Definitely seems like a great value, but I know I couldn't buy it without an OLED screen. How close to a stock experience does MIUI 9 provide? It doesn't look very intrusive at all, I like it.
I'll be adding a software section in a short while - I've had zero issues with MIUI 9.5. Xiaomi also offers quite a novel gesture navigation method that works really well and gets rid of the navigation bar creating more screen real estate.
Yeah, BlackBerry really used gestures a lot since the beginning of this decade, Apple took them and made them famous with the iPhone X, but now they are no longer novel because OnePlus/Android also copied them in 2018? :)
Palm beat virtually everyone by a number of years to the gesture game. Give credit where credit is due. WebOS revolutionized mobile OS navigation and virtually every OS since had borrowed almost everything from multitasking cards to an information "hub" from WebOS.
On top of all that, Palm beat Apple to wireless charging by an entire DECADE (unless you consider the Apple Watch, which by that means Palm beat them by 'just' 7 years.) Palm's wireless charging implementation was also significantly better than Qi from more efficient charging current (excluding Qualcomm high voltage fast charging) to magnetic alignment.
It's actually kind of depressing to anyone who owned a Palm device with wireless charging how shoddy current wireless technologies are, and how few devices actually support it. The Pre and the Touchpad charged without any hassle whatsoever.
The little stand for the Pre was great but my screen always remained powered up while charging. The screen would be dark and blank but that was still more than enough to illuminate a dark bedroom.
The OS was very good but the hardware was definitely shonky. My keyboard rubber literally wore through to the metal below and I had a couple of incidents where I lost all the stored data and photos.
"It’s clear that the nearest competitor to the MIX 2S is the Galaxy S9+" It's a good review but I think it would have benefited from direct comparisons to the OnePlus 6, as they seem more direct competitors to me, particularly in Europe as you mention: prices and hardware offering between the 2 devices are close, both phones are available to buy online rather than through carriers (afaik), etc. Always nice to see the Anandtech methodologies applied to phone reviews though, thanks!
I'll be receiving the OnePlus 6 next week so I avoided making any comparisons to it without having had the phone in my hands. Obviously it's a valid contender.
I'm sure I'm a minority here, but isn't the screen of a phone the most important part? Frankly I don't game on my phone all the time, but I am always using the display. I would rather have a slightly lessor processor and/or RAM and those funds be diverted to the most important part of a Smartphone. This is clearly a situation where specs were more important than user experience IMHO. And the placement of the front facing camera is just ridiculous.
Agreed on the screen (not only latency, but reflections and black levels are also pet peeves for me) The front facing camera is an issue only if you make a lot of video calls. For shooting selfies, having to hold the phone upside down is not an issue.
For me it would be a non-issue. I've used the front facing camera on my Pixel 2 maybe 2 or 3 times. I'm sure some users it would be much bigger problem.
Nice review thank you. Most compare it to the OnePlus 6 and the Honor 10 (or is it View 10 ?), with mixed results. Also, Samsung is being increasingly aggressive with promos on their current and older-gen devices. The 500€ space is very crowded. I myself buy one step down, Redmi line and Mi Max not Mix. $200 buys you a whole lot of phone these days, I feel reviews skew way too much to the high end.
Still rocking my Redmi 2 2GB, but the discontinuation of battery replacements is an issue (and OS - LineageOS worked great, until it didn't). I found an off-brand replacement batter, but as I suspected it doesn't last as long as the original when new, and appears to have issues delivering peak current when below 50%. It'd be nice if they lasted for stockpiling!
I'm happy with Xiaomi making devices likea this as long as it keeps the Redmi and Mi Max lines. I'm willing to stick with a fast midrange SoC like the 650, 660 or 636 and still get MicroSD storage, a robust metal body, IR blaster and a headphone jack. The Mi Max 2 is the best value when it comes to large and cheap phones with almost-premium parts.
Seems phone makers don't get it. Why depende on internet, when you can have tiny sets of mSD's on your wallet, pocket, backpack with different kind of content (favorite music, cartoons, anime, manga, popcorn/hentai)
Maybe I don't get it either. I admittedly have a S8 with a 128GB SD card in it but I would have no problem going to a phone with 256GB internal storage and no SD card. I have something like 2000 320kbps songs, a bunch of games/apps, and that still is only around half of my total storage. If I really wanted to I could fill the rest of the storage with something like 40 hours of high-quality 1080p rips. More likely if I watch something on my phone I just connect to my Plex server back home with its terabytes of content.
