Xiaomi announces Mix 4 with under-display camera

Xiaomi has announced the Mix 4, the first phone in the Mi Mix series to be announced in nearly three years. The Mix phones have always been about bezel-less designs with seamless screens, and the Mix 4 carries on that idea by commercializing a technology that Xiaomi has been working on for a long time: a selfie camera that’s located directly under the screen.

Xiaomi calls this CUP (Camera Under Panel) technology, though it’s similar to the under-display selfie cameras we’ve seen from other companies. Like Oppo and ZTE’s latest efforts, the Mix 4’s screen has a 400ppi area that lets light pass through to the selfie camera, which Xiaomi describes as “virtually invisible.” The camera is 20 megapixels and the display is a 6.67-inch 120Hz 1080p curved OLED panel.

Xiaomi says CUP is “a technology iterated through three major generations, five years, sixty patents, a $77 million investment, and hundreds of engineers.” Last year the company pledged to start mass-producing smartphones with its third-generation under-display camera technology in 2021, so it’s making good on that promise with the Mix 4. Xiaomi first demonstrated its take on the idea back in 2019.

The Mix 4 is the first phone to be announced with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 888 Plus processor, a speed-bumped version of the flagship 888 chip with a top clock speed of 3GHz. (Honor did already say that it would use the 888 Plus in the Magic 3, but that phone is yet to be revealed in full.) The processor is paired with 8GB or 12GB of RAM and 128GB, 256GB, or 512GB of storage.

The camera system centers around a 108-megapixel Samsung HMX sensor, suggesting similar or identical performance to the slightly outdated but still pretty good Mi 11. There’s also a 13-megapixel ultrawide and an 8-megapixel 5x periscope telephoto.

The Mix 4 has a 4,500mAh battery that can charge at up to 120W wired and 50W wireless. This isn’t Xiaomi’s first phone with 120W fast-charging, but it might be the fastest — Xiaomi claims the battery will get a full charge in under 15 minutes, compared to 23 minutes for last year’s Mi 10 Ultra. 50W wireless charging, meanwhile, will take 28 minutes to get you to 100 percent.

Xiaomi will only confirm a mainland China launch for the Mix 4 so far. Preorders will start there tomorrow with general availability coming on August 16th, and the pricing starts at 4,999 yuan (~$770) for an 8GB/128GB model, going up to 6,299 yuan (~$970) for 12GB/512GB.