The Mi Mix Fold claims to have the largest smartphone foldable display so far, as well as four speakers and a ‘liquid lens’.
While it’s still hard to see what the point of foldy phones is, Xiaomi deserves credit for putting its back into this one. Of course all flagship phone launches are littered with superlatives, but they seem more justified than usual in this case, which isn’t saying much.
The regular AMOLED display on the outside of the phone is 6.5-inches and, while the quirks of trigonometry mean that when you unfold the phone the resulting internal OLED screen has a diagonal of 8-inches. That is apparently larger than any other foldy phones and, as if that wasn’t enough, we’re told this is also the first smartphone to comes with no less than four speakers.
Apart from the screen, the major differentiator in smartphones these days is often the camera. Here, too, Xiaomi has pushed the boat out. This phone marks the debut of something called the Liquid Lens camera.
“The liquid lens uses the principle of human eye bionics, forming a lens-like structure with a transparent fluid wrapped in film, very different from traditional optical lenses,” says the Xiaomi press release. “The radius of curvature of the spherical surface can be accurately changed thanks to a high-precision motor based on Xiaomi’s self-developed technology, which allows for 3X optical zoom, up to 30X telephoto, and a minimum focus distance of 3cm. One lens virtually covers functions of two lenses.”
So there you go. All this cutting edge shininess is yours for as little as RMB 10,000, which is around $1,500. Only Chinese pricing was offered, indicating that’s the only place you can get the Mi Mix Fold for now. Xiaomi launched the flagship Mi 11i yesterday at half the price of this bad boy and good reasons to pay such a premium for a foldy phone continue to elude us. Nonetheless here are the specs.
| Mi MIX FOLD | |
| Internal display | 8.01” flexible OLED 4:3 aspect ratio WQHD+ resolution, 1 billion colors, DCI-P3 60 Hz refresh rate; 120Hz touch sampling rate 900nits peak brightness, 600nits overall brightness 4,300,000:1 contrast ratio HDR10+, Dolby Vision JNCD≈0.29 and ΔE≈0.35 Supports MEMC |
| External display | 6.5” AMOLED display 90Hz refresh rate, 180Hz touch sampling rate 27:9 screen ratio, 2520 x 840 resolution 900nit peak brightness, 650nit overall brightness TrueColor display, JNCD≈0.55 ΔE≈0.52 Super Resolution, both for video and images HDR10+ |
| Connectivity | Dual 5G stand-by, Wi-Fi 6 |
| Processor | Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ 888 |
| Storage | LPDDR5 3200MHz + UFS 3.1 |
| Cooling system | Buttery cooling system – VC chamber + Bionic-structure graphene + thermal gel
+ multilayer graphite sheet |
| Rear camera | Self-developed Surge C1 image processing chip 108MP HM2 primary sensor, 1/1.52”, 7P, 2.1μm (9-in-1)large pixels The world’s first liquid lens, 8MP, 80mm equivalent focal length, 3cm minimum focusing distance 123° ultra-wide angle lens, 13MP, F2.4 aperture 1.12μm |
| Front camera | 20MP front camera |
| Audio | Quad speakers 3D panoramic sound system Dual 1216 speakers SOUND BY Harman Kardon |
| Security | Side fingerprint unlock (2-in-1 power button) |
| Battery | 5,020mAh double-cell design |
| Charging | 67W wired turbo charging 37 min to 100%1 |
| OS | MIUI 12 based on Android 10 |
| Colors | Black, Ceramic Special Edition |
| Dimensions&Weight | Extended: 173.27mm x 133.38mm x 7.62mm Folded: 173.27mm x 69.8mm x 17.2mm Black：317g Ceramic Special Edition：332g |
1 Data from Xiaomi Labs.