Xiaomi's first foldable features liquid camera lens, Samsung-style design

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The Xiaomi Mi Mix Fold, which looks a lot like Samsung's foldables.

The back.

The indoor 4:3 display.

The front screen is tall and lean.

The big camera bump.

Xiaomi resurrects the Mi Mix model range with the

Mi Mix Fold

.The

first Mi Mix

was a futuristic-looking smartphone that started the race for slim bezel smartphones. This new Mi Mix Fold is Xiaomi's first commercial foldable, and,

like Huawei's efforts

, represents the company doing its best to simply copy the

Samsung Galaxy Fold

design.

Just like Huawei's clone, the Xiaomi Fold is a little bigger than Samsung's 7.6-inch device and sports an internal 60Hz, 2480 x 1860, 8.01-inch flexible OLED display. Xiaomi's Fold is a 90Hz, 2520x840, 6.5-inch OLED display, which is larger than Samsung's 6.2-inch display and Huawei's 6.45-inch outer display. Interestingly, Xiaomi adopts the Opposite approach to screen refresh rates that Samsung takes. 60Hz.Xiaomi made the indoor large screen slow and the outdoor screen fast.

Xiaomi has opted for an iPad-like 4:3 aspect ratio for the interior screen, while Samsung has gone from almost 4:3 in the first generation (4.2:3) to a more high of 5:4 in its second generation foldable. Huawei also landed around that 5:4 aspect ratio for its foldable. It's hard to know what the right screen dimensions are for a foldable Android because tablets Android have been dead for so long that there is really no app support anymore. Most Android apps today are phone apps, and they

really struggle

to accommodate larger screens. Samsung and Huawei's ~5:4 screens are almost two regular 21:9 Android phones placed next to each other, so they can work around this problem by just running in split-screen most of the time. The Galaxy Fold 1's 4:3 aspect ratio was a bit too narrow for split-screen.

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One of the things that Xiaomi and all other vendors cannot match is Samsung.

collapsible glass display stand

.Devices like the Galaxy Z Flip and Z Fold 2 actually have an "ultra-thin" layer of glass on the screen.

High

layer (it's still easily scratched plastic), but it gives much-needed rigidity to a flexible display, which can otherwise be a wavy, spongy, light-distorting mess. Xiaomi doesn't have any actual images of the device, just renders, all of which present the interior screen as perfectly flat. In real life, expect ripples on the screen and a large crease on the screen where it bends in half.

High-end smartphone parts make up the rest of the internals. The phone has a Snapdragon 888 SoC, 12GB of RAM, 256GB of storage, 67W wired charging, and a 1000mAh battery. 5020 mAh. Xiaomi notes that there are

four

speakers and a side fingerprint reader. Unfortunately, Xiaomi ships the phone with Android 10 instead of the latest version, Android 11.

The camera features the debut of "liquid lens technology" in a smartphone. One of the camera lenses is literally a drop of oil instead of a glass lens, and applying it a voltage, you can

change the shape

and the focal length of the lens. Liquid lenses are

not a new idea

- they appear in things like

industrial barcode scanners

- but they are new for a phone.Xiaomi says the lens allows a camera to cover two functions: the 8MP sensor is both 3x optical zoom and has a minimum focusing distance of 3cm for macro pictures.

Your liquid lens should not

Freeze

at low temperatures, but Xiaomi says you'll be good for a minimum of -40°C (-40°F) to a maximum of 60°C (140°F). The rest of your smartphone will be

probably stop working

before the lens does in temperatures like that. There's also a 108MP main sensor and a 13MP ultra-wide on the rear.

The Xiaomi Mi Mix Fold ships to China (only, for now) on April 16 and starts at CNY 9,999, or around $1,526.