Xiaomi Mi Mix 2S Officially Announced With Wireless Charging, Dual Cameras

After months of speculations, rumors and leaks, Xiaomi has officially announced the Mi Mix 2S in Shanghai, China. The 2S arrives six months after the Mi Mix 2 and it comes with upgrades and new features along with the same bezel-less design that consumers and critics love.

Up front, the Xiaomi Mi Mix 2S looks very similar to the Mi Mix 2. It still features the same 5.99-inch full HD plus LCD display with minimal bezels on top and on its sides. The device still has a chin, where the 5-megapixel front-facing camera is housed. Although the chin may not be the most elegant way of including the front-facing camera, it wouldn’t be too hard to imagine a lot of consumers breathing a sigh of relief to see that the device has no display notch of any kind.

The Xiaomi Mi Mix 2S comes in two color options: a white model with silver trim and a black model with gold trim. Like its predecessors, the Mi Mix 2S is still made of aluminum and ceramic materials, giving the device a sleek premium look and feel.

On the back, the Mi Mix 2s features a lot of changes from last year’s Mi Mix 2, as reported by The Verge. First off, the Mi Mix 2S is the very first Xiaomi phone to support Qi wireless charging. Tucked underneath its ceramic back is a wireless charging coil. Its wireless charging feature should work with all wireless charging pads compliant to the Qi standard, but Xiaomi also has its own brand of wireless charger. If wireless charging isn’t something that consumers are looking for, the Mi Mix 2S also supports Qualcomm’s QuickCharge 3 fast charging technology.

The Mi Mix 2S also has vertically-aligned dual cameras on its back — a distinct upgrade from the the Mi Mix 2’s single camera. Both cameras have 12-megapixel sensors, but one has a wide angle lens while the other has a telephoto (zoom) lens. The setup and the design of the cameras are very reminiscent of what’s on the iPhone X. Unsurprisingly, the Mi Mix 2S’s dual cameras can also capture portrait photos that blur the background.

The cameras on the Mi Mix 2S also come with some AI functionalities. The camera app can recognize scenes and automatically adjust the camera setting depending on where the user is pointing the cameras. The camera app is also able to translate text and convert currencies when the user points the cameras on signs, brochures and menus, according to The Next Web.

In terms of performance, the Mi Mix 2S is no slouch. The Xiaomi phone is packing the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor, the same one that’s powering the Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9+. The device also has 6GB/8GB of RAM and 64GB/128GB/256GB of storage. On the software side of things, the Mi Mix 2S runs Android 8.0 Oreo straight out of the box, with Xiaomi’s MIUI 9.5 skin.

The Xiaomi Mi Mix 2S will be available in China next week with a starting price of 3,299 yuan or around US$527. Unfortunately, it won’t officially be available in the United States, but that probably won’t stop users from finding ways of importing it.