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Battery life
- 3,800mAh battery delivers decent life
- No wireless charging
The bump up to a 3,800mAh battery in the new Xiaomi Mi Mix 3 5G is very welcome, with a capacity that’s 600mAh larger than that of the original Xiaomi Mi Mix 3. That said, the increase in battery size has come with a price - wireless charging is nowhere to be seen, which is a shame.
We’re delighted to report that the Mi Mix 3 5G comfortably makes it through a full day of relatively intensive use. After a 90-minute video played back at max brightness, it still had 89% left in the tank, and we were never struggling to make the phone last until the end of the day.
Dive into the settings, and you can access insights into your power usage, as well as battery optimization tools. These include a battery saver, which limits background processes, an app-specific battery saver, so your phone can keep a close eye on rogue apps, and scheduled power on and off control.
If you need to get two days out of the Mi Mix 3 5G, therefore, with all these features fired up, you should be able to.
Camera
- Dual 12MP rear cameras
- Dual front cameras
The Xiaomi Mi Mix 3 5G features dual 12MP rear cameras with different focal lengths, allowing for portrait mode photos and a 2x zoom without a major loss in quality.
It's a typical camera setup for a high-end phone these days, though most of the competition packs three primary cameras. Still, in good light, the Mi Mix 3 5G is capable of capturing clear, detailed shots.
The camera app isn't the fastest we've used, with a small amount of lag when switching between modes, but most of the time you can stick with the standard Photo mode.
HDR mode (high dynamic range) is turned off by default, but you will want to tap the icon and switch it to auto so it can pull out detail in backlit conditions and brighten up dark foregrounds.
Slide across the modes above the shutter key, and you'll move to portrait mode, which allows you to take an image of your subject with a blurred background.
This uses the 2x zoom telephoto camera and is a little fussier than we've found on the likes of the Google Pixel 3 and OnePlus 7 Pro, with the app telling you to get nearer or further away from the object you want in focus. Once you lock on to your target though, the results are very good indeed, especially in brightly lit conditions.
Thanks to software updates, low light performance has gone from zero to one hundred since the original Mi Mix 3 launched. While it can’t compete with the Huawei P30 Pro in the darkest conditions, it’s certainly respectable, bettering pricier phones like the iPhone XS Max in automatic mode, let alone night mode.
Switching to the front-facing cameras (24MP + 2MP) is easy, just slide the screen down! If you slide the screen down at any point while using the Mi Mix 3, you’ll be taken to the selfie snapper, though this slide function can be customized.
The dual-camera selfie setup here also allows for portrait mode shots, but the quality and clarity isn't as good as from the rear cameras. As a selfie camera, though, it's totally acceptable, excelling in good lighting, though we would have preferred a secondary wide angle camera as found on the Google Pixel 3 XL.
Video is recorded at up to 4K resolution, though we’d recommend shooting at 1080p to keep stabilization switched on. Like most Xiaomi phones, it’s inactive when shooting at max quality. In good light, the image looks great across resolutions, however, low light video is something we’d avoid altogether on the Mi Mix 3 5G.
Camera samples
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