Gadgetory

Shami is trying to give us a look into our smartphone future where our devices don't necessarily have screens so much as they are the screens and with their concept found they've gotten about 91% of the way there however there are definitely some things we have to keep in mind with this new take on a smartphone it's charge of a card from Android authority what's going on everybody and this is the Xiaomi me mix I first a quick disclaimer regarding this phone you are going to be dealing with a phone made in only small quantities and it's only going to be sold in China because of that a lot of you viewers out there may not even ever get to own this device because of that we're not really taking this review as a look at this phone as a daily driver so much as we're taking a look at mainly the features that it introduces and a couple of the things that the Xiaomi mix brings to the market this phone is made entirely of ceramic and it makes for a very flashy looking device we do love the look of the Xiaomi me mix however there are a few big problems with it big is kind of the right way to put it because this is a very large phone six point four inches is what you get for the size of the screen and then the entire device just slips about so easily because ceramic is a slippery material not to mention the fact that it is very fingerprint prone there is a case that comes with the phone made of a high quality premium feeling leather but unfortunately that leather covers up what is otherwise a very wonderful looking phone all of the different tropes you would expect around the sides come here including the buttons on the side and the camera and fingerprint reader here on the back but on the front once you turn on the display you realize that things have actually changed in order to make room for this massive display that bleeds over to the very edges of the phone they had to move the front facing camera the phone speaker and the proximity sensor the front-facing camera is found now at the bottom and the other two features are things we're going to dive into in the hardware section overall this might be one of the sexiest phones that we've seen this year but mainly because of its ceramic but also because of the screen up front so let's go ahead and talk about that this IPS display comes in at 2040 by 1080 resolution that's right this is a 1080p display and that is a little bit of a bummer not necessarily because Full HD is really all that bad but because quad HD seems to make a little bit more sense for a phone screen this size but even then there's plenty of real estate to enjoy everything from text to videos to games and we definitely played quite a few games on here including the game don't starve which performs beautifully thanks to the Snapdragon 820 1 and the 4 gigabytes of RAM that backs it up for an IPS display it does get plenty bright even in broad daylight and the saturation has been bumped up a little bit to make everything look that a little bit more vibrant but there's another thing that you have to keep in mind that's 17 by 9 aspect ratio you might be seeing me right now on the Xiaomi me mix and you see that there are black bars on the sides of me that's because with 17 by 9 aspect ratio there's a little bit of extra room for all of the different content and there's a lot of it pretty much all of it out there that is made in 16 by 9 aspect ratio that means that there's a little bit of extra space and this'll letterboxing that occurs makes the phone feel like it has more bezel than it really has and ultimately it takes away from the immersion that the display is supposed to provide after all the phone is supposed to be all display all the time there are some trade-offs in order to make a screen like this and Xiaomi is hoping that with this concept phone it's going to become a feature you might see in future phones as we mentioned already the Snapdragon 820 one performs beautifully on here and with the me UI we didn't really have any problems when it came to speed and snappiness of the user interface and any applications that we installed on here in the base for gigabyte ram model you get 128 gigabytes of on-board storage and then the 6 gigabyte ram version has 256 gigabytes of on-board storage that's just absolutely ridiculous and it's great that that is the case because there is no micro SD card slot with all of that storage freedom I was able to put so much video content and also games onto here and I enjoyed all of it so with that kind of onboard storage it really makes this screen that much more enjoyable and that much more useful and of course you have the USB C port on the bottom that does qc3 in order to charge the 4400 million power battery but I actually found myself not needing to charge this one all that often because on any given day I could get over five to six hours of screen on time and in one case I got seven hours given my usage even for a screen this large having it at 1080 resolution is probably a good choice in terms of battery life but even then I'm not really able to use this phone on LTE carriers here in the States because since it's a Chinese phone it would only connect to HSPA+ which finally brings us to the two main features that had to be changed in order to make the screen happen the proximity sensor actually has a very elegant alternative and that is a sonar sensor I honestly didn't find any differences in the daily usage of this particular device because of that so that means it should be working pretty well otherwise the phone speaker is probably the one thing that really hurts this device because the vibrating piece of ceramic underneath the surface that vibrates and emits sound that way unfortunately it's just not a