SD card support on android has always been a mediocre experience; it certainly works but has always felt tacked on at best. OTG SD/flash drive readers cover most of the remaining use-cases anyways.
I'm willing to bet their surveys showed people will complain but still buy the phones because the SD slot isn't a real *must* have. I've heard too many people claim "128/256GB is not enough" only to fall flat when they realize how much music fits in there, how many pictures, videos, etc. And the argument "my 4K videos, my lossless audio, my RAW pictures" is about as realistic and compelling as "but my mouse, my Excel, my coding project" on the phone.
If you consider how much of that data has to be with you at any time it really stops making sense to insist on memory cards. Especially since they don't excel at reliability so having your only copy on that SD would be a monument of ignorance euphemistically speaking.
Over the years I heard people screaming "no [whatever] no buy" 1000 times. Yet most of them now rock a phone with no replaceable battery, no physical keyboard, no SD slot, no headphone jack, no physical button, no week-long battery, notched screen, etc. They *ALL* pull it off ;).
64 GB internal flash with no MicroSD isn't enough for me, especially when the user-accessible space is more like 45 GB after subtracting system and data partitions.
How many people do we know in real life that would even know their phone has a SD slot or not? I for one can only think of a couple of cousins and maybe on uncle who would know, and even then I doubt they care.
I'm in IT professionally, but even I have no use for it. How big is the market for such items? Sounds great to have and I'm sure if you told people what it was and asked if they wanted it they would mostly say yes, but in the real world I see very little use of it.
722MB/s R 243 MB/s W on 8 threads. The issue with NAND performance tests is that they're generally broken and aren't properly representative of real file system performance.
Ok, did a few AndroBench 8 threads test: average 750MB/s read 200MB/s write on Mi Mix 2. Can not quite reach 250MB/s write, but otherwise very much the same.
They're real but the question is if those numbers are representative of the file system. The hardware can be fast but if the software doesn't manage it correctly it's not meaningful. Currently that's a lot more complex question.
I had a Redmi Note 3 SE that didn't resist the 10,001nth drop. The RN5 Pro for Taiwan was the only viable replacement due to network support, but was not yet available. I prefer to have SD sopport on the phone, but I finally settled for the Mi Mix2 64GB for $365. It'll arrive in about a week.
Hi Andrei, any comments/conclusions regarding the availability of OS and security updates from Xiaomi? I never owned one of their phones, but a manufacturer's committment to keeping their phones current for the next 2-3 years is key for any purchase for me. For example, I had a bad experience with Huawei (no updates at all despite official promises) and that put me off their phones for the foreseeable future.
Xiaomi's update policy is actually one of the best amongst Android manufacturers, contrary to popular belief. This is especially true for their flagships.
For instance, the 2013 flagship, the Mi 3, is still receiving rom/feature updates despite being almost 5 years old
Interface and security updates but the underlying Android version remains the same. MIUI decouples the OS and Android versions so it's possible to have the latest MIUI release with a Lollipop base.
My Mi Max launched with 6.0 with an official 7.1 update later but 8.0/8.1 third party ROMs are available, if a little flaky. I blame both Xiaomi and Qualcomm for not updating and releasing board support drivers for new Android releases.
"vendors need to pay a lot more attention to it, as in the grand scale of things, the cost of writing good software just seems minuscule compared to the vast investments needed to design and manufacture faster silicon chips and to brute-force the issue"
This fact is so underrated it's not even funny. Great review Andrei.
I've always wondered if most manufacturers just don't realize how important this is nor do they have any real ability to know if they are getting their money's worth out of their coders.
Andrei, I have to say that I am impressed by the quality of the latest batch of reviews, truly outstanding, the small one or two paragraph conclusion at the end of each section ia also extremely useful when you want to quickly check the performance of a devic3 in any given area.
The newly introduced Speaker quality segment is quite simply, brilliant.
Great review, keep up the great work.
