The race to be the best foldable phone is becoming incredibly competitive, and Xiaomi has just thrown its latest MIX into the mix.
The Xiaomi MIX Fold 3 has impressive specs including an intriguing quad-camera setup tuned by camera legends Leica, and the entry level price comes in at roughly £972. That's not much for a high-spec folding phone, but it looks like UK users won't be able to pick one up without going the import route.
That's a shame, because this looks like a very impressive foldable.
The processor is an octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 with Adrenon 740 GPU and the battery is 4,800mAh with three dedicated power surge chipsets and a reported battery life of 8 hours; according to Xiaomi you can get up to 1.38 days from a single charge.
There's 12 or 16GB of LPDRR5X RAM and up to 1TB of storage, and the foldable screen is an 8.03-inch AMOLED with 120Hz and peak brightness of 2,600 nits. The cover display is another AMOLED with 120Hz, this time with a size of 6.56 inches.
But the real draw here is that Leica-tuned quad-camera setup.
Xiaomi MIX Fold 3: what cameras does it have?
The front camera is a 20MP selfie shooter with an f/2.45 aperture, but the interesting stuff is happening round the back. That's where you'll find the 50MP Sony IMX 800 main camera, which has optical image stabilisation and an f/1.77 aperture; the 13MP ultrawide camera with f/2.2 aperture; the 10MP telephoto lense with optical stabilisastion, f/2.0 and a 3.2x optical zoom; and the 10MP periscope lens, again with optical image stablisation. That has an f/2.92 aperture and a 5x optical zoom.
The MIX Fold 3 launched earlier this week (on 14 August) alongside the same firm's Redmi K60 Ultra, Xiaomi Pad 5 Max and the Xiaomi Band 6 Pro. The Redmi will be rebranded as the Xiaomi 13T Pro for the global market, and the Xiaomi Band 8 Pro is also going to be sold globally.
However for the time being the firm has no plans to sell either the MIX Fold 3 or the Pad 6 Max outside Xiaomi's home territory of China. That's a shame, because a more affordable rival to the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5 would be awfully nice to see.
