Xiaomi Mix Flip

Verdict

The Xiaomi Mix Flip is a solid first effort in this flip phone category. It bests its direct rivals on charging speed and battery capacity. There are some issues to address in future generations, mind. The front screen feels awkward to unlock in general use, there’s no water or dust resistance, and the significant thermal throttling means the potential of the high-end processor goes to waste somewhat.

Introduction

Xiaomi is no stranger to foldables. It has made them since 2021. The original Xiaomi Mi Mix Fold was the first. But the Mix Flip is Xiaomi’s first flip phone. 

It’s in the ring with the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6 and Motorola Razr 50 Ultra, which is part of the lineage that made the flip phone “cool” in the 2000s. 

Can it compete? Xiaomi has not made this phone cheaper to do so. At £1099, it costs a lot. 

It also lacks the ruggesidation of the competition, which is a worry in an already-vulnerable foldable. And its display crease does, anecdotally, appear to have worsened noticeably in just the first few weeks of use.

However, the Mix Flip does have the fastest battery charging and highest battery capacity of this crowd, which may well appeal if you’re here for the convenience of a flip foldable, not just a fashion statement. 

Design

• Dual screen with flip fold
• Noticeable display crease
• Poor front screen control ergonomics

The Xiaomi Mix Flip has a design similar to that of the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6, but its inner screen is a bit larger.

What’s not to like with that, if you want a Motorola Razr-style flip phone? The key issue is the Xiaomi Mix Flip is a first-generation phone of this style for Xiaomi. And you can tell in a key area or two. 

First up, the Xiaomi Mix Flip does not have any formal water or dust resistance. Samsung has managed to get the Galaxy Z Flip 6 up to speed with excellent water resistance, if only minimal dust protection thanks to the realities of the screen hinge. 

The Xiaomi Mix Flip also has a fairly prominent screen hinge fold line, from day one. I took the phone out for a weekend away with some less techy friends, and their reaction was almost universally “wow, look at that crease.”

It does appear to have deepened a little after the first few weeks of use. And I do find it distracting whenever I’m in a place with harsh lighting. The Mix Flip crease attracts distracting reflections much more than a phone with a curved glass front. At times I’ve even noticed the variance in brightness around the crease in general use, caused by the OLED panel appearing slightly dimmer when viewed from an angle.

If you consider this crease to be a problem in foldables, it’s one that remains unfixed. 

I’m not particularly well qualified to talk on what I think is the most pressing issue here: how resilient is the Xiaomi Mix Flip over the long haul? So far I have seemingly caused no damage to the plastic-topped inner screen, despite having — on a bunch of occasions — put it into my pocket unfolded. But this is one that will take months of use to investigate.

The steel hinge feels fairly tough, and the phone’s outer uses Xiaomi’s own Dragon Crystal Glass. Xiaomi claims this stuff is stronger than the Gorilla Glass alternative. Of course it does. But I have managed to put a couple of micro-scratches in the glass black already. 

Screen

• 6.86-inch foldable screen
• 4.01-inch cover screen

This phone has a 6.86-inch OLED inside, and a roughly 4-inch OLED on the upper half of the rear. The cover screen looks fantastic, thanks to its high pixel count, and the way the panel weaves its way around the cameras. 

I’ve mostly opened the Xiaomi Mix Flip up whenever I use the phone, though, as the outer screen’s abilities are pretty limited and the ergonomics of waking up the display when closed are poor. You press the power button to do so, and my thumb always ends up searching awkwardly for it.

Want the vital statistics?

The inner screen can reach 515 nits in normal conditions, 912 nits when displaying HDR content. There were similar results on the front display.  Xiaomi claims the displays can reach 3000 nits, but it’s a rather pointless claim if you’re never going to see anything like that brightness in normal use. 

The main inner screen is interrupted by a punch hole, but it’s so wide (or long) that you can watch 16:9 content without the hole getting in the way. It’s the distorted reflections you need to worry about, not the punch hole.

Solid stereo speakers help out for content-viewing too. They are fairly loud, have some lower-frequency beefiness, and they push sound out of either end of the Mix Flip.

Cameras

• No ultra-wide camera
• Good daylight images in general
• Image quality inconsistent, and mid-tier, at night

The Xiaomi Mix Flip has three cameras. There are two on the back, a standard cam and a 2x zoom, and a selfie camera inside. 

I’ve seen some reviewers complain the inner camera is a bit pointless. But it obviously isn’t if you’re a fan of video chat.

The missing element on the rear is an ultra-wide camera. I personally much prefer having a zoom to an ultrawide, because I find it opens up way more shooting opportunities. Most of us don’t spend that much time wandering around the Acropolis, or another place where such a wide view becomes near-essential. I’ve only missed having one a few times in the last few weeks.

This is a largely fun camera to use, but there are some notable issues. 

I find it is very easy to take blurry images with the Xiaomi Mix Flip in lower light conditions. This suggests the computational photography mode, which takes a second to several seconds to take an image, isn’t that well implemented. This phone does have optical image stabilisation, after all. Images should be more consistent. 

Very dark scenes do not result in top-tier photos either. While the Mix Flip does have solid low-light processing, there’s still a tendency for textures to revert to oatmeal/porridge. 

