[Smartphones] | Mi Mix 3 : A Sliding Successor!

A new innovation in sliding cameras!

It's needless to say that Xiaomi has been ruling the smartphone market here in India since the past 2 years or so. Even though I have recommended a bunch of their devices to others, I never considered buying one for myself because they're all mid-range smartphones. Don't get me wrong, they're still great phones. Why else would I recommend them in the first place? But me, I am a flagship lover.

I've always liked premium phones because of the attention to detail and the overall premiumness that they have to offer. Call me crazy, but I'm willing to spend 3 times as much for those minor added benefits. And I'm not alone in that mentality.

But apart from their best selling mid rangers, Xiaomi does have some really great flagships. The mi 8 for one, is an incredible device in my opinion. I'm still waiting for the Explorer edition to be launched in my local market so I can take a closer look at it.

But the phone that we're going to talk about right now is the 3rd edition in the smartphone series that started the bezel-less trend in the first place. I am, of course, talking about the Mi Mix 3!

It's official and it's been put out there for the world to see. Even though the over-90% screen to body ratio is nothing new, I am extremely excited for this smartphone for one main reason. That sliding camera!

The Sliding Successor

No, it's not the motorized camera slider mechanism that we have seen from the likes of the Vivo NEX and the Oppo Find X. This one, wait for it, uses a traditional mechanical slider where you have to physically slide the display down with your fingers to expose the camera tray! How cool is that!

I don't know why, but I'm more excited for this mechanical slider than the automatic sliders on the other two phones that are mentioned earlier. I guess it's a little bit of nostalgia at play because we used to see and use a lot of those sliding keyboard phones in our childhood days.

The display slides DOWN!

That sliding mechanism is really robust. It reminds me of the Nokia phones of old with their sliding keyboards. They used to give a solid click every time you pull out the keyboard tray and the same can be said about the mi mix 3's camera tray. This thing is absolutely built to last. No compromises were made during its design and engineering, that's for sure.

Upon exposing the camera tray, you'll see your set of 2 cameras on it. The primary one is a 24 megapixel sensor and a secondary 2 mp sensor for capturing depth information.

The rear camera assembly comprises of a primary 12 megapixel sensor at f/1.8 aperture and a secondary telephoto sensor, also at 12 megapixels. Initial impressions of the camera seem very positive. That's not a surprise considering this phone came after the Mi 8, and the Xiaomi Mi 8 already had incredible cameras.

Other specs include:

• A 10 nm Snapdragon 845 SoC,
• From 6 GB, 8 GB up to a whopping 10 GB of DDR4 RAM!
• 128 / 256 / 512 GB storage capacity,
• A big, beautiful 6.4 inch Amoled display panel,
• Adreno 630 for graphics,
• MIUI 10 on top or Android 9.0 Pie,
• 3200 mAh battery unit with 10 W wireless charging support.

Note that the 10 GB RAM is only available on the 512 GB storage variant, and the remaining two have to share with either "only" 6 or 8 GB of RAM. Yeah, we live in a crazy world!

Wireless charger included in the box

The Mi Mix 3 seems to be the phone which everyone was waiting for, myself included. It is the perfect hardware that we would like to see in a 'futuristic' phone.

What are you think about the Mi Mix 3? Do you join me into thinking that this is the best phone that was ever designed? Sound off in the comments down below.

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