Gadgetory

hey just Joshua Vergara what's going on everybody and we're taking a look at this xiaomi me mix 2's now I've spent a little bit of time with this phone already it's been updated to final software and xiaomi themselves are off the heels of an IPO announcements they're also going to be opening stores out in europe so it's an exciting time for them and their most unique smartphone could be making it into more hands a side-by-side comparison with the original me mix to makes it pretty clear what's been added a new telephoto lens that add zoom capabilities but you still get ceramic backings here which is Xiaomi's forte and it still makes this phone look awesome even if it is ultimately familiar one thing we really like however it's that included in the box is this wonderful case it's a plastic case that is very form-fitting and when you have it on the phone you still get very tactile feedback from the buttons over on the side it's still the volume rocker and the power button nothing new there with the fingerprint reader on the back the design is mostly the same which means that on the bottom you get a little bit more bezel underneath the screen and yes the front-facing camera is still in that area underneath that you have a single bottom mounted firing speaker and a USBC port that requires an adapter if you want a headphone jack this is designed at johnny's best and it keeps this phone which is very familiar still exciting it's really hard not to like what Johnny's done here 6 inch 18 by 9 display is still of a full HD plus resolution which for the most part is ok because me UI has been updated so that it has a tighter use of space colors from this panel do look a little bit muted when you compare it to more saturated displays out there but it hardly took away from any of my experiences I do wish that the display got just a little bit brighter though this is an IPS panel and when the Sun is really bearing down on it and I go to crank the brightness all the way to 100% I felt like it could get a little bit brighter and helped me out so that things were more legible now the me UI still crowdsources many of its features from the forum community so one feature that Apple introduced appears here in its full screen gestures if you really want to have the entire screen be available for whatever you're doing you can hide the soft key bar and just use gestures by swiping up from the bottom of the screen in order to go to home holding from there to go to recent apps or swiping from either side in order to go backwards in the interface now there are some annoyances here for example when you are in YouTube and you're watching videos and landscape swiping from the bottom to look at related videos could trigger the home function oh and when there's no home button on the bottom that also kind of eliminates the easiest way of activating Google assistant but to their credit Xiaomi continues to buck trends in this line by not going for a notch while a number of other phones are putting the front-facing camera centered at the top Xiaomi is still making their compromise by putting it in the bottom corner it's a compromise that proves to be annoying on its own perhaps on the same level as a notch so why don't we do this let us know what you think in the comments down below which of these types of designs are better where Xiaomi really gets things right is in the performance package and of course there are gonna be very high specifications in these phones the snapdragon 845 provides a ton of power but you have different configurations between 6 and 8 gigabytes of RAM and 64 128 and 256 gigabytes of on-board storage available so all of the specifications really mean a high powered device I know it's the same as before but I still want to mention this little slit at the top which is zombies way of bringing back a more proper phone call experience in the original me mix they put a bone conduction speaker in there and this is just way better but in terms of audio the loudspeaker at the bottom of the phone just isn't all that great it doesn't provide much body to the sound and a lot of other flagships are really pushing for a better speaker experience I'm a fairly heavy user and I pretty much have something running in the background at all times here whether it's YouTube or music or podcasts and even with that I was able to get 5 hours of screen on time with the 3,400 milliamp hour battery unit inside what's great this time though is that there's wireless charging so even with that ceramic backing you can use wireless charging so you can make sure you're always topped up and the best part is that that wireless charging mat is really affordable as long as it's available in more markets this thing should sell like hotcakes because it is $15 USD equivalent alright so let's talk about the camera aside from adding in a telephoto lens the me mix 2's also gets a better sensor the main lens now has an F 1.8 aperture with pixels at 1.4 microns the zoom lens on the other hand gives you 2 X optical zoom but the pixels are one micron sized all right let's talk about the front-facing camera the placement still makes it a bit annoying to use there are ways around it like turning the phone around so that you are able to get a more conventional selfie and then you can import that into the different applications we're turning the phone over might mean some silly interactions like Instagram or snapchat it's still not in an ideal place to do video calls or live streaming but then again that's the compromise you have to make for a full screen experience pictures out of the front-facing camera or 5 megapixels they are pretty decent but not something to get too excited about it also provides the ability to add bouquet background effects much like a portrait mode but then again there is a real portrait mode now for the rear shooters the frame will be a little bit tighter and the software will be adding bouquet background effects as long as it gets the cutout right which it does maybe 80% of the time it really kind of depends on your subject but overall when you get the good result then the picture itself looks pretty great with great detail and the background effect is pretty nice the same can be said for most photos coming out of this phone actually detail is pretty good and colors are not quite that saturated but they're still pleasing to the eye and the only thing lacking is in the dynamic range it could be just a little bit better video capture is actually pretty detailed I was pretty happy with a lot of the 4k video that I got out of this device especially for that vlog and as long as the exposure is dialed in properly you'll get a good looking video audio could be a lot better though as plenty of the videos exhibited a lack of audio clarity one final addition is the AI engine denoted by a simple AI icon at the top of the viewfinder you just click that and it will try to figure out what you're pointing the camera at once it does that it will change the settings accordingly the main gripe I have with this is that it doesn't change straight to the portrait mode if you're pointing it at one person which I feel like should be the default behavior however if you're pointing it at let's say food or some sort of plants or a flower or a building so that it brings up those particular modes it also seems like the default behavior is to up the exposure and then make the photos more saturated it made me kind of feel like the AI engine needs a little bit more work just to make sure that it's doing more in general thankfully pictures out of the phone already look pretty good so it's not like you have to have the AI mode on all the time I expect that the AI engine is going to be enhanced in future generations and I look forward to that after all the software me UI is updated all the time and because it is crowd-sourced because of their robust forum community then you get a ton of new features all the time and in this particular case with me UI 9.5 there are a number of them added in we already talked about the full screen gestures but in the home screen so you now get a guide it's a little bit like the oneplus shelf where shortcuts can be added and one widget gives quick access to a note-taking area it's a simple but welcome addition that shows that the Bui is always evolving and thanks to the input of its users it's very avid users the me UI will provide even more on top of the existing android 8.0 Oreo experience and so there you have it the me mix 2's jammies high-end phone that is also their most unique one and it's really a phone that just shows that Jonny is not playing around not only do they provide as much performance as possible they're also trying to get the camera rights granted they are a little bit stifled because of the placement of the front-facing camera but that is just a motif that you're gonna have to expect from this line and it's the way that they are able to provide the full screen experience that kind of pioneered the trend it's an exciting time for Xiaomi and this just might be the flagship phone that they want to move them out of the East and move more into the West and luckily even if this is just an update to a phone we already reviewed last year the good thing is that the mimics 2 s hasn't lost its luster as always thank you guys very much for watching and hope you enjoyed this review of the Xiaomi me mix 2s now you can take a look at all of the other coverage of this phone including the Shanghai vlog that I put out a little while ago here at the Android thority YouTube channel if you're not subscribed to make sure you do so and there's that little bell on the side that you can click to turn on notifications so you know exactly when we put out all of our videos from there you can head over to Andrew 30.com where we are going to be reporting to you live from Google i/o and if there's a lot of exciting stuff going on there so you're gonna want to keep up by heading over to Andrew authority comm because we are you of course your source for all things Android