China’s prolific handset maker (or maker of all things sellable, really) may not be the first to tout bezel-less display, but it was among the first to recognize the potential and hopped onto the bandwagon fairly swiftly with the Mi Mix introduced last year. Nearly a year on, a second iteration was born and like the first, the Mi Mix 2 is beautiful, lent to it by an incredibly expansive display and a unibody ceramic construction. It is again, a product touched by contemporary design maestro, Philippe Starck. Xiaomi may have started out imitating others, but along the way, the company has matured, developing its own vision in the area of innovations.
The Starck collab was a pleasant surprise and we are glad that Starck is still involved in this follow up. Like its predecessor, it is a sight to behold even though aesthetically, not a lot has changed – unless you consider downsizing the display from a juggernaut 6.4-inch to a tad more manageable 5.99-inch is an aesthetic change (and in a 5.5-inch class form factor!). Speaking of the display, the now smaller Mi Mix 2 has a ‘cinematic’ 18:9 aspect ratio adopted by current Samsung and LG flagships and while smaller, it now boast a higher FHD+ resolution with 2,160 x 1,080 pixel (which works out to be 403ppi, if you really must know) on the tap.
Power comes from a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 chip clocking in at 2.45 GHz – the fastest SoC there’s today, backed by 6 GB dual-channel LPDDR4x RAM (8 GB on the all-ceramic deluxe edition) and 64/128/256 GB UFS 2.1 flash storage (only 128 GB on the all-ceramic deluxe edition), Graphics duty, on the other hand, is undertaken by Adreno 540.
Other noteworthy details include a 12MP 1.25um large pixel rear-facing camera with 4-axis optical image stabilization, a 5MP front-facing 1080p video call camera, 4K video recording at 30fps, 720p slo-mo at 120fps, dual SIM support, 2G/3G/4G LTE/VoLTE, 802.11a/b/g/n/ac, 2×2 MIMO, support MU-MIMO, dual-band WiFi, WiFi Direct, WiFi Display, Bluetooth 5.0, dual ADC HD recording, fingerprint sensor, a non-removable 3,400 mAh battery with fast charging support, USB Type-C port for charging and data transfer, plus the usual serving of sensors.
Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 will roll out in China first where it will retail at a starting price of 3,299 RMB (around US$505 and up), depending on the storage and version you opt for. At the time of this writing, no less than 750,000 people have already flocked to pre-order it. Wow. With such a big following, it is no wonder Xiaomi never lack the determination to turn out even more devices.
Images: Xiaomi China.
