Pre-announced a few days agoMIX Fold 3 specific appearance, and confirmed that it is also deeply cooperating with Leica on camera design. Xiaomi officially unveiled this foldable screen mobile phone with "no shortcomings" at Lei Jun's annual speech event, claiming to have achieved the ultimate in durability, performance, camera and battery life. It even launched a dragon fiber version that claims to have higher impact protection, while maintaining the same price as the previous generation model.
Lei Jun emphasized that Xiaomi will upgrade its technology strategy, enhancing its brand value and increasing its competitiveness through long-term investment. He emphasized a technology-first approach, focusing on deep cultivation of underlying technologies, sustained long-term investment, and the deep integration of software and hardware, along with comprehensive AI empowerment. From 2017 to 2022, Xiaomi's R&D investment is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 38.4%. Xiaomi's R&D investment is expected to exceed RMB 200 billion this year, and Lei Jun even predicts that R&D spending will exceed RMB 5 billion within the next five years.
Lei Jun also explained that Xiaomi currently holds over 32000 patents worldwide, with a global share of 5% for 4.1G network standard essential patents, surpassed only by Huawei's 14.59% and Qualcomm's 10.04%. Regarding artificial intelligence technology, the company established an AI big model team in April of this year and integrated Xiao Ai into the big model to achieve more precise interactive effects. Future plans include deploying lightweight AI big models on devices.
At the same time, Lei Jun emphasized that Xiaomi will continue to compare with Apple's iPhone in the future, so that there will be a clearer competitive goal and Xiaomi products can be made better.
With the Xiaomi MIX Fold 3, Lei Jun said it overcomes the shortcomings of foldable phones that were criticized in the past, including weak screen durability, poor camera, insufficient battery life, and limited performance.
In terms of the screen, the new phone adopts a brand-new keel hinge design consisting of 198 components and 14 movable joints. It is made of super steel that can support 1800Mpa pressure and high-wear-resistant ceramic steel. It has passed the 50-time durability certification of the German Rhine TÜV. It is claimed to be a teardrop-shaped concave folding design compared to the previous generation model. Not only does it greatly reduce the force on the screen folding, but it also reduces the width by 8% and the space inside the hinge by 17%. The thickness of MIX Fold 3 when folded is reduced to 10.96mm (10.86mm for the dragon fiber version), which is almost the same as the thickness of the iPhone 14 Pro Max with a protective case. The thickness when unfolded is reduced to 5.26mm, and the weight is reduced to 259 grams (255 grams for the dragon fiber version).
The MIX Fold 3's external screen is 6.56 inches with a 21:9 display ratio, while the internal screen is 8.03 inches with a display ratio close to 1:1. It's also claimed that there will be no noticeable creases when unfolded. Both the front and rear screens are Samsung E6-grade AMOLED display panels that support a 120Hz refresh rate. The body can also be freely hovered between 45 and 135 degrees, allowing users to view the screen at different angles or use it for camera framing. The back cover is made of two glass versions and a dragon fiber version made of a composite fiber material.
The processor uses the leading overclocked Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, and is equipped with 12GB or 16GB of LPDDR5X memory, paired with UFS 256 storage components in 512GB, 1GB, and 4.0TB capacities. The battery uses a 4800mAh capacity built with two components, supports 67W wired fast charging and 50W wireless fast charging, and is controlled by two G1 and one P2 Xiaomi Surge chips. In addition, by removing the polarizer design, power loss is reduced by 52%, corresponding to a maximum battery life of 1.34 days.
The camera system uses 2000-megapixel front and rear video lenses. The main camera uses a 1200-megapixel ultra-wide-angle lens, a 5000-megapixel wide-angle lens, a 1000-megapixel 3.2x portrait lens, and a 5-megapixel telephoto lens with a 1000x periscope mechanism design. These lenses support commonly used shooting focal lengths of 15mm, 23mm, 75mm, and 115mm, and all adopt a large aperture design. Except for the ultra-wide-angle lens, all lenses are equipped with optical image stabilization design, and even the wide-angle lens has a memory metal anti-vibration mechanism to ensure the best image quality.
In addition, in terms of user interface design, Xiaomi emphasized that MIX Fold 3 has been optimized for the top 200 commonly used apps in China, so that they can be fully adapted for switching to a large-size screen. It even uses artificial intelligence to automatically identify app interfaces, allowing apps that have not yet been optimized for the large screen to automatically display a more appropriate screen. Unlike previous systems, the app content would not be directly forcibly enlarged, making it difficult for users to use it on the large screen of the foldable phone.
Regarding the suggested retail price, Xiaomi emphasized that the Mi MIX Fold 3 will be priced the same as last year's model, starting at RMB 8999. Even the Dragon Fiber version will be priced the same as the glass version. However, Xiaomi confirmed that there are currently no plans to introduce this phone to the Taiwanese market. Pre-orders are currently only available in China, with an official market launch expected on August 8th.
