Mi mix 3 review battery life năm 2024

We've missed sliders - smoothly sliding them open to answer a call and then sliding them shut with a satisfying click to hang up. The Xiaomi Mi Mix 3 brings back that tactile joy along with other neat tricks.

This is great, the slider isn't just a way to move the selfie camera off the front bezel and avoid the scar of a notch. The added functionality will see a lot more use than "squeezable" phones like HTC and Google make (have you ever used Edge Sense).

The way that Xiaomi pulled it off is pretty innovative. It uses neodymium magnets to lock the phone in the open and closed positions and also to provide the "springy" feel in between. This is a more durable solution than actual springs, Xiaomi says the Mix has been tested through 300,000 open/close cycles and you can use it as a fidget toy.

Still, pressing down on the top edge of the phone, we can feel the top half of the slider bend a bit. Drop tests with the Mix 3 will be interesting.

Open or closed, the 6.39" screen is always visible. It's a Samsung-made AMOLED with 19.5:9 aspect ratio - and unlike most 19.5:9 phones, you get to use all of the screen, no awkward notches here.

The 6.39" Super AMOLED screen has the front all to itself • Always On Display

It has 1,080 x 2,340px resolution, same as Xiaomi's other flagship models. It tops out at 600 nits maximum brightness with an additional sunlight mode. 430 nits is the typical brightness. Anyway, the display supports HDR and 103.4% coverage of the NTSC color gamut.

Always On Display mode is available as well (we'll see how it affects battery life when we do the full review).

Note that the earpiece lives in the lover half of the slider. You can talk with the slider closed, though.

The earpiece and dual selfie camera are on the bottom half of the slider

The frame of the phone is made out of 7000-series aluminum, which has a higher tensile strength than 6000-series. The back is made of ceramic, which explains the shine (and slippery-ness) that Xiaomi was able to achieve. The glass front offers slightly more grip. The sturdy build and all that ceramic do add to the weight, however, and we didn't like how slippery the phone is - this is a phone you'd better put in a case.

Mi Mix 3 in Onyx Black, Jade Green and Sapphire Blue

That will make it easier to handle and protect the back in case you do drop it. Speaking of the back, all three color versions are just so reflective, almost like a mirror. Here's a look. It's not quite this reflective in real life, but if that's not a look you like, it's another point for cases.

The ceramic back has a high gloss finish

Sliding the phone open and closed really underscores how slippery the back is (the metal sides too). So, you need to grip the phone tightly to push the slider up and down.

Xiaomi Mi Mix 3 retail box

There's a case included in the box, which was designed to work with the slider form factor. It covers both halves of the slider and somehow doesn't add any friction. It's better than most bundled cases we've seen, Xiaomi is offering a pretty rich retail box. No headphones, though, you just get a USB-C to 3.5mm adapter.

The bundled case

Since the phone launches with MIUI 10, it comes with the Xiao AI assistant. Like its peers, it has a dedicated hardware button on the side of the phone to summon it.

Dedicated Xiao AI assistant button • Power button and volume rocker

The Xiaomi Mi Mix 3 has a 3,200mAh battery, not quite the capacity we were hoping for. Still, we were pleasantly surprised to find out that Xiaomi is bundling a 10W wireless charger into the box. Wireless charging is no longer an optional extra.

Xiaomi Mi Mix 3 retail box • The 10W wireless charger

If you need to charge faster, QuickCharge 4.0+ is supported, though a QC 3.0 charger is provided in the box. Both standards provide 18W maximum, though a 4.0 charger has a higher average speed of charge.

USB-C port for charging (no 3.5mm jack) • Top side of the phone

There's a fingerprint scanner on the back of the phone. It's pretty fast, but the one on our pre-release unit experienced some hiccups, which will be fixed for the release version.

We're not sure if this is caused by the slider design or not, but the vibration of the Mi Mix 3 feels weak and hollow.

It’s not all lightsabers and socialism this time around, though. This £499 phone is out to stop you paying £800-1000 for a mobile, just like the Honor View 20 and OnePlus 6T.

This resistance is made up of a loose coalition of competing Chinese companies. And, yes, they mostly just want your money, but ask for hundreds less than some.

The Xiaomi Mi Mix 3’s top draw is a slide-up front camera that lets it fill the entire front with display, bar an ultra-slim border.

Competition is the main issue here. The Honor and OnePlus alternatives last a longer between charges, and the View 20’s camera is more dynamic.

Saying that, if you hate notches and want to punch holes, buy one.

Design: Sliding to the top

Xiaomi’s Mi Mix 3 has to deal with one important conundrum. Its most striking feature is a slide-up front camera. But to appeal to a mass audience, it needs to be as invisible as possible. No-one wants a phone that looks like a mock-up from a mid-90s tech TV show.

