Xiaomi has an exciting new foldable phone in the works
Xiaomi unveiled the Mi Mix Fold smartphone earlier this year. After teasing foldable concepts in recent years, the company finally launched a handset to rival Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold. The large foldable screen is placed on the inside, while an external display sits on the exterior. The Mi Mix Fold features premium hardware, including a high-quality OLED display, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 888 processor, LPDDR5 RAM, 5G connectivity, quad-speakers with Harman Kardon sound, a Surge C1 image processor, a Liquid Lens camera, and a 5,020 mAh battery with fast 67W charging.
All of that makes the Mi Mix Fold a formidable adversary for the Galaxy Fold, particularly considering its price. Xiaomi’s first foldable phone starts at around $1,500, which is significantly cheaper than the original $2,000 price tag of Samsung’s main foldable handset. The Chinese vendor is already rumored to launch an even better foldable handset in the second half of the year.
The Mi Mix Fold might not be available in as many markets as Samsung’s foldable, and not everyone might be interested in buying phones that are hard to find and service. But the fact it offers such a compelling hardware package for an incredible price makes the Mi Mix Fold an exciting addition to the roster of foldable handsets. The Mi Mix Fold might not be available in that many markets, but its existence will pressure Samsung to compete. The first proof of that is already here, as Samsung is rumored to significantly discount the Galaxy Z Fold 3 flagship that it plans to launch later this summer.
The Mi Mix Fold has at least one significant disadvantage compared to Samsung’s Fold 2 handset. It features a plastic screen rather than a glass-made UTG screen on the Samsung handset. A new leak from China indicates that Xiaomi might improve the Mi Mix Fold’s successor’s durability.
According to a leaker from China, the new Xiaomi foldable will feature some sort of “proactive under-screen technology” that could improve the handset’s durability. That’s a machine translation of a message that was first posted on Weibo, so it’s unclear what that under-screen technology is. The Mi Mix Fold 2 would also fold inwards, similar to the first model or Samsung’s Fold devices.
