Xiaomi’s state-of-the-art phone is almost perfect, but is that enough for the one who wants the best?

This article will not be a standard phone test because Xiaomi MIX 2 tests can block the Danube. I’d rather tell you a little bit about the phone, the Xiaomi, and of course this wonderful phone I’ve been using for over a month now.

Xiaomi - innovation and a new approach

Xiaomi, although today’s fastest-growing phone maker, was not an old company founded in 2010, and immediately serious investors emerged behind it, such as Qualcomm, which makes perhaps the best mobile chips today. The company was the first to acquire an Android-based mobile operating system along with the entire development team, and then in August 2011 they launched their first phone with software dubbed MIUI. The first major success came with their second phone, a device dubbed the Mi 2, in which a member of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon family, the S4 Pro, also known as the APQ8064, was already working.

The company’s growth hasn’t slowed since then, and over the years, more and more slices are being carved out of the mobile phone market. The development is still unbroken, so much so that by the end of 2017, they were already selling most phones in India. The Indian market is of paramount importance to any manufacturer anyway, as mobile penetration in India has only just begun to grow, allowing it to suck up an unbeatable amount of handsets.

Xiaomi initially did not devote much energy to either advertising or offline sales. their phones were mostly advertised in news and articles in the online press, and customer feedback was also important to them, so their awareness grew rapidly through oral tradition. At the time, at the beginning of the decade, there were several mobile manufacturers who set the goal of giving the money saved on advertising to their customers, in other words, giving phones cheaper, but Xiaomi did this business policy the most.

Over the years, the company has been selling not only online but also offline. In 2017, they took out a huge loan in order to conquer Chinese cities and even opened their first European store in Spain.

Xiaomi is by no means considered a typical company. Rather, we see an innovative research and development company with a clear idea of ​​where our world is heading. Over the years, they have entered into many cross-contracts with companies they work with or that produce products directly for them. In these cases, Xiaomi will either provide only the name and distribution channels, or in other cases, for example, the mobile application needed for smart home solutions and the associated cloud service.

Today, the company’s products no longer cover not only mobile technology, but also many other areas, from apparel to wearable smart devices or home health preservation. Because of the variety of their products, they couldn’t even be more different from each other, yet, they have some qualities that immediately turn out to be made or manufactured. These are high quality, surprising features not found in other manufacturers and a low price compared to performance and quality. It’s no coincidence that Xiaom is called the Chinese Apple in China, the quality of their products is, in many cases, even better than that of the apple maker, and nowhere can we find the extra profit associated with the name that Apple pockets on every single product.

The story of Xiaomi Mi MIX

The Xiaomi Mi MIX was the first frameless phone on the market. Afterall, no. Many believe that this was the case, but no, Sharp had overtaken them for years with its device called the Crystal, but there is a way that the market is not yet ready for a revolutionary novelty that exploded another market a few years later.

So the Xiaomi Mi MIX was just the first successful frameless phone. Of course, it took a lot to succeed, not just the frameless design, although in fact, it was, and has been, the most important component of success ever since. The other really form-breaking idea was the material of the phone case. The industry has long used ceramics, for example, for military purposes, but in the case of the telephone, no one has dared to use it yet. This is due to the extremely high scrap rate and the extreme complexity of machining. The production of a housing made of microcrystalline zirconia ceramics requires no less than sixteen work processes from the beginning to the fully finished state. These are casting, punching, sintering, coloring, setting, CNC machining, sheet polishing, frame polishing, laser cutting, finishing CNC machining, inspection, laser milling, fingerprint coating application, re-inspection, packaging and shipping.

In return for the above difficulties, we get a house whose material is the third hardest on earth after diamonds and sapphires, making it essentially completely scratch-resistant. It feels much more like, say, granite than an artificial material, but somehow it still feels silky soft. It doesn’t overheat while making phone calls, and it also gives you a premium feel that we haven’t experienced on other phones so far.

The Mi MIX was a special phone in other ways as well. For a long time, there was a completely legitimate image of Chinese industry in our minds that they could do nothing but copy. In the case of the MIX, however, everything came up from the bottom, as it was the first Chinese phone that reputable manufacturers had to adapt to. They could throw away essentially every plan and idea of ​​what the phone of the future should look like and start planning from scratch.

