Xiaomi Mi MIX 4 is finally here with another display breakthrough tech

 

Xiaomi has reserved the MIX series for display-related innovations and five years later, it has got something refreshing in the Mi MIX 4. After fighting display bezels with clever chip packaging and slider arrangements, Xiaomi has now figured out a way to cleanly hide the front camera under the display (so says the company). The result is a phone that looks no different than the MIX 3 from the front, but packs interesting tech inside. 

Before you get your hopes high, Xiaomi has only released the Mi MIX 4 in China so far at a starting price of CNY 4,999 (approximately Rs 57,000). The phone will go on sale in China on August 16 and Xiaomi is yet to comment on global availability. However, with phones like the Mi 11 Ultra making it to India and other markets, there’s a possibility of Xiaomi considering this for our shores. 

Now, back to the specs and features. 

Mi MIX 4 is all about the display, again

The star of the show is the large 6.6-inch display, which does not appear any different than that of a OnePlus 7 Pro or an Oppo Find X. It is a FHD+ AMOLED display with 120Hz refresh rate and curved edges on the outside but there’s interesting stuff underneath. Xiaomi using a flexible OLED panel with a rearranged circuit and a new micro-diamond pixel pattern to increase the transparency and minimum light refraction.

The resultant display can hide the 20-megapixel selfie camera underneath itself without revealing its positioning. Xiaomi says that the area above the camera has a pixel density of 400 ppi, which means you can rear all text clearly without seeing pixels. Hence, you won’t see the camera sensor even when you aren’t using it, something which the ZTE Axon 20 struggles to do with its under-display camera tech.

Does it work in real life? We have no idea and you will have to wait for Xiaomi to lend us a unit of the MIX 4 to deliver our verdict. So far, the implementation looks promising and knowing Xiaomi’s history, this could mark the farewell for punch-hole cutouts and ugly notches.

In keeping with the traditions, the Mi MIX 4 gets a ceramic body and comes in white as well as black colour variants. Inside, there’s a Snapdragon 888+ chipset looking after the performance needs along with up to 12GB RAM and 512GB storage. This phone also gets a UWB chip for accurate positioning (expect UWB trackers from Xiaomi to launch soon). A modest 4500mAh capacity battery keeps the lights on but there’s some fancy tech for the charging department.

Xiaomi has baked in a boost mode that allows the 120W wired charger to fill up the battery from 0-100 per cent in 15 minutes. The boost mode also helps the 50W wireless charger to do the same in 28 minutes. For those concerned about battery health, the wired charger can do the full refill in 21 minutes in normal mode. Not bad by modern fast charging standards.

The Mi MIX 4 has also got fancy cameras. There’s a 108-megapixel Samsung HMX sensor with a 1/1.33-inch sensor, f/1.95 aperture, and OIS assistance for the main camera. An 8-megapixel telephoto camera with 5X optical zoom and a 13-megapixel ultra-wide camera with a free form lens complete the rear camera setup.