good alternative it doesn't get loud enough at all even at the highest volumes for calls and I found myself digging the phone into my ear because I thought I had it in bad position I would have to put in a pair of headphones with a microphone on them or use a Bluetooth headset just to be able to enjoy my calls and that simply is just not a good mark for the Xiaomi me mix the last portion of the phone that had to be changed was the camera and is brought down to the bottom right for the front-facing shooter and there are a couple of issues with that but at least they can be changed by turning the phone upside down after all we are taking a look at me right now on the front-facing camera and the upward angle because of his positioning is not all that ideal so selfies might be a little bit tougher to get in the first place but also if I was to bring my thumb down to the shutter button you can see that my thumb actually appears on the top right of this frame so that's also not very ideal and it does show up when you're doing landscape selfies as well then again you could turn the phone upside down like I just mentioned even then selfies at 5 megapixels are only decent at best beauty mode is pretty aggressive and is on by default and the photos lack a certain sharpness and crispness that we would otherwise want really the best part about using this camera is the fact that the entire screen can become the viewfinder which is in and of itself pretty awesome and when you're recording video you can see quite literally everything that's going on in the frame because the screen is so large and then the rear shooter honestly is kind of good on paper but not necessarily an overachiever 16 megapixel shooters at F 2.0 aperture sound good but the processing that Johnny puts into their camera app is unfortunately the Achilles heel in a lot of different photos when taken with HDR on auto there's just a lack of sharpness because the noise reduction makes everything look really smudgy and then as the light goes away and you get into darker situations this only gets worse colours are also kind of inconsistent in certain photos the colors look wonderful and have a little bit of saturation but turning on HDR can help those photos that don't have enough saturation though that does happen more often than we would like especially right now there are a bunch of wonderful cameras out there and there's almost no excuse for having a subpar or even just decent camera these days for a flagship when you compare it to the low-light performance of let's say a Google pick so you can already see all of those issues and finally we can get to the software and that is the me UI the me UI is in this phone the Chinese version that was translated to English with Google Play services kind of tacked so the software experience is not indicative of the entire me UI experience nor is it indicative of this phone because it's not going to be coming to the u.s. at all but that said we can see why the me UI is one of the most popular Chinese operating systems even if for us we don't really like the lack of an app drawer it still is one of the speediest s-- and smoothest experiences and it's also one of the most polished out of all of the asian operating systems so for this entire package if you happen to live in China and you're watching this video well you can get your hands on it for a price that roughly translates to about 500 to 600 dollars the u.s. depending on what version you get but for everybody else those importing cost could be pretty killer so this phone will end up being more expensive and so there you have it the Xiaomi me mix a look at a phone that is trying to introduce some new features that hopefully will come in future smartphones the main thing to really take away from this is that a screen that is virtually bezel this is something we all want and it is very fun to use on this device despite the caveats that it has as a device on its own it's simply a little bit too big and that phone speaker being a vibrating piece of ceramic that doesn't get loud enough is one of the biggest bummers and then just below that is a subpar camera experience but there's a lot to love about this phone including the onboard storage the very good performance and all in all the wonderful and sleek look and I can't help but think that Xiaomi made this phone this big because even they think that this screen could work pretty well on something like a 7-inch tablet after all you don't really need to have a front-facing camera and the proximity sensor and phone speaker aren't really part of pretty much any tablet anyway so you could make a 7-inch tablet for example that is literally the slab that Xiaomi is trying to give us a look at so maybe that's something to think about in the future but for smartphones the Xiaomi me mix like I said at best is a glimpse into our future but at its worst it's an example as to why that future is still a little ways off as always thank you guys very much for watching and I hope you enjoyed this review of the Xiaomi me mix it's actually a pretty wonderful device but it has some main issues whether that kind of harken back to the problems that any smartphone has especially in the Chinese market but even then a glimpse into the future shows us what pitfalls we currently have that might keep us from getting there at least for now stay tuned to Android authority for all of the best including more from Xiaomi and across the world of Android and you can head over to other websites to dive outside the world of Android including tab time sound guys charge to IO and VR source and then when you're done with all of that pop on over to Android or neucom because we are your source for all things Android