Xiaomi Mi MIX 2 - Disappointed?

After the success of the Xiaomi Mi MIX, after a plethora of innovative and beautiful solutions, the market has priced in advance that its successor, the MIX 2, will come with similar revolutionary innovations. There was everything from the huge resolution, completely, not only frameless, but in reality everything from the frameless display to the fingerprint sensor hidden under the glass. What did we get instead? An ultra-perfect design, a smaller-than-MIX phone with a smaller diagonal and lower resolution display, with a traditional single-camera build.

It was obvious that the system would be faster, so the fastest Qualcomm chip was included when it came out, but the memory remained at 6GB and the storage capacity didn’t increase either. The only interesting thing in this regard is the device, which is packed in a completely ceramic housing - which does not even have a metal frame - because it has 8 GB of memory. Eventually, the camera, which has become more modest compared to top solutions, only has one sensor working in it.

So when the phone came out, it made many people feel lacking, we didn’t get the feeling of faithfulness we expected. Regardless, it was obvious to me from the first minute that I needed to get one of them. Not only because it will be good to write an article about it, and not primarily because, but because it feels really good to have such a top phone, and I wanted to try that feeling.

Xiaomi Mi MIX 2 - has arrived

If you are interested in the phone, you have probably already watched a lot of pictures and videos about it. You could see the beautiful black box, the simple yet exclusive packaging, the ceramic back cover and the gold inscription on it. I’m sorry to have to say this, but the pictures, the videos give nothing, or at least very little, back to the feeling of unpacking this phone and taking it in hand first. There really isn’t the feeling of fuss, just the quiet amazement as you take it out of the box, rotate it around, touch the ceramic back cover, feel the cool and silky feel, run your fingers around on the camera’s gilded coffee. It’s hard to put the feeling into words, and of course you have to feel a little upset and a dose of love for the advances in technology to feel that way.

So the first feeling was not so much the cheering in me, but rather the admiration. This phone is really a masterpiece, with a look developed to the last tenth of a millimeter, but not like a bodybuilder, more like a model with modest but perfectly proportioned muscles, with almost a bit of feminine beauty.

Xiaomi MIX 2 - use

Once turned on, we can get to know MIUI, the system that many say provides the best Android user experience. There’s something about this, though, since there’s a phone with a pure Android nearby, and I have a hard time deciding whether its puritanical cleanliness, ease of use, or MIUI’s beauty and multitude of features will appeal to you. Let’s stick to the fact that both have their pros and cons. I have all the technical equipment in use, I use the phone as a phone and the car as a car, not as a status symbol or ego booster, so maybe pure Android is closer to me, but still, I enjoy using the MIX 2 MIUI every day, discovering newer and new delicacies, small attentions with which the creators pamper us.

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The phone is obviously fast, as the Snapdragon 835 was the fastest mobile chip when the phone was introduced, with its eight-core 2,45 GHz processor and Adreno 540 graphics accelerator. If you have a phone like this, you certainly won’t have a problem with muscle strength for a few years.

The display, as I wrote above, has a lower and lower resolution than its predecessor. This is partly due to the fact that the phone already has a fashionable and useful 18: 9 aspect ratio, which makes it a bit more elongated but as narrow as possible, and partly due to the fact that Xiaomi, like many manufacturers, has decided to completely it is unnecessary to force 2K and 4K resolutions, FHD is also enough. This, of course, means FHD + here, which means a resolution of 2160 x 1080 pixels. In use, it’s not the detail of the display that stands out, but the beauty and brightness of the colors that make the phone usable on the street during the day. The colors on the display are beautiful, but not hurtfully sharp, not loud, much closer to the real colors experienced in nature. So there’s no mistake here either, in fact, it’s a high-end phone, a top display.

Let's say a few words about the camera. As you can read, the camera was one of the points that made users bitter about it. The reason for this is that the pair of Mi 6 rear camera was very good and they hoped that MIX 2 would be at least as good if not a better solution. Instead, it became the only camera with a 12-megapixel Sony IMX386 sensor, a 1,25-micron pixel size, and 4-axis anti-shake f / 2.0 aperture.

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I tried to take some photos to see what the quality is. Judge, I’ll share my opinion, too, and I’m not going to use such wonderful words as chromatic aberration.

