I know what you’re thinking, “of course Mercedes got a new phone, she never holds onto phones for more than a few months!” And......crap, you’re right. Anyway, I followed through on selling the Mi Mix 2, here is why:
1) Camera - Ugh, the camera on the phone was pretty mediocre. I was sure it was more of a software issue than hardware, however the hardware of the shooters were designed for the software. So while getting a modded Google Camera app on the phone was possible, the pictures still came out looking “off” and the app itself didn’t know how to handle the screen. The Mi Mix 2S may fix this problem, however I’m not a betting woman so I didn’t want to see. Going from the iPhone 8P shooter to this was a major downgrade. And sure, the 8P had a dual while the Mix 2 had a single, so what was I expecting? I was sort of expecting a camera at least as good as like, a Galaxy S6, maybe. The Mix 2's single loses hard to any flagship single shooter circa 2015 or 2016.
2) Paint quality - I’ve owned a lot of Chinese phones in my time, however none of them had paint that flaked off as if the phone was doing its best impression of an iPhone 5. It’s clear Xiaomi really wanted people to spring for the all ceramic version over the ceramic+aluminum version.
3) Screen - In press shots (like the lede) the phone’s screen looks as good as anything Samsung/Apple churns out. In reality it was an IPS dimmer than even the screen found on a couple gens old iPhone. Maybe I’ve become a snob for OLED after my brushes with Samsung, but the screen just left me unhappy.
4) Water resistance - I previously reported that I didn’t need this feature. However it is nice to have the peace of mind that I can ride home in a thunderstorm and my phone will make it. This phone seemed decently capable at resisting rainwater, so this isn’t much of a real complaint.
5) MIUI - MIUI is iOS meets TouchWiz. It’s missing the bloatware of TouchWiz while having a combined aesthetic and features of both systems. A lot of people hate MIUI, however I actually like it. However, MIUI often had issues with high speed multitasking. Give it “too many” commands at once and the phone will freeze for a whole minute while the UI takes a breath. It’s a bit sad because the phone has flagship specs. Shoot, it has more RAM than my flight simulator rig.
Outside of those, the phone was really solid. The battery lasted a long time, its real world performance was among the best, and the screen had the best gesture controls I’ve had on any phone. It was the first phone where I felt that having soft keys were actually a detriment to the experience. The ceramic back was stunning and lived up to the promise of being nearly unscratchable.
I lost $150 on the Xiaomi. This is the first phone I’ve had where it suffered catastrophic depreciation in the short time I’ve had it. Maybe I’m not the only one who had these gripes.
The phone that replaced it? Well, I went back to the one phone I ever regretted selling: the Galaxy S7.
I found a NIB one on eBay and sent it my way. This phone is everything I remembered it was. That said, I may upgrade to a S8 in a few months as I was spoiled by the lack of Bezels on the Xiaomi. Oh gosh, I will take the battery drain any day for this AMOLED goodness...