Saturday’s gadget: Xiaomi MIX Flip, a smartphone that wants to turn the market around

Clamshell foldables have many advantages: they are small and fit in any pocket, they are easy to handle, they have (increasingly) a good-sized secondary screen, but they also have a B side: the camera is not always up to par. , the fold is too obvious… Xiaomi has opted to solve some of these obstacles with the MIX Flip. The obvious question is: does he get it?

Let’s first with the design. Despite being the first in its catalog, Xiaomi has made an effort with this mobile. Its weight is about 190 grams (quite light for this type of smartphone) and it has a closure that is among the best we have tried thanks to a combination of plastic in the lower rear part, aluminum in the frames, glass in the screen and steel in the hinge. The entire construction shows solidity and reduces one of the constants of folding mobile phones: damage to the screen due to particles that sneak in.

Speaking of screens, the main one, when displayed, is huge: 6.86-inch LTPO OLED, 120Hz refresh rate. The good news is that the fold is barely noticeable: an engineering work that brings us closer to the effectiveness of this type of phone. The bad thing is that the brightness, despite talking about 3,000 nits, does not perform as well as others in challenging conditions.

The other screen shows 4-inch specifications. Here there is also a side A and a side B. The positive side is that it is one of the largest secondary screens on the market. Efficient, of good quality and enabled to interact with the main applications (messaging, social networks, etc.). On the less flattering side is that the 4 inches have a trick: a part of them are destined for the dual camera module, which steals almost 20%. It is not so noticeable due to its size, but it must be taken into account.

As far as your brain is concerned, it takes a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, 16 GB of RAM and 512 internal storage. The entire system runs on wheels… as long as the track is right. The obstacle (perhaps the biggest one with this phone) is that it gets very hot with demanding tasks or high-demand games. This, taking into account that it has a good cooling chamber and that the Qualcomm processor has been trained to reduce high temperatures, is probably due to a software problem, which Xiaomi should solve with an update.

Battery? Very good for this type of mobile: 4780 mAh and 67W fast charging. Its consumption is suitable, although it could be greatly reduced if we return to the issue of heating.

Two aspects to highlight. The first is that the MIX Flip has AI functions linked to photo editing and productivity enabled. Translation, recording of voices, summaries of these, and editing of video and images using text.

And the second, and probably the most interesting, are its cameras, signed by Leica, which is already a guarantee. Without a doubt, these are the best cameras in a folding clamshell: two exterior 50 MP and the interior 32 MP. Without a doubt, with this configuration, Xiaomi has bet heavily on photography in its folding models. A leap in quality that these phones had to take.

Verdict

If you like clamshell phones and can afford to spend 1299 euros, it’s your phone, once the warm-up issues are resolved.