides more stable signal and battery when connected to another bluetooth 5.0 device (i.e. smartphone).
Speaking of games, the Mi Mix 3 has superb performance without lag, thanks to integrating a snapdragon 845 chip, 6GB of RAM, and octa-core (8 cores) 2.8Ghz cpu so, the Mi Mix 3 has 8 processing sub units, which are clocked at 2.8 Ghz.
This particular Mi Mix 3 version comes with a massive 128GB of internal storage capacity, which makes up for the fact that there is no micro SD support to expand the memory.
The Mi Mix 3 uses MIUI software (version 10.3.3.0), which has a nice, clean user interface with rounded edges.
The MIUI software is very responsive and lets you pull down the notification menu bar natively by swiping anywhere on the screen.You can also swipe upwards from anywhere to bring up Google search.
A blue vertical volume slider appears on the right side of the screen when turning the volume up and down and that is because the Mi Mix 3 runs Android 9.0 Pie, which integrates a one-tap shortcut to the silent dnd menu where you can select silent, do not disturb (dnd) and airplane mode.
There is 22 system notifications to choose from and 36 ringtones, which you can listen to on the YouTube video embedded on this review, which also features daytime and nighttime video footage, as well as slow motion video footage.
The Mi Mix 3 comes with different Miui versions according to region. While you could get the China rom version, you will want the Miui global rom version because it is the only version that comes with Google apps pre-installed and has no bloatware.
The Miui global version also has push notifications enabled, meaning you can receive, say, whatsup notifications even if the app is closed. The Miui 10.3.3.0 version is the same software version you get on other Xiaomi phones, including the Redmi Note 6.
Navigating the Mi Mix 3 screen is really nice. You get a vertical app drawer to see all your open apps nicely laid out vertically. Another feature you get with Miua software is "dark mode", which inverts the the text color from dark to light to produce a theme similar to a negative display watch.
The top halve enclosing the Mi Mix 3 display is made of plastic, while the body enclosure is made of aluminium, which is the same material the buttons are made of. All buttons are clicky and tactile with good feedback.
The centre button on the left of the Mi Mix 3 is a customizable button that you can program to launch the Google Assistant, the camera or the flashlight. Right above this programmable button, there is the dual sim card tray.
The top and right side of the phone are also made of aluminium metal. The Mi Mix 3 is a well constructed, solid device that weighs 215 grams and measures 15.8 cm high, 7.5 cm wide and 8.5 mm thick (9 mm with the rear camera bump).
The volume rocker and power button are located on the right side. There is no headphone jack on the Mi Mix 3 but there is a USB-C port on the bottom along with one loudspeaker. The back of the Mi Mix 3 phone looks like glass back but it is, in fact, ceramic, which is harder and more scratch resistant than glass.
The rear camera enclosure is made of glass and houses dual 12 megapixel lenses: one standard 12 megapixel lens with an f1.8 aperture and 1.4 micron pixel size, and one 12 megapixel telephoto lens that lets you zoom in on a subject 2x of the frame without compromising on the image quality.
The telephoto lens is easily and manually activated via the on-screen button, which appears floating on the camera screen.
Speaking of camera lenses, the Mi Mix 3 has a night mode for shooting in low light, which works superbly. And, it's not just still photography the Mi Mix 3 shines at; it also shines at video recording, being capable of shooting videos in uhd 4K at 60fps and 30fps, fhd 1080p at 30fps and 60fps and hd 720p at 30fps.
There is no video stabilization in 4K at 60fps but video stabilization is supported in 1080p at 30fps. The Mi Mix 3 also features time lapse and slow motion mode, letting you capture slow motion video in 720p at 960 frames per second (fps), 120 fps and 240 fps.
There is no IR blaster on the Mi Mix 3 but you get face recognition unlock, as well as a physical fingerprint reader on the back, which is great since most newer smartphones these days are being made with fingerprint scanners under the display, which are slower, less responsive and not as accurate as rear fingerprint scanners.
Another smartphone feature that is somewhat becoming a legacy feature is a notification led, which the Mi Mix 3 does have.
There is no 3.5 mm headphone jack though but, you can use a USB-C male to 3.5mm female adapter (included) to listen to wired audio via the USB C port, which sounds very good.
Speaking of sound quality, the Mi Mix 3 comes with two built-in microphones: one on top and the other one on the bottom. Having two mics is always nice because of improved sound quality and better amplification in speakerphone and during audio recording.
Despite being one of the cheaper flagship phones of 2019, Xiaomi includes a wireless charging pad with the Mi Mix 3, making it easier for the buyer to transition into a wireless ecosystem.
Along with the wireless charging pad, you also get a long USB-A to USB-C data and charging cable, a Quick Charge 3.0 wall charger and a quick start guide.
Charging the Mi Mix 3 takes approximately 100 minutes (1h 40m) from flat via the included Xiaomi power adapter model mdy-08-ei wall charger, which can deliver a variable output of 5V/2.5A, 9V/2A and 12V/1.5A (max 18W).
Charging the Mi Mix 3 via the included Mi wireless charging pad takes approximately 2 hours with a variable charging input of 5V/2A and 9V/2A.
Considering how inexpensive the Mi Mix 3 sliding camera is; the quality materials, accessories and functionality are very impressive. You can buy the Mi Mix 3 global version from amazon, which is shipped via online tracking from Hong Kong, taking 16 days to arrive to a UK postal address via Parcel Force.