The colour handling can go a bit off-piste when dealing with a scene that demands extra dynamic range processing or low light mitigation too. And sharpness at the sides and corners of the frame is not great, demonstrating how much value there is in having a Leica-branded lens — as seen here (not a whole heap of value, if you’re still wondering).

None of this is hugely surprising when you look at the sensors used, which suggests the budget for camera stuff was at least somewhat restrained. This is an all-Omnivision line-up: an OVX8000 for the main camera, OV32B for the front camera and an OV60A40 for the zoom. Yep, the zoom actually uses a 60MP sensor, but (I presume) crops it in order to reduce the magnification required in the actual camera lens. Cheeky, but a technique I’ve seen before. 

Let’s not be too down on the Mix Flip camera, though. It can take lovely shots in the daytime, and I’m more than happy with how 4x zoomed shots hold up. The app lets you zoom up to 20x, but the presets are 1x, 2x and 4x. It’s an indication of the modes to use without ending up with rubbish photos. 

The phone will revert to using the primary camera for 2x zoomed photos in lesser light, so you will see quite a variance in detail and character when pushing that zoom mode. 

The Mix Flip’s video modes have quite a few interesting little features, matching its identity as a more vlogger-friendly design. You can, of course, use the rear screen to help capture rear camera selfies and vlogs. 

There’s a teleprompter mode that lets you import documents to read while shooting. And there is, of course, control over the speed of the text’s scrolling. 

The Mix Flip can shoot video at up to 8K 30fps, or 4K 60fps, and all these modes have some form of stabilisation, thanks to OIS (optical image stabilisation). There’s a Master Cinema mode too, which has a lightly different, generally, warmer, colour tone. And its focus appears to be on retaining highlights without focusing quite so much on making the image appear bright, allowing for editing where it may feel less like you’re fighting with the phone’s own processing. 

These are all examples of tertiary features that don’t feel like useless bloat. Nice work, Xiaomi.

Software

• Custom interface for the front screen
• Familiar Xiaomi take on Android 14
• Front screen only supports select apps

For the most part, the Xiaomi Mix Flip’s software looks and feels much like that of another Xiaomi phone. 

It’s based on Android 14. You can choose whether or not to have an app drawer. And, the part I always find annoying, the drop-down menu that lets you access feature toggles and your notifications is split in half. You swipe down on the left side for notifications, on the right for feature toggles. 

The most important part here is how the front screen is implemented. Unlock the Mix Flip when closed and you’ll see a sort of mini home screen of sorts. 

Xiaomi says 200 apps are supported by the front screen. And instead of just cramming in every compatible one, the Mix Flip asks you to pick the apps here in the Settings menu. 

As well as obvious Xiaomi picks like the camera and phone, other ones that work include Spotify, Chrome, Facebook, WhatsApp and TikTok. This is a much more responsible approach than just letting you have a crack at anything. 

I don’t love using any app on the front screen, to be honest, as the Mix Flip feels an unfortunate mix of chunky and cramped. And as mentioned earlier, actually waking up the front screen in real use is an ergonomics car crash.

But as an implementation of a difficult thing? It’s not bad at all. 

Xiaomi also says the Mix Flip is to get Circle to Search, Google’s smart search feature. But it’s not live on my review phone right now. 

Performance

• Has a great processor
• Failed our stress tests
• Still good for gaming

The Xiaomi Mix Flip has an excellent processor, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. This is a flagship processor first announced in late 2023, and was among the most powerful mobile processors available at the time of the phone’s release. 

It’s punchy. But this isn’t the best application of it in practice. 

As well as using significant thermal throttling, it failed 3DMark’s Time Spy stress test. This means it was unable to push hard for 20 minutes without overheating to the point the app was forced to close down. Not ideal. 

I tried another stress test app, which suggested it keeps just 45% of its performance under pressure. While GPU power just takes a dive after a couple of minutes, the CPU seems to continually get weaker as the heat builds up, ending up in a dismal state. 

It can’t be easy to make a foldable flip phone that performs as well as a standard candybar one. But it does make you wonder if the money you pay for those top specs is well-spent. 

I did try playing Fortnite, though, and it ran well. The higher tiers of frame rate and graphics options were unlocked too. 

Battery life

• Charges in around 50 minutes
• Comfortable all-day battery life
• Up to 67W charging 

The Xiaomi Mix Flip has the largest battery so far in this flippy class. It’s a 4780mAh cell, just a shade under what I consider to be the comfortable minimum for most Android phones. 

This phone has very good stamina for a flip phone, and perfectly solid longevity more generally. I haven’t had to worry about it dying early in general use. And while I have managed to drain it down to nothing by the late evening on a few occasions, it typically ends up with around 15-20% charge left at the end of an average day. 

It supports 67W charging, although the highest I recorded using a power meter was 62W, and it spent virtually no time there before dropping to around 50W — and dropping further through the charge cycle, as is pretty normal.

The Mix Flip reaches 50% charge in a solid 19 minutes, and 100% charge at 50 minutes. It takes a Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6 upwards of 90 minutes to charge. This is, yet again, a great result for a flip phone. 

There’s no wireless charging here, though, which you do get in the Z Flip 6.  

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