Xiaomi’s Mi Mix 4 packs an under-screen digicam in a ceramic physique | Engadget

Just days after Oppo unveiled its newest under-screen digicam answer, Xiaomi is now launching a brand new flagship telephone with an analogous, if not the identical, characteristic. The Mi Mix 4 is the Chinese firm’s slimmest ceramic unibody smartphone but, that includes a 6.67-inch 2,400 x 1,080 display that stealthily hides a 20-megapixel selfie digicam beneath a near-indistinguishable patch of pixels — it is the identical 400ppi density as the remainder of the panel, albeit with smaller pixels and clear circuitry due to developments in AMOLED manufacturing.

If the selfie photographs on the Mi Mix 4 turn into simply nearly as good, if not higher, than Oppo’s samples from final week, then it is no shock that Xiaomi went with this under-screen digicam tech. The Mix sequence has all the time been about pushing the boundary of kind issue design, with the primary two fashions — each designed by Philippe Starck — providing tremendous slim display bezels alongside three sides. They have been a number of the first ceramic smartphones, too. 

With the Mi Mix 3, Xiaomi lastly removed the chin by transferring the selfie digicam to a slide-up module. I wasn’t a fan of that design, although, because it felt extra fragile.

Now that the under-screen digicam is seemingly reaching maturity, it serves as a smart evolution path to the Mi Mix 4. Still, CEO Lei Jun added that in case you actually care about your selfies, you need to follow telephones with punch-hole cameras; however for him, the under-screen digicam is sweet sufficient.

The display itself is in any other case very a lot the identical as what many different current flagships are providing: 10-bit colour, P3 gamut, Dolby Vision, HDR10+, 120Hz refresh charge and 480Hz contact sampling charge. It’s protected by a layer of Gorilla Glass Victus. Like many current Xiaomi telephones, the Mi Mix 4 gives stereo sound tuned by Harman/Kardon, which ought to go properly with that vibrant display.

The Mi Mix 4 additionally occurs to be the primary smartphone sporting Qualcomm’s newest Snapdragon 888+ 5G processor, taking the clock velocity as much as 3GHz whereas being cooled by a number of layers of graphene and graphite. LPDDR5 RAM choices vary from 8GB to 12GB, whereas UFS 3.1 storage goes from 128GB to 512GB.

Much just like the iPhone 12 sequence, the Mi Mix 4 additionally packs UWB (ultra-wide band), however as a substitute of monitoring tags, Xiaomi is utilizing this for a characteristic dubbed “Point to Connect.” Simply level your Mi Mix 4 to a suitable Xiaomi good system like a TV, good speaker (just like the freshly-announced Xiaomi Sound) or air conditioner, and the related app will present up. 

The firm can even provide a small UWB hub for present TVs, and this can launch through a beta program in China on August twentieth. But in case you favor the old-school means, this Android telephone additionally has an infrared distant characteristic — as is the case with some Chinese smartphones today.

The rear cameras are spectacular on paper. There’s a 108-megapixel foremost digicam (HMX sensor with optical stabilization), an 8-megapixel 5x optical zoom digicam (with optical stabilization) and a 13-megapixel 120-degree ultra-wide digicam (with free-form lens). Still, Lei admitted on stage that he is saving the higher digicam elements for his foremost flagship line.

The Mi Mix 4 homes a 4,500mAh which is comparatively commonplace today, but it surely helps 120W wired charging, which fits from zero to one hundred pc in 21 minutes by default, or in simply quarter-hour in case you allow “Boost Mode.” There’s additionally 50W wi-fi charging, which usually takes 45 minutes for a full cost, or simply 28 minutes in “Boost Mode.”

Xiaomi can be promoting the Mi Mix 4 in China ranging from August sixteenth, with colours together with white, black and a brand new grey possibility. Prices begin from 4,999 yuan or round $770 for the 8GB RAM + 128GB storage mannequin, and capping at 6,299 yuan or about $970 for the 12GB RAM + 512GB storage possibility. We’ll have to remain tuned for worldwide availability, however we might be shocked if the world’s second largest telephone maker does not plan on taking the Mi Mix 4 exterior of China.