I think this camera gives exactly what we would expect with a 12 megapixel sensor and f / 2.0 lens. I have already seen images taken with a sensor that is said to be larger (lied?), Where the results of the software preview were clearly visible even without magnification. However, this camera does not lie. There will never be images coming out of it that a self-proclaimed photographer would put on his wall, but it is plenty enough for everyday use.

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I have to note that unfortunately I will not be the most honest tester of telephone cameras. For me, my phone’s camera is pretty much about shooting a silly selfie or taking a picture of a panel before desoldering so I don’t forget where to solder back, or taking a photo of a serial number or password I don’t have time (or no pen) to write down, but it’s important to be somewhere.

The point is that the MIX 2 camera is perfect for me, in fact, we can say that it knows a lot unnecessarily. If you are a person who likes to capture the things that are going on around him, you will be happy to use it. It doesn’t distort, it’s not blurry, though the colors could be a little more vivid. HDR works well, rarely when assembling a panoramic image, but errors do occur. Vibration protection is perfect, as much as you can in a phone.

What is the conclusion? In my opinion, it was a mistake to put this slightly better than average camera into this brutally good phone. This is simply not what this phone deserves. It's only incomprehensible because they were able to do better in the half-price Xiaomi A1, so why not do it?

Xiaomi MIX 2 - the radios

If I’ve been fidgeting well about the camera, I’m a little excited about the radios now. In this area, the phone is impeccable. Not a little, very much! Unlike many of its cheaper counterparts, WiFi is finally familiar with 5 GHz, and the signal is very good, very strong. There will also be no problem with the signal strength of Bluetooth, and you will find everything, you can easily connect to the millennial Nokia handsfree in my car, for example. I listen to music through it, and while I wouldn’t dare call it impeccable (whoever calls Bluetooth music like that either doesn’t hear well or is biased), it can’t spoil MP3 compression anymore, so let’s just say it sounds good. GPS is accurate and fast. Very fast. In a matter of moments you will find enough moons and navigation will start. In one case, there is only a tiny vacillation. If a message comes to me while driving say and Vaze goes into the background, there is no satellite signal for minutes after returning, but why I don’t know.

The great performance of the radios may have to do with the fact that the phone has a ceramic back cover instead of a metal one, so there is no need to route the antennas outside the house. Ceramics do not shield the signals, and this is certainly a great help in operation.

Xiaomi MIX 2 - listening to music, multimedia

Well, one half of multimedia is image, the other is sound. If the display is good, and here it is good, then the picture is not possible and there is nothing wrong. However, the sound… I do not want to say rough, the point is, do not want to listen to music without headphones, earphones. The quality of the external speaker is simply not suitable for this. I’ve also found much better sound in phones built by a much cheaper, much weaker manufacturer. But what you can boldly use is speakerphone. It reproduces speech relatively well, though, it could be a little louder.

If, on the other hand, you accept my advice and buy a decent, at least moderately priced ear, you’ll be happy. Well, it won't be anywhere from a normal stereo amplifier, but we can enjoy a lot of good quality.

Xiaomi Mi MIX 2 - summary

In several places in the article, you may have read that the Xiaomi MIX 2 did not become the phone that many people have been waiting for. It has become a top-quality, terribly beautiful phone with “only” minor flaws that are easy to live with. As you may have read so far, I have only been seriously critical of the camera, not because it is so bad, but because it could have been better. They had the solution in their hands, the ready-made, tried-and-tested, two-camera solution, but they didn’t use it, who knows why.

Sound as it is, it’s not a speaker to want to listen to music in company. There are thousands and one mini speaker with a Bluetooth connection, they don't cost much.

In all other respects, however, this phone is a dream come true. No, that's not a bit of an exaggeration. I didn’t regret for a minute that I put my vote next to it, and unless the OTP breaks on me, I’ll even use it for a while. Maybe I’ll only redeem it if someone offers me an amount for it that I can buy a Xiaomi Mi 7 arriving in the spring with a tiny amount of money next to it. I am not willing to replace it with another phone, offer any expensive device from any reputable manufacturer for it.

If you’re thinking about getting a phone like this, I can only encourage you. You won’t be disappointed, at least if you believe me on what I’ve written so far.

I ordered from here: Xiaomi Mi MIX2