This flip phone going global should worry Samsung
The Xiaomi Mix Flip has a far beefier battery than the clamshell Galaxy
Western flip phone fans have been on a restricted diet for years now, with just a handful of brands bringing new models to the table – but we finally have a new name ready to provide some nourishment. The Xiaomi Mix Flip is officially coming to Europe, with one of the biggest batteries in the class and Leica-backed lenses that should make it a serious camera contender.
Flip phone sales outside of Xiaomi’s native China have now taken off enough for the firm to sit up and take notice, despite having several generations of book-style foldables under its best on home soil. The Mix Flip is no “me too” model, though: it’ll face off against the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip6 and Motorola Razr 50 Ultra with suitably flagship specs and a distinctive cover screen that looks a lot more useful than either of its big rivals’.
Two camera lenses take up a lot of space on the outside of the phone, but its 4.01in AMOLED screen leaves a generous portion free for an app-friendly 16:9 usable area. The rest of the space is eaten up by a smart sidebar, for notifications, shortcuts and widgets. Inside there’s a sizeable 6.86in flexible AMOLED good for 120Hz refresh rates and a peak 3000 nits brightness.
There are a pair of outward-facing 50MP snappers: an f/1.7 main camera with optical image stabilisation, and an f/2.0 telephoto good for 2x optical zoom or 4x magnification with a bit of sensor cropping. There’s a choice of Leica colour treatments and a bunch of camera modes that make the most of the form factor, including camcorder-style video recording.
The Mix Flip has the flat sides and matte finish glass thats on trend everywhere in the phone world right now, and will reach Europe in two colour options: black and purple. It weighs a modest 192g, is just under 16mm when folded, and opens up to a svelte 7.2mm.
Inside Xiaomi is promising flagship performance, with a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset, cooled by the firm’s bespoke 3D Cooling vapor chamber. 12GB of RAM is par for the course, but 512GB of storage puts it comfortably ahead of either Samsung or Motorola on a cost-per-gigabyte basis.
It’s battery capacity where the Mix Flip is head and shoulders above its closest competition: a 4780mAh cell is almost 20% more than you’ll get from a Z Flip6 with the same CPU, so I’m expecting great things when it comes to time away from the mains. 67W wired charging isn’t to be sniffed at, either.
Xiaomi will be bringing all the software smarts from the Xiaomi 14T series, announced at the same time, so you’ll be able to create convincing AI self-portraits, translate different languages in real time, and transcribe or summarise long voice recordings and text notes. Google Gemini is installed out of the box, too.
The Xiaomi Mix Flip launches right away, at £1099 for the 12GB+512GB model. That neatly undercuts the equivalent Galaxy Z Flip6.
Tom Morgan-Freelander
Deputy Editor 