Xiaomi has done a great job here, though. Lots of phone have a little border of plastic between the display glass and the metal on their sides. The Mi Mix 3’s is simply a bit thicker than some. This layer holds the screen, which you actually slide down to reveal the cameras on the front.

Until you do that, the Xiaomi Mi Mix 3 looks a rather subdued, normal phone. Its back is curved ceramic, almost indistinguishable from glass, with a solid colour finish. The sides are shiny aluminium. There are none of the desperate-for-attention antics of the View 20, no laser-like effects that fire off as soon as you place the phone near a light.

There’s no headphone jack either, no water resistance and a rear fingerprint pad rather than one built into the screen. But no £500 phone has very single piece of tech you might ask for. And unlike the Honor and OnePlus rivals it has wireless charging, and even comes with a 10W pad.

Thickness and weight are the two physical trade-offs of the hardware design. At 218g, the Mi Mix 3 is heavier than average. And its 8.5mm thickness no longer seems that slim.

You’ll probably get used to this in a few hours or days, of course. Xiaomi also bundles an ultra-thin case. Many bumper cases will make an iPhone X thicker than a Mi Mix 3.

Battery Life: cut down to size

Battery life is the real way you pay for the slidey screen. We came to the Mi Mix 3 after using the View 20, and the difference in stamina is huge. Where the Honor might end up with 40% charge by the end of the day, the Xiaomi often has 10%.

We’re back to the world of phone longevity that’ll usually get you through ’til bedtime, but isn’t really worth more than a shoulder shrug. Look at the specs and the reason for this becomes clear. The Mi Mix 3 has a 3200mAh battery, 500-800mAh lower capacity than its rivals.

Xiaomi has chopped down the size of the battery to make sure the phone seems normal, not huge. And much as Xiaomi might see the sliding screen as a better solution than a notch or punch hole display, that it eats into battery space is a big issue in this class. It’s the Mi Mix 3’s main issue when sidling up to the arch rival Honor View 20.

This phone lasts ages when simply playing a video, but you feel that loss of battery capacity with real-world use.

Display: Made for movies

What you get in return is a screen that is only disturbed by the slight rounding-off at the edges. And every slim border phone has display curves.

Movies benefit most from the Xiaomi Mi Mix 3’s screen style. It lets the footage spread out across its entire 6.4 inches, with no holes or nobbly bits. If you watch videos to get you through a work commute, this is just about the best you’ll get for the money. Or any money, really.

It thrives on ultra-wide cinematic content, as the 19.5:9 aspect ratio is so “long” you end up cutting the hairdo off most YouTubers if you stretch a 16:9 vid to fit the screen.

With the right content, the Mi Mix 3 screen looks fantastic. The OLED panel provides superb contrast and vivid colour. It supports HDR too (just not in Netflix, yet).

Resolution is “only” 2340 x 1080 pixels, but 3D gaming (and only some actually use higher resolutions) is just about the only content that makes the difference between this and even sharper 1440p screens obvious. 6.4in screens don’t need 4K video.

The Mi Mix 3 also has an Ambient display mode, which shows the time and date, all day long. OLED screen tech should mean this doesn’t eat up too much extra power. But keep it off if you want to stretch out the just-solid battery life out a little longer.

Software: Android 9.0 and MIUI

The Xiaomi Mi Mix 3 runs Android 9.0 and Xiaomi’s MIUI software. This is quite different to vanilla Android, but is also clean-looking and fast.

There’s no app drawer. MIUI has an iOS-like layout, where your apps have to find a spot on a homescreen, somewhere. Get ready to make some app folders unless you’re happy to live in an app-icon-filled wasteland.

If you used a Xiaomi Mi Mix 3 back in its homeland of China, you’d have access to a Themes store too. But it’s not available in the UK. Just three themes are baked in from the start.

The phone does have a few nifty extra, mind. You can create second versions of some apps, perfect for maintaining those secret second lives that will one day implode and fracture all your most meaningful relationships.

Or, y’know, let you run a work WhatsApp account and your personal one from the same phone. Do people have work WhatsApp accounts?

Xiaomi’s most notable extras fuse hardware and software. The Mi Mix 3 has a button on its left side that acts as a shortcut. As standard it fires up Google Assistant, and activates the mic so you can talk to the phone like a Star Trek tricorder.

You can’t change this basic interaction, but can make long presses and double taps do other things, like activating the camera, turning on the flashlight or opening the last-run app.// It’s a shame you can’t make it load a specific app, though.

The slider has a behind-the-scenes tricks too. By default flicking it opens up the camera app. But after doing so accidentally a half-dozen times, seeing chins rippling off your face at 7am before you’ve even had a shower, you may want to change this.

It can alternatively open up any app you like, or bring up a clever little shortcut display, home to things like the calculator, voice recorder and flashlight.

