Xiaomi Mi Mix 2S

Xiaomi Mi Mix 2

Xiaomi Mi Mix 2S
Released March 2018: The Mi Mix 2S is Xiaomi's first flagship of 2018. The phone shares the same design aesthetic as last year's Mi Mix 2, but has key upgrades both on the hardware and software fronts. The Mi Mix 2S is powered by Qualcomm's latest 10nm Snapdragon 845 chipset, and comes with 8GB of RAM, 256GB of internal storage, and global LTE bands.

There's also a variant with 6GB of RAM and storage options of 64GB and 128GB, but these models don't offer global LTE connectivity. The highlight of the Mi Mix 2S is the dual camera arrangement at the back, with the phone featuring two 12MP imaging sensors. The primary 12MP camera is a Sony IMX 363 sensor and offers 1.4-micron pixels, whereas the secondary sensor is made by Samsung and is used as a telephoto lens.

The primary camera may just be the best Xiaomi has offered in a phone to date, and DxOMark give it a score of 97, just a few points shy of the Pixel 2 XL. The phone holds its own in daylight conditions, but it's in low-light shooting modes where the camera truly shines. A lot of that has to do with the new AI-assisted features baked into the camera, giving it the ability to pick out the best shooting mode based on the lighting conditions.

Xiaomi Mi Mix 2S review: Great hardware and vastly improved software

The AI features also extend to portrait mode, giving you the ability to set the intensity of the background blur and even animate the background bokeh. On the software side of things, the Mi Mix 2S is the first Xiaomi phone to come with Android 8.0 Oreo out of the box. It offers the latest iteration of MIUI — MIUI 9.5 — and the interface as a whole feels much more polished.

With MIUI 9.5, you can also finally restore settings and apps from a previous Android phone or using your Google account. Previously, you were limited to choosing restore options from Xiaomi's own Mi Cloud account — and the latest move makes MIUI a more enticing option to customers in Western markets.

The phone is on sale in China for the equivalent of $540. The variant with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage costs $640, and right now there's no indication that the phone will be sold in global markets. But you can always pick it up from the likes of GearBest.