Makes the Galaxy Z Fold 4 look bulky

Xiaomi’s first foldable phone, the Mi Mix Fold, was a bit of a chunky boi, even going by the standards at the time of its April 2021 debut. It tipped the scales at 317g (with the ceramic model adding another 15g on top) and measured 17.2mm in thickness when folded. 

What a difference a year (and four months) makes! The newly announced Xiaomi Mix Fold 2 has slimmed down dramatically, shedding almost 18% in weight and 35% in thickness. In fact, the Mix Fold 2 is the lightest and thinnest large screen inner foldable on the market right now, with the latter category beating Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 4 by some distance.

Not everything about the Mix Fold 2 is great — there is a glaring weakness I’ll talk about in the design section — but it still represents a hardware engineering breakthrough in foldables, and it’s going to set the bar going forward. Samsung could perhaps continue to get away with its bulk-ish design next year due to lack of competition globally. But for other Chinese foldables? There’s no going back. The next foldables from Oppo, Vivo, Huawei, or anyone else must also be at least this thin or it’s going to look bad.

The Xiaomi Mix Fold 2 is, sadly, only for the Chinese market for now. Importing is an option, but you likely won’t get a warranty and there may be potential network connectivity issues. Therefore this device is likely a non-starter for most readers. Consider this article a look at what’s out there rather than an actual buyer’s guide.

Xiaomi Mix Fold 2: Specifications

About this review: Xiaomi provided me with a Mix Fold 2 to test. This hands-on was written after two and half days with the phone. Xiaomi did not have any input in this article.

Xiaomi Mix Fold 2: Design and Hardware

• Incredibly thin at 5.4mm unfolded and 11.2mm folded
• Feels more like a slab phone when folded than any other previous foldable
• The hinge cannot stay in place mid-fold
• Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 with a triple camera system

The Xiaomi Mix Fold 2 slims down dramatically, weighing 262g and measuring 11.2mm when folded. These figures are the lightest and thinnest yet in the large screen inner foldable space, even beating Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 4.

In fact, the Mix Fold 2 is barely thicker or heavier than a top flagship with a case, meaning if you use an iPhone 13 Pro Max or a Galaxy S22 Ultra with a case, then the Mix Fold 2 won’t feel too out of place.

Xiaomi Mix Fold 2 and iPhone 13 Pro Max with a first-party case.

This addresses one of the main complaints of foldables over the years — that they’re too bulky, essentially twice the thickness of a normal phone. That is no more.

Displays

The Mix Fold 2’s main screen is an 8-inch, 1914 x 2160, LTPO 2.0 OLED panel. It’s covered by ultra-thin glass, has a maximum refresh rate of 120Hz, and looks great mostly. But the crease is slightly more visible than other Chinese foldables. It’s still nowhere near as deep a crease as Samsung’s foldables, however.

The main screen’s aspect ratio is much closer to a square (4:3.55) compared to last year’s portrait orientation screen. This change was so the Mix Fold 2’s secondary 6.5-inch outside screen can keep a more traditional 21:9 aspect ratio in folded form. The first Mix Fold, you may remember, had a very elongated 27:9 aspect ratio that was even taller and narrow than a Galaxy Fold.

With a more traditional aspect ratio in folded form plus the lighter and thinner form, this makes the Mix Fold 2 feel more like a slab phone in the hand.

When opened, the 8-inch main display has a 4:3.55 aspect ratio, making it almost feel like a square. This is a screen shape most Chinese foldables have adopted in recent years, with the only exception being Oppo’s Find N with its landscape widescreen. This main display is covered by ultra-thin glass, so you don’t get an awful plastic feeling on your fingertips either.

The hinge feels sturdy and doesn’t protrude from the side when folded the way Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 1 to 3 did, but there’s one glaring weakness: it cannot stay in place mid-fold, meaning it cannot pull off the so-called “Flex Mode” that has a foldable stay in an L shape like a laptop. Samsung pioneered this ingenious idea, and other foldables from Oppo and Vivo have followed suit. This L shape allows a foldable to essentially work as its own tripod for hands-free photos and videos.

The Mix Fold 2’s hinge cannot stay locked in this position the way other foldables can.

I personally use Flex Mode often for taking photos of myself without needing a helping hand or tripod, and for taking hands-free video calls on the road. The omission here is glaring and my biggest nitpick about the Xiaomi Mix Fold 2.

Internals: SoC, memory, battery, and other bits

Despite the sleek body, the Mix Fold 2 still managed to cram a 4,500 mAh battery inside, which coupled with the power-efficient Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1, has given me excellent battery life thus far. But, it’s only been three days, so not enough testing for a final battery life conclusion yet. Storage options come in 256GB, 512GB, or 1TB, and all are paired with 12GB of UFS 3.1 RAM.

