Next week, Xiaomi will announce a phone with 5G and 10GB of RAM

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By Andy Boxall

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xiaomi mi mix 3 news palace museum edition

Xiaomi has announced the Mi Mix 3 on Friday, and the exciting phone (almost) entirely lives up to our expectations. It has a stunning 6.4-inch screen, no notch, 10GB of RAM, some surprises — and yes, you slide the the body up to reveal the camera. However, despite pushing the 5G aspect ahead of the launch, the 5G Mi Mix 3 phone won’t be out until sometime in 2019.

The Mi Mix 3 will steal your attention thanks to its massive screen, which Xiaomi says has a 93.4-percent screen-to-body ratio. This has been made possible without the use of a notch too, as the selfie camera has been hidden inside a slide-up section, which you flip into view using your thumb. Xiaomi has used “carefully calibrated” magnets to get the feel of this action just right: not too much force, and just enough pull to make it effortless. Lab tests have pushed it to 300,000 cycles without a problem, the company claims, so durability shouldn’t be a concern.

Don’t dismiss the slider as only there for when you want to take a selfie. It can also have other functions attached to it, for example to answer calls, or to deactivate notifications when you’re playing a game, or even take a screenshot. There are actually two camera lenses in the module, a 24-megapixel primary lens and a 2-megapixel secondary one, ready to take bokeh-style selfies. Xiaomi also includes its Super Pixel technology, where four pixels are combined into one for better low-light selfies. (You may have seen this on the Mi A2.)

Camera and specifications

On the back of the Mi Mix 3 is a dual-lens camera, both with 12 megapixels, and identical to the setup used on the Mi 8. Features include 4-axis optical image stabilization, 4K video recording, and slow-motion video. The camera on both the front and rear make good use of Xiaomi’s artificial intelligence features too, with scene recognition, studio lighting effects, and AI-driven beauty modes. The Mi Mix 3 has a hardware button for calling up a voice assistant, which it says is available in seven different Chinese dialects. It’s not Google Assistant, however, but instead Xiaomi’s own Xiao AI assistant.

For power, the Mi Mix 3 has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor, and depending on the version you buy, up to 10GB of RAM a first for a smartphone. Interestingly, the Mi Mix 3 comes with a wireless charger in the box, as the device supports 10w wireless charging. The body is made from ceramic (something of a Mi Mix tradition) with an aluminum chassis, and comes in black, jade green, or sapphire blue. To get the 10GB of RAM, you’ll have to buy the sapphire-blue version created with the Palace Museum, and featuring an engraving of Xiezhi, a creature from Chinese legend.

The basic Mi Mix 3 comes with 6GB or 8GB of RAM and up to 256GB of internal storage space, and costs from about $475. The Palace Museum 10GB/256GB version will be about $720. The phone has been announced only for China at the moment, but the company says other markets will be announced in the future. Xiaomi has spent the last year expanding further into Europe, hitting France and Italy in May; it and will launch in the U.K. this November.

Updated on October 26: Rewritten with all the official Mi Mix 3 details following its announcement.

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