Hands on with the Xiaomi Mi MIX 2S: Bold, beautiful... and a little boring

Xiaomi's handset looks promising but also delivers few surprises

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Published: 8:40pm, 28 Mar 2018Updated: 8:21am, 20 Sep 2019

This article originally appeared on ABACUS

Xiaomi's new flagship handset ticks all the right boxes for a smartphone in 2018. But it also feels a little too familiar.

Part of that is because there’s only so much you can do with a smartphone these days.

But another part of it is that we knew, mostly, what the Mi MIX 2S would look like before launch, thanks to Xiaomi’s tweets showing brand ambassador Kris Wu showing that the phone’s front was virtually identical to its predecessor, the Mi MIX 2.

Xiaomi's 2018 flagship phone: Mi MIX 2S. (Picture: Abacus)

In fairness, it is a good looking front, with razor-thin bezels on the sides and top, and a thicker chin at the bottom for the selfie camera. Even though other companies now have bezel-less phones too, it's still a bold and striking design.

But once you flip the Mi MIX 2S over, you’ll immediately notice a difference: There’s a dual-camera. It actually looks a lot like the iPhone X, with the lenses aligned vertically and the flash in between. It’s also been moved to the top left corner from the centre position seen on the Mi MIX 2 — much like Apple’s handset.