Now, these phones offer so much Bang for the buck that you'd be hard pressed to find any reason spend $700, $800 or $1000 on a phone, the Note 9 comes to mind as it is the one device that really checks all boxes with even some extra and unique bella and whistles but nithing else seems adequate at that point with this or the Pocophone in the market.
Reliance Jio is also said to be eyeing the telecom towers and optic fibre network of the cash-strapped phone services provider — assets that Canadian pension fund Brookfield, and a clutch of private equity firms have also shown interest in, said one of the sources. The joint lenders forum (JLF), which met in Mumbai on Thursday, discussed the sale of assets of the telecommunications firm and a proposal to convert RCom’s debt into equity. <a href="https://jiophone4g.com/"> jio tv </a> <a href="https://jiophone4g.com/">jio dth</a> <a href="https://jiophone4g.com/"> Jio Tv Web</a>
Reliance Jio is also said to be eyeing the telecom towers and optic fibre network of the cash-strapped phone services provider — assets that Canadian pension fund Brookfield, and a clutch of private equity firms have also shown interest in, said one of the sources. The joint lenders forum (JLF), which met in Mumbai on Thursday, discussed the sale of assets of the telecommunications firm and a proposal to convert RCom’s debt into equity. https://jiophone4g.com/
I took the full size images from the Mi Max 2s review and edited them a little in Photoshop, the compared them to Galaxy S9 samples. With a little tweaking they were almost the same quality. As noted, the Xiaomi does not do that much sharpening compared to Samsung. I like that. It's almost like having a RAW image in which the user has control rather than the phone manufacturer. I hope you'll do a Mi 8 review. It seems like a Mi Max 2 with an AMOLED display.
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nathanddrews - Friday, June 29, 2018 - link
Definitely seems like a great value, but I know I couldn't buy it without an OLED screen. How close to a stock experience does MIUI 9 provide? It doesn't look very intrusive at all, I like it.Andrei Frumusanu - Friday, June 29, 2018 - link
I'll be adding a software section in a short while - I've had zero issues with MIUI 9.5. Xiaomi also offers quite a novel gesture navigation method that works really well and gets rid of the navigation bar creating more screen real estate.Flunk - Friday, June 29, 2018 - link
It's not that novel, OnePlus offers a similar feature.close - Saturday, June 30, 2018 - link
Yeah, BlackBerry really used gestures a lot since the beginning of this decade, Apple took them and made them famous with the iPhone X, but now they are no longer novel because OnePlus/Android also copied them in 2018? :)arashi - Sunday, July 1, 2018 - link
You mean Nokia? With the N9?arashi - Sunday, July 1, 2018 - link
*that pioneered extensive gesture navigationSamus - Sunday, July 1, 2018 - link
Palm beat virtually everyone by a number of years to the gesture game. Give credit where credit is due. WebOS revolutionized mobile OS navigation and virtually every OS since had borrowed almost everything from multitasking cards to an information "hub" from WebOS.On top of all that, Palm beat Apple to wireless charging by an entire DECADE (unless you consider the Apple Watch, which by that means Palm beat them by 'just' 7 years.) Palm's wireless charging implementation was also significantly better than Qi from more efficient charging current (excluding Qualcomm high voltage fast charging) to magnetic alignment.
Lord of the Bored - Sunday, July 1, 2018 - link
But if we give credit where it is due, we can't give credit to Apple instead!piroroadkill - Monday, July 2, 2018 - link
It's actually kind of depressing to anyone who owned a Palm device with wireless charging how shoddy current wireless technologies are, and how few devices actually support it. The Pre and the Touchpad charged without any hassle whatsoever.hbsource - Monday, July 2, 2018 - link
Well, kind of.The little stand for the Pre was great but my screen always remained powered up while charging. The screen would be dark and blank but that was still more than enough to illuminate a dark bedroom.
The OS was very good but the hardware was definitely shonky. My keyboard rubber literally wore through to the metal below and I had a couple of incidents where I lost all the stored data and photos.
Could have been great but wasn't quite.
onisad - Friday, June 29, 2018 - link
"It’s clear that the nearest competitor to the MIX 2S is the Galaxy S9+"It's a good review but I think it would have benefited from direct comparisons to the OnePlus 6, as they seem more direct competitors to me, particularly in Europe as you mention: prices and hardware offering between the 2 devices are close, both phones are available to buy online rather than through carriers (afaik), etc.