We use it to launch CityMapper, and this gesture really capitalises on the Mi Mix 3’s corporate stress toy vibe.

The Mi Mix 3 does miss out on some of the headline features of Android 9.0, though.

There are no “digital wellness” app timers, presumably because Xiaomi hasn’t had a chance to incorporate them in its interface yet. You might get them in an update, though.

Performance: game ready

This phone is otherwise ready for anything you want to throw its way.

There’s a massive 128GB storage, and the combo of a Snapdragon 845 CPU and 6GB RAM can square up to any phone available at the time of release.

Phones with the next-gen Snapdragon 855 are on our doorstep, but this is still a formidable chipset. It scores 8224 in Geekbench 4, around 10% lower than the newer Kirin 980 of the View 20.

And it can play titles like PUBG with graphics maxed-out, no problem.

Speaker quality is one part that doesn’t quite match the OnePlus 6T or View 20. They are just slightly beefier and louder, but the Xiaomi Mi Mix 3 is no reed-thin slouch.

Camera: day and night

The Xiaomi Mi Mix 3 camera sounds like, and is, a great combo. A 12-megapixel Sony sensor and a 12MP “2x” optical zoom camera sit on the back.

It produces bold, contrasty images during the day, and even holds up fairly well at night. Xiaomi says the main camera has 4-axis stabilisation but it clearly relies on software more than this judder-killing camera tilt mechanism when shooting stills.

However, you still get night images with a good amount of detail, and there’s a slightly slower “night” mode whacks up the dynamic range at the expense of some contrast and colour saturation.

The Xiaomi Mi Mix 3 camera is happy in just about all situations.

Video capture is impressive too. It goes all the way up to 4K 60fps. And while you lose out on software stabilisation beyond 1080p, the optical stabilisation kicks in at 4K. It does a good job of limiting hand judder. This is where the OIS feature seems to be used most effectively.

You can also shoot slo-mo video, at up to a radically slowed 960fps. Want zoomed images? While the 2x zoom camera is not nearly as sensitive as the main one, it does capture a stack more detail in daylight.

All the most important features that were once only available to top-end phones are here. It’s just a pity £500 is still a stack of cash, eh?

The Honor View 20 still pips it in a few areas, though. Its HDR tweaking is more intelligent, and it is far better at making very, very dark scenes look bright and clear. At a certain point the Xiaomi Mi Mix 3 seems to give up, leaving shots looking glum unless you use the flash.

There’s some of the same effect in the front cameras. The Xiaomi Mi Mix 3 has two of ‘em. There’s a main 24-megapixel sensor and a second 2MP depth one, used for shots where the background is blurred out.

In mid-level lighting and better your selfies will often look great. But once again the Honor View 20 handles dark scenes better without using a flash. Here, they look softer and dim more quickly.

It honestly seems a bit odd to criticise the Xiaomi Mi Mix 3 too much considering its price. However, the competition at £500 has gone from tepid to boiling in the space of a month.

Xiaomi Mi Mix 3 Verdict

The Xiaomi Mi Mix 3 is the phone to buy if you like to watch movies and TV episodes on your way to work.

Its screen slider gets rid of the annoyances of notches and punch hole displays, letting you watch cinematic odysseys as intended: on a 6.4in screen. OK, so phones aren’t ideal for movie-watching, but you won’t find much better at the price.

It also has the power, storage and versatile cameras needed to let the Mi Mix 3 compete with more expensive phones. And it also gets wireless charging, missing from the OnePlus and Honor rivals.

While great, the Xiaomi Mi Mix 3 is not our pick of the three, though, thanks its lesser battery life.

What is the battery life of Mi Mix 3?

Don't be disappointed by the Mi Mix 3's 3,200mAh battery, even if on paper it's smaller than many of its peers. It's a strong performer, returning easily a day's worth of heavy use.

Is Mi Mix 3 worth buying?

The Mi Mix 3 is a fantastic device with the best hardware available. It's got Qualcomm's current Snapdragon 845 chip (though the Snapdragon 855 is due to arrive soon), a 6.4-inch Super AMOLED full HD+ display, dual 12-megapixel rear cameras with 2x optical zoom and wireless charging.

How good is Xiaomi battery?

The Xiaomi 12 is powered by a 4500mAh battery, which kept it going for 10 hours and 34 minutes under the PCMark for Android Work 3.0 battery life test. That's a little more than the 10 hours and 9 minutes for the Xiaomi 12 Pro, which has a 4,600mAh battery.

How fast is the Mi Mix 3 charging?

Charging Time The Mi Mix 3 supports 18-watt fast charging and it comes with the fast charger in the box. Not just that, you also get a fast wireless charger included in the box for free as well! Awesome! It took the Mi Mix 3 less than an hour and a half to reach a full charge.