The fingerprint scanner is embedded into the power button on the side, and there are two symmetrical speakers located at the top and bottom, tuned by Harmon/Kardon. The haptic engine inside the Mix Fold 2 is solid, but not as precise and firm as the X-axis linear motor found in Xiaomi’s flagship and mid-range phones. I’d say the haptics are fine, just not amazing.

Cameras

The Mix Fold 2 has four cameras: a 20MP front-facing camera located in a hole-punch near the top of the secondary display, and a triple-lens main camera system comprising of a 50MP, f/1.8 main (wide) camera, a 13MP, f/2.4 ultra-wide camera, and an 8MP 2X telephoto zoom lens with an f/2.6 aperture. There is no selfie camera in the inside main screen.

Going purely by hardware, this is clearly not Xiaomi’s top-of-the-line camera system. The Xiaomi 12S Ultra released last month packs a primary camera with a larger sensor, a custom-built eight-layer lens, and a 5X Periscope zoom lens. But it’s not all about hardware: the Mix Fold 2 still gets the Leica tuning that made its debut in the 12S Ultra, and from early testing so far, the Mix Fold 2’s main camera produces great photos with excellent HDR.

For example, in the above photo, you can see I’m shooting against very harsh sunlight blasting through the window. But yet, in the final output photos produced by the Mix Fold 2, the main and ultra-wide cameras produced a shot with everything properly exposed.

The 2X telephoto zoom lens produces respectable sharpness, but there’s a subtle color shift from the main lens. Plus, 2X optical zoom in 2022 is a bit lacking. Digital zoom maxes out at 10X, but there’s a significant loss of details at 10X zoom.

I’ve only had the phone for a couple of days, so this is just an early impression. I will have a more thorough camera review, including how this system stacks up against other foldables and slabs, in the full review.

Xiaomi Mix Fold 2: Software

• Runs on a special version of MIUI called MIUI Fold
• Some first-party Xiaomi apps are optimized for the tablet screen, but many third-party apps are not
• Intuitive multi-tasking system — except for YouTube

The Xiaomi Mix Fold 2 runs a special version of the company’s MIUI, named MIUI Fold, on top of Android 12. The lack of Android 12L or 13 is disappointing, but MIUI Fold is well thought out, with an intuitive multi-tasking system that allows apps to run in split-screen view or resizable floating window mode.

However, the software so far isn’t as polished as Samsung’s Fold series software. For example, in split-screen multi-tasking, you can only split two apps vertically, not horizontally. This is fine for most apps, but for YouTube or other video apps like Netflix, it’s much better to be able to split horizontally, as videos get more room to spread. Look at how a YouTube video looks in a split-screen view on MIUI Fold currently.

Still, I am someone who runs around town doing work and social things with my phone often, and I appreciate the larger canvas. Over the weekend, I met up with a friend in Singapore, and I was navigating on Google Maps on one screen while asking him for directions on the other. Sure, I can do this on a normal phone too, but the Maps area would be too cramped. I also enjoy using the larger screen to read press releases and spec sheets.

As mentioned, the Mix Fold 2 is only available in China, so the phone does not come with Google apps pre-installed. However, Google’s Mobile Services framework is on the phone, so all I had to do was install Google Play Store (available directly in Xiaomi’s own app store or trusted third-party sites), and I could begin installing all the typical apps people outside China use, like YouTube, Google Maps, Facebook, etc.

There’s also quite a bit of Chinese app bloatware, but almost all can be uninstalled. It took a good 20 minutes or so, but I can get the Mix Fold 2 to look like a typical international version Xiaomi phone.

Xiaomi Mix Fold 2: Early Thoughts

Since I only had this phone for about two days at the time of writing this, this is by no means a full review. However, I am so well versed in using foldables and Xiaomi phones, that I already have a general idea of the Mix Fold 2’s pros and cons. I know I’m going to find the 2X zoom lens lacking, because I love snapping city street photography of people and things, and a 5X or 10X lens is much better for that task. I also am quite certain the Xiaomi Mix Fold 2’s software is not going to be as well optimized for Google apps like YouTube or Google Meet the way the Galaxy Z Fold 4 is.

The Xiaomi Mix Fold 2 (middle) next to the Vivo X80 Pro in a case (left) and Galaxy Z Fold 3 (right).

But I also already love the Mix Fold 2’s in-hand feel, particularly when it’s folded. As I said earlier, this is the closest a large foldable has ever gotten to feeling like a normal slab phone. And I think this really matters. I was (and still am) blown away by the Huawei Mate X2 and Vivo X Fold‘s hardware, but both phones are a bit too heavy for me to carry around daily, particularly when I’m doing physical activities like cycling or hiking. As for Samsung’s Fold series, I never loved how the first three devices felt in folded form, with the bulky hinge and too-narrow screen. The Galaxy Z Fold 4 fixes this a bit, but the Xiaomi Mix Fold 2 in folded form is just a superior form factor.

I’ll have more on the cameras, overall performance, and battery life in the full review coming later this week.