Always nice to see the Anandtech methodologies applied to phone reviews though, thanks!
Andrei Frumusanu - Friday, June 29, 2018 - link
I'll be receiving the OnePlus 6 next week so I avoided making any comparisons to it without having had the phone in my hands. Obviously it's a valid contender.beersy - Friday, June 29, 2018 - link
I'm sure I'm a minority here, but isn't the screen of a phone the most important part? Frankly I don't game on my phone all the time, but I am always using the display. I would rather have a slightly lessor processor and/or RAM and those funds be diverted to the most important part of a Smartphone. This is clearly a situation where specs were more important than user experience IMHO. And the placement of the front facing camera is just ridiculous.StormyParis - Friday, June 29, 2018 - link
Agreed on the screen (not only latency, but reflections and black levels are also pet peeves for me) The front facing camera is an issue only if you make a lot of video calls. For shooting selfies, having to hold the phone upside down is not an issue.jospoortvliet - Saturday, June 30, 2018 - link
Agreed, I am hoping the next version will have a good AMOLED screen...Fergy - Sunday, July 1, 2018 - link
How often do you use the front camera? It is only meant for selfies and short video calls right? I prefer this solution to a notch.Holliday75 - Tuesday, July 3, 2018 - link
For me it would be a non-issue. I've used the front facing camera on my Pixel 2 maybe 2 or 3 times. I'm sure some users it would be much bigger problem.StormyParis - Friday, June 29, 2018 - link
Nice review thank you. Most compare it to the OnePlus 6 and the Honor 10 (or is it View 10 ?), with mixed results. Also, Samsung is being increasingly aggressive with promos on their current and older-gen devices. The 500€ space is very crowded.I myself buy one step down, Redmi line and Mi Max not Mix. $200 buys you a whole lot of phone these days, I feel reviews skew way too much to the high end.
GreenReaper - Saturday, June 30, 2018 - link
Still rocking my Redmi 2 2GB, but the discontinuation of battery replacements is an issue (and OS - LineageOS worked great, until it didn't). I found an off-brand replacement batter, but as I suspected it doesn't last as long as the original when new, and appears to have issues delivering peak current when below 50%. It'd be nice if they lasted for stockpiling!serendip - Saturday, June 30, 2018 - link
I'm happy with Xiaomi making devices likea this as long as it keeps the Redmi and Mi Max lines. I'm willing to stick with a fast midrange SoC like the 650, 660 or 636 and still get MicroSD storage, a robust metal body, IR blaster and a headphone jack. The Mi Max 2 is the best value when it comes to large and cheap phones with almost-premium parts.Arbie - Friday, June 29, 2018 - link
No microSD, no sale. I want to easily load and swap sets of media files. The lack of a standard headphone jack hurts too.Lolimaster - Friday, June 29, 2018 - link
Seems phone makers don't get it. Why depende on internet, when you can have tiny sets of mSD's on your wallet, pocket, backpack with different kind of content (favorite music, cartoons, anime, manga, popcorn/hentai)Destoya - Friday, June 29, 2018 - link
Maybe I don't get it either. I admittedly have a S8 with a 128GB SD card in it but I would have no problem going to a phone with 256GB internal storage and no SD card. I have something like 2000 320kbps songs, a bunch of games/apps, and that still is only around half of my total storage. If I really wanted to I could fill the rest of the storage with something like 40 hours of high-quality 1080p rips. More likely if I watch something on my phone I just connect to my Plex server back home with its terabytes of content.SD card support on android has always been a mediocre experience; it certainly works but has always felt tacked on at best. OTG SD/flash drive readers cover most of the remaining use-cases anyways.
FunBunny2 - Friday, June 29, 2018 - link
"Seems phone makers don't get it."their all trying to emulate Jobs: tell the consumer what s/he needs irregardless. so far, he's about the only one to pull it off.
close - Saturday, June 30, 2018 - link
I'm willing to bet their surveys showed people will complain but still buy the phones because the SD slot isn't a real *must* have. I've heard too many people claim "128/256GB is not enough" only to fall flat when they realize how much music fits in there, how many pictures, videos, etc. And the argument "my 4K videos, my lossless audio, my RAW pictures" is about as realistic and compelling as "but my mouse, my Excel, my coding project" on the phone.If you consider how much of that data has to be with you at any time it really stops making sense to insist on memory cards. Especially since they don't excel at reliability so having your only copy on that SD would be a monument of ignorance euphemistically speaking.
