During the annual speech of Xiaomi Founder, Chairman, and CEO Lei Jun in Mainland China this week, he unveiled the company’s advanced foldable flagship smartphone, the Xiaomi MIX Fold 2.
Xiaomi MIX Fold 2 is a giant technological leap in the ultra-slim foldable smartphone space. Measuring just 5.4mm unfolded, the device offers a consistent viewing experience on both its inner and outer displays. In addition, it delivers an authentic Leica imagery experience and outstanding power efficiency with the latest Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 mobile platform.
Micro Waterdrop Hinge
The Xiaomi MIX Fold 2 boasts a revolutionary design, one of the thinnest foldable smartphones on the market with a folded body just 11.2mm thin — significantly slimmer than many other foldable devices. Both edges measure just only 5.4mm unfolded, offering a pleasant in-hand feel experience.
To achieve these breakthroughs in form factor, Xiaomi focused on refining the hinge — the core component of the foldable smartphone. Xiaomi MIX Fold 2 is equipped with a self-developed Micro Waterdrop Hinge which features a smaller bending radius, thinner screen modules, customized mini rotating hinge, and utilized an integrated solder-free precision process to create a carbon fiber double-wing floating panel. Together, these highly integrated components reduced the number of parts to only 87, enabling a lighter and thinner hinge design than ever before.
Both sides of the hinge use space stacking technology, and use large hidden spaces on both sides of the hinge for soft boards, achieving a 20% increase in space utilization and thereby offering the 5.4mm¹ flat design with balanced weight distribution.
Two Displays, One Exceptional Viewing Experience
The Xiaomi MIX Fold 2 sports an inner folding design, with two AMOLED flagship screens of two different sizes on two respective sides. The outer display adopts a 21:9 classic ratio design, allowing for excellent compatibility with most applications and taking into account user experience when handling. The 6.56-inch display features Samsung E5 material, a resolution of 2520×1080, and supports 120Hz high refresh rate and P3 color gamut, with a brightness of up to 1000nit–giving it an edge over other common displays thanks to its outstanding user experience.
On the inside, Xiaomi MIX Fold 2 flaunts an 8.02-inch Samsung Eco OLED display. It adopts POL-LESS technology, replaces the traditional polarizer with an ultra-thin color filter, and uses a black matrix material to reduce reflection on the screen. Compared to traditional displays, light transmittance has been increased by 33%, with power consumption reduced by 25%. This screen has a resolution of 2160×1914, supports a P3 color gamut, and LTPO 2.0 1-120Hz AdaptiveSync Pro. The ultra-low anti-AR film allows the display to reduce reflectivity to less than 2%, resulting in a more detailed viewing experience and pleasing aesthetics.
The two displays offer an exceptionally consistent user experience, both supporting 120Hz refresh rate, professional screen calibration on primary colors, 1,000nit brightness, and Dolby Vision. Regardless of which screen is used, the device supports dual ambient light sensing on the front and back, providing for natural and smooth automatic brightness adjustment.
MIUI Fold 13
The Xiaomi MIX Fold 2 runs on the latest MIUI Fold 13 operating system. Developed as a permutation of the classic MIUI interface, it is perfectly adapted to foldable form factor, with screen interaction optimizations offering advancements in user experience.
The smart screen desktop design adapts to the foldable display and doubles the viewing area of the smartphone. As well as maintaining visual consistency, it allows for the hundreds of available MIUI widgets to be used without deformation, increasing both aesthetics and usability.
Xiaomi MIX Fold 2 system applications are customized for its large screen, and a large number of app interfaces have been redesigned for a better on-screen experience. Calendar, file management, voice recorder, notes, and other applications apply a new column design to take full advantage of the large screen. Third-party application adaptation will be conducted according to solutions available in Android 12L, providing more native support capability for third-party apps.
Additional Xiaomi MIX Fold 2 innovations include updates in smart screen interaction. Users can now three-finger swipe to split screen. Floating windows can be quickly accessed through the sidebar, which can also be used to exit split screen mode. The design of floating windows and notifications has also been adjusted, and multitasking on a smartphone has never been quite this efficient.
Authentic Leica Imagery, Dual-Quality Approach
Xiaomi has set a new imaging standard for smartphone photography, combining Leica’s imagery expertise with Xiaomi’s rich experience in the field of computational photography.
To ensure optical excellence, Xiaomi MIX Fold 2 is equipped with a 50-megapixel IMX766 main camera, with 7P lenses all using ALD low-reflection coating. Also featured are a 13MP ultra-wide angle camera and an 8MP telephoto camera with 2x optical zoom and portrait capabilities.
In addition to the Leica-certified Summicron lens, Xiaomi MIX Fold 2 offers access to two photographic styles: The “Leica Authentic Look” and “Leica Vibrant Look”, both offerings enhanced creative freedom to the photographer.
With the Xiaomi ProFocus support, Xiaomi MIX Fold 2 offers fast camera startup, quick captures, and continuous shooting support of up to 30 frames per second.
In regards to video, Xiaomi MIX Fold 2 supports Dolby Vision HDR recording, as well as both Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos for video viewing. Videos shot on Xiaomi MIX Fold 2 will look amazing, particularly when utilizing UGC platforms that support Dolby Vision, allowing users to share exceptional visuals online.
Snapdragon® 8+ Gen 1
In addition to its revolutionary thin and light foldable screen design, Xiaomi MIX Fold 2 takes advantage of the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon® 8+ Gen 1 mobile platform for snappy performance. TSMC’s 4nm manufacturing process enables a significant increase in energy efficiency while integrating tens of billions of transistors, into an area the size of a fingernail. The advanced process allows both CPU and GPU to receive a 10% boost in performance, while simultaneously improving CPU and GPU energy consumption by 30%. This upgraded design allows the ultra-slim smartphone to maintain higher speeds and efficiency at the same time.
Excellent power efficiency allows for a long-lasting battery, with a full day of use being possible even when the inner screen is frequently used, with extended use when using primarily the outer display.
Xiaomi MIX Fold 2 also packs a cooling system equipped with a large-area VC, rarely seen on foldable smartphones. The high-quality VC offers a surface area of up to 2,520mm, enabling a 50% improvement in thermal conductivity compared to typical VCs. The inner layer of the battery is covered with second-generation boron nitride heat dissipation film, with an area of up to 3715mm. Finally, the multi-layer high-density graphite sheet creates a solid foundation for Xiaomi MIX Fold 2’s excellent sustained performance.
Pricing & Availability
The Xiaomi MIX Fold 2 comes in two colors: Black and Gold, with three storage variants and will have the following prices when it becomes available for sale via official Xiaomi channels in Mainland China starting on 16 August 2022:
- 12GB+256GB – priced at RMB 8,999
- 12GB+512GB – priced at RMB 9,999
- 12GB+1TB – priced at RMB 11,699