The Chinese folding market is growing competitive, offering consumers a wider choice and the latest foldable phone to hit the market is Xiaomi’s Mix Fold 3. The review section has arrived and it’s time to check out the latest addition. Before we bring up our detailed review, the Battle Fold line.
The Mix Fold 3 is a premium device with a premium aluminum frame, Gorilla Glass Victus 2 cover screen, quad cameras with Leica optics and a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset at the core.
The Mix Fold 3 is one of the slimmest and lightest vertical folding devices out there at 5.3mm in non-folding form factor while still weighing 259g. Our review unit sports a black vegan leather that provides a good grip and holds up much better than glass. Xiaomi offers a composite fiber version of the device which has superior rigidity and is also a few grams lighter.
Opening the Mix Fold 3 reveals the original 8.03-inch LTPO panel, which has the same 1,960 x 2,160px resolution and 120Hz dynamic refresh rate as last year’s model. The one change here is that we now have a punch hole cut in the top left corner for the 20 MP front camera. The notch in the center is visible in direct light, but it doesn’t feel as heavy as it does on the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold5, for example.
The newly developed suspension mechanism on the Mix Fold 3 feels more robust than the one on the Mix Fold 2 and now supports multiple flex modes. The software takes advantage of the new hover capabilities, allowing you to have a control bar on various applications, such as the camera and browser, for a laptop-like experience.
We played with the new 10MP periscope camera, which offers up to 5x optical zoom – which is still unusual on foldables. We’ll reserve judgment on the camera’s performance for our full review.
Since Xiaomi is still hesitant to bring its Mixfold lineup outside of China, this unit comes with the Chinese MIUI ROM like all the others which is a seamless experience out of the box here in Europe. The Mix Fold 3 also brings 67W wired and 50W wireless charging, which we’ll make sure to test throughout our review.