Over the years I heard people screaming "no [whatever] no buy" 1000 times. Yet most of them now rock a phone with no replaceable battery, no physical keyboard, no SD slot, no headphone jack, no physical button, no week-long battery, notched screen, etc. They *ALL* pull it off ;).
serendip - Saturday, June 30, 2018 - link
64 GB internal flash with no MicroSD isn't enough for me, especially when the user-accessible space is more like 45 GB after subtracting system and data partitions.Holliday75 - Tuesday, July 3, 2018 - link
How many people do we know in real life that would even know their phone has a SD slot or not? I for one can only think of a couple of cousins and maybe on uncle who would know, and even then I doubt they care.I'm in IT professionally, but even I have no use for it. How big is the market for such items? Sounds great to have and I'm sure if you told people what it was and asked if they wanted it they would mostly say yes, but in the real world I see very little use of it.
ianmills - Friday, June 29, 2018 - link
Go cheaper and you can have what you desire. Xiaomi Redmi note 5 does all that for ~$200djayjp - Friday, June 29, 2018 - link
Apparently NAND performance doesn't matter........Pallmei - Friday, June 29, 2018 - link
400MB/s read, 160MB/s write on my Mi Mix 2. I am sure 2s is no worse and AFAIK they haven't upgraded the specs eitherAndrei Frumusanu - Friday, June 29, 2018 - link
722MB/s R 243 MB/s W on 8 threads. The issue with NAND performance tests is that they're generally broken and aren't properly representative of real file system performance.Pallmei - Friday, June 29, 2018 - link
Ok, did a few AndroBench 8 threads test: average 750MB/s read 200MB/s write on Mi Mix 2. Can not quite reach 250MB/s write, but otherwise very much the same.** A - R ** - Friday, June 29, 2018 - link
Then, how do Samsung & Toshiba advertise their Read/Write Speeds for UFS NAND ?Are they not Real ?
Andrei Frumusanu - Friday, June 29, 2018 - link
They're real but the question is if those numbers are representative of the file system. The hardware can be fast but if the software doesn't manage it correctly it's not meaningful. Currently that's a lot more complex question.Glock24 - Friday, June 29, 2018 - link
I had a Redmi Note 3 SE that didn't resist the 10,001nth drop. The RN5 Pro for Taiwan was the only viable replacement due to network support, but was not yet available. I prefer to have SD sopport on the phone, but I finally settled for the Mi Mix2 64GB for $365. It'll arrive in about a week.serendip - Sunday, July 1, 2018 - link
A Mi Max 2 would have had the right network support and still get you MicroSD support.arashi - Sunday, July 1, 2018 - link
Mi Max series are ginomous.Glock24 - Sunday, July 1, 2018 - link
None of the Mi Max series have LTE B2/B4 that I need. Besides, those are like having a Kindle Fire as a phone, just ridiculously bug.Glock24 - Sunday, July 1, 2018 - link
*bigeastcoast_pete - Friday, June 29, 2018 - link
Hi Andrei, any comments/conclusions regarding the availability of OS and security updates from Xiaomi? I never owned one of their phones, but a manufacturer's committment to keeping their phones current for the next 2-3 years is key for any purchase for me. For example, I had a bad experience with Huawei (no updates at all despite official promises) and that put me off their phones for the foreseeable future.Retycint - Friday, June 29, 2018 - link
Xiaomi's update policy is actually one of the best amongst Android manufacturers, contrary to popular belief. This is especially true for their flagships.For instance, the 2013 flagship, the Mi 3, is still receiving rom/feature updates despite being almost 5 years old
fm13 - Saturday, June 30, 2018 - link
but these are just interface updates, without new OS versions underneathserendip - Sunday, July 1, 2018 - link
Interface and security updates but the underlying Android version remains the same. MIUI decouples the OS and Android versions so it's possible to have the latest MIUI release with a Lollipop base.My Mi Max launched with 6.0 with an official 7.1 update later but 8.0/8.1 third party ROMs are available, if a little flaky. I blame both Xiaomi and Qualcomm for not updating and releasing board support drivers for new Android releases.
ppi - Saturday, June 30, 2018 - link
Is there Android One option?lilmoe - Saturday, June 30, 2018 - link
"vendors need to pay a lot more attention to it, as in the grand scale of things, the cost of writing good software just seems minuscule compared to the vast investments needed to design and manufacture faster silicon chips and to brute-force the issue"This fact is so underrated it's not even funny. Great review Andrei.
