During the recent Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6 launch our most frequently-used word was ‘iterative’. And now Xiaomi’s first flip phone is promising to make its Samsung rival look pretty conservative and dull, with a mix of bold design and promising specs.
Ahead of the Xiaomi Mix Flip’s official launch on July 19, Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun has released a succession 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 gets a global release.
The Mix Flip’s most obvious calling card is its 4.01-inch cover display, which stretches across the whole of the rear cover and makes the Z Flip 6’s 3.4-inch equivalent look a bit last-generation. That screen is similar to the one we’ve seen on the Motorola Razr Plus, which we found to be pretty useful, and also has a built-in earpiece speaker so you can privately take calls without opening up the phone.
Xiaomi’s new flip phone also has a couple of other big spec highlights. Like the Z Flip 6, the Mix Flip has a top-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’ll translate to real-world battery life, but it’s a lot bigger than its Samsung rival’s 4,000mAh cell.
Does anyone know what it’s called? Asking for a friend.#XiaomiMIXFlip pic.twitter.com/dyriQc0rRtJuly 17, 2024
Camera-wise, it looks like the Mix Flip could again have the edge, with a 50MP main camera, 60MP telephoto camera and a 32MP selfie snapper – although we don’t yet know anything about sensor sizes, and megapixels aren’t necessarily a signifier of quality.
The Mix Flip’s 6.9-inch AMOLED internal display, meanwhile, is slightly larger than the Z Flip 6’s 6.7-inch equivalent and has a 120Hz refresh rate. In theory, then, Xiaomi’s flip phone looks like a hardware successor to its Samsung rival, even though the Z Flip 6 was only launched a week ago. We’re certainly keen to see more on July 19 and also hear when it might, as is rumored, be launched outside China.
Mixing it with Samsung
There’s a lot more to a great foldable phone experience than just specs, so it’s hard to make any firm conclusions about the Xiaomi Mix Flip – particularly as HyperOS, which runs on top of Android 14, can be an acquired taste.
On previous phones like the Xiaomi 14, we found HyperOS to be a little convoluted with some confusing quirks, even for experienced Xiaomi users. It can also be a little bloated out of the box, with various unwanted third-party apps clogging up the menus.
Still, Xiaomi’s software experience is otherwise pretty smooth and versatile. And there’s no doubt that the Xiaomi Mix Flip, like the Mix Fold 4 that’ll be announced alongside it, has a lot going for it hardware-wise – 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 that’s another promising sign for its similar Xiaomi rival. At the very least, the Mix Flip looks likely to be one of the best Xiaomi phones – and we’ll be interested to hear about pricing and more on July 19, particularly as Samsung’s recent foldables were given slight price hikes.
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mark.wilson@futurenet.com (Mark Wilson)
