D5X Mix 2S EN 6+64 Black

Screen - This 2,160 x 1,080 (Full HD+)screen is very good. Crisp and vibrant. The fact that the resolution is not higher does not bother me at all.The size of screen is 5.99 inches diagonally. Certainly cannot say that there is much difference in this and the latest S9 Samsung displays. This is a good LCD screen. The blacks are not as dark as AMOLED screens though. Build Quality- Very good. Among the latest and greatest. Non removable back. No issues here. Design- Well, those bezels on the top and bottom are trimmed a lot . Has a flat screen rather than curved, but this is no issue at all. The front camera is at the bottom when compared to the top, when compared to most other phones. Sound and Call quality- Sound of multimedia clear but , bit on the softer side. Call quality acceptable. There is NO headphone jack. Responsiveness- Very good, no lag at all. Have not had any issues so far with sluggishness or re-starts etc. 6GB RAM is there, and that is more than adequate. I honestly cannot find the difference in speed (for day today activities) with this and the Note 9/Samsung S9 plus. Added features- There is no card slot to expand memory, but inbuilt 128GB storage is more than adequate for photos etc, as well as some movies if you fancy. NO water resistance here. Cameras- Good Dual: 12 MP back camera. Very good photos in good daylight. There is room for improvement for low light photos. The front camera is a single 5 MP which is not that great. Video recording from the back camera is acceptable, but nothing fantastic. Battery- Very good 3400 mAH battery. Easily can use the phone for a day. Operating System- Runs Android 8.0 (Oreo) out of the box. The OS is very much customizable. Security features- Fingerprint sensor- very accurate, positioned in the back. Nothing extra-ordinary here though. Colour- It currently comes in Black, white back. The white back phone is beautiful. Price- Currently goes at around £500, and this is reasonable. Final words- A flagship type phone with the latest chipset. Despite a few niggles, this is considerably cheaper when compared to other Android flagships, such as Sony Samsung or LG. Can recommend! Now that Xiaomi is officially in UK, warranty claims should be less of a problem. But, just be aware that the Mix 3 is just around the corner, so you may want to hold for now.

I switched to Xiaomi after a short stint with spending exorbitant amounts on Samsung flagships that were disappointing compared to their cost, and I have not looked back. Xiaomi is not "another Chinese manufacturer", it is the highest quality Chinese manufacturer and they often lead the market with some developments - e.g. the bezel-less era was pioneered with the original Xiaomi Mi Mix, before Apple etc went there. Anyway, this short intro was because the brand is not known in the UK, as it was not available here until recently. I have the EU version, since I got it before Xiaomi started selling here, so it is good to have the option of purchasing directly from the UK. However, the price difference is significant, e.g. this model is sold for under 400 Euro (£350) in other countries - despite similar VAT, which is a steep premium. In any case the phone is gorgeous, very fast (well Snapdragon 845 & 6GB - what do you expect), the display great - although LCD (the Mi Mix 3 finally has an OLED, should start selling soon) - in fact the display is pretty much as large as it can for the size of the phone, and it doesn't have a notch, or heavily rounded corners so it is all usable! The selfie cam is on the bottom (hence no notch), you can rotate the phone for the photo app if you want the selfie not to be taken from "below", although some 3rd party apps stupidly don't rotate the camera when you rotate the phone (I am talking about you whatsapp). It takes 2 SIM cards, I use it with a UK and an international network and its network coverage includes US network LTE bands, so if you go across the Atlantic you can pop in one of those T-Mobile tourist plan SIMs and enjoy 4G LTE speeds. At this point I am assuming that the UK version is the same as the EU, which also comes with a nice case and the headphone dongle (I'd prefer a headphone jack though, but nice to get at least the dongle). And a proper fast charger of course. The battery is not its strongest point, I still get a full day's heavy usage easily, but the Xiaomi Mi 5 I had before would give me 2-3 days. As always with Xiaomi's MIUI version of Android you get frequent updates and it is a quite nice, though a bit Apple-inspired, UI. It would still be worth the 450-499 price compared to the competition, but Xiaomi phones are known to be sold on tiny margins in the rest of the world, so hopefully their UK pricing might even-out