Holliday75 - Tuesday, July 3, 2018 - link
I've always wondered if most manufacturers just don't realize how important this is nor do they have any real ability to know if they are getting their money's worth out of their coders.AndrewBCraig - Saturday, June 30, 2018 - link
niceBoloMKXXVIII - Saturday, June 30, 2018 - link
For those complaining about the placement of the selfie camera, just rotate the phone 180 degrees! Now it is in the "correct" location.Andrei Frumusanu - Sunday, July 1, 2018 - link
There's still issues with some apps in terms of flipped rotation, so while that's a valid argument and workaround, it not always guaranteed to work.ionutt - Sunday, July 1, 2018 - link
felicitari pentru review...icalic - Monday, July 2, 2018 - link
Hi @Andrei Frumusanu,why no more gfxbench manhattan es 3.1 / metal test for battery life and final frame rate @ 150 nits?
i think that test is good for us to look GPU efficiency on every device.
icalic - Monday, July 2, 2018 - link
sorry, i meant @ nitsicalic - Monday, July 2, 2018 - link
@200 nits lolHolliday75 - Tuesday, July 3, 2018 - link
Third time is the charm!hisipo - Tuesday, July 3, 2018 - link
mynkl blUtilityMax - Monday, August 6, 2018 - link
No 3.5mm jack, no deal from me point. I would rather use a Moto G6 with SD450 but still have a 3.5mm connector.Fidelator - Sunday, September 2, 2018 - link
Andrei, I have to say that I am impressed by the quality of the latest batch of reviews, truly outstanding, the small one or two paragraph conclusion at the end of each section ia also extremely useful when you want to quickly check the performance of a devic3 in any given area.The newly introduced Speaker quality segment is quite simply, brilliant.
Great review, keep up the great work.
Now, these phones offer so much Bang for the buck that you'd be hard pressed to find any reason spend $700, $800 or $1000 on a phone, the Note 9 comes to mind as it is the one device that really checks all boxes with even some extra and unique bella and whistles but nithing else seems adequate at that point with this or the Pocophone in the market.
harshale7 - Saturday, October 6, 2018 - link
Reliance Jio is also said to be eyeing the telecom towers and optic fibre network of the cash-strappedphone services provider — assets that Canadian pension fund Brookfield, and a clutch of private equity
firms have also shown interest in, said one of the sources.
The joint lenders forum (JLF), which met in Mumbai on Thursday, discussed the sale of assets of the
telecommunications firm and a proposal to convert RCom’s debt into equity.
<a href="https://jiophone4g.com/"> jio tv </a>
<a href="https://jiophone4g.com/">jio dth</a>
<a href="https://jiophone4g.com/"> Jio Tv Web</a>
harshale7 - Saturday, October 6, 2018 - link
Reliance Jio is also said to be eyeing the telecom towers and optic fibre network of the cash-strappedphone services provider — assets that Canadian pension fund Brookfield, and a clutch of private equity
firms have also shown interest in, said one of the sources.
The joint lenders forum (JLF), which met in Mumbai on Thursday, discussed the sale of assets of the
telecommunications firm and a proposal to convert RCom’s debt into equity.
https://jiophone4g.com/
Archipelago - Wednesday, October 17, 2018 - link
I took the full size images from the Mi Max 2s review and edited them a little in Photoshop, the compared them to Galaxy S9 samples. With a little tweaking they were almost the same quality. As noted, the Xiaomi does not do that much sharpening compared to Samsung. I like that. It's almost like having a RAW image in which the user has control rather than the phone manufacturer. I hope you'll do a Mi 8 review. It seems like a Mi Max 2 with an AMOLED display.