[Xiaomi Mi Mix 3 Guides, News, & Discussion] GeekOnTheHill:
I picked up a XIAOMI Mi Mix 3 from Micro Center today at what I consider a steal considering the hardware (USD $379.98) and after doing some quick research.

Micro Center is a two-and-a-half-hour drive for me and I was already there, so I didn't have the luxury of time for leisurely research. I usually spend weeks, not half an hour, making these decisions. But I used to be a commercial customer before I sold my business, and I made a lot of friends there, so they don't hassle me about returns; and since I was already there, I figured I'd try it out.

My initial impressions are mixed, but more positive than negative.

Positives

The build quality feels very solid. Actually, it feels like a Sherman tank. This is a pretty hefty phone. It has a quality "feel" to it, though. I also like the flat screen, although I guess that's a matter of personal preference. The included case is okay for now, but I ordered a more rugged one, a screen protector, and a leather holster from Amazon. I'm old, but active; and I don't carry a purse.

Functionally, the XIAOMI Mi Mix 3 supports AT&T's network 100 percent, as far as I can tell. That seems pretty amazing for a phone that technically isn't sold in the USA. I've had phones that were targeted to the U.S. market that had mediocre band and protocol support.

The radio reception is also the best of any phone I've ever used where I live, and I've been on AT&T for a long time and used a lot of phones. The LTE works great. I'm getting download speeds of around 50 Mbps, and I live in the boondocks.

The GPS reception is especially incredible, with TTFF of an amazing four seconds, two meter accuracy in 16 seconds, an average C/N0 around 46 dBHz using 32 of the 35 satellites it caught, with some coming in at 59 dBHz. That's pretty amazing for a phone. It's actually better than some airplanes I've flown.

I didn't mess with the cameras much (I don't really use them that often on any phone), but they seem very good to me. I break out my Nikon when I have serious photography to do, so I may not be the best judge of mobile phone quality. The cameras on the Mi Mix 3 seem perfectly adequate to me; but as I said, I'm no connoisseur of cell phone cameras.

The slider for the selfie camera is a nice feature if you hate the notch. I never cared about the notch, but it does bother some people. I also like that the slider stays in place magnetically (more reliable and durable than mechanical latches), although I do wonder whether that affects the magnetometer (assuming the phone has one).

In short, hardware-wise, I'm happy. The Snapdragon 845 is no slouch, and the rest of the hardware in the Mi Mix 3 seems to use it well. I consider it a bargain for the hardware alone.

In terms of performance, it's fast and crisp. I haven't put it through any strenuous tests yet, but It has a nice, fast feel to it.

Setup was completely painless, it auto-provisioned on AT&T with zero configuration needed, and Google and MIUI restored almost everything from Drive with no issues. Even my DND settings were carried over. It was really pretty flawless. The one exception was K-9 Mail. For reasons I neither know nor intend to bother looking into, neither the app itself nor the settings were migrated. I had made backups of everything anyway, so it was no big deal.

Negatives

I wouldn't say that MIUI is quirky so much as that I wonder what the point was of changing things around for no apparent reason. In other words, I don't think there's anything "wrong" with MIUI based on the few hours I've had the phone, but I wonder what advantage there is to it as compared to a stock Android. I can live with it, though. It's not so much a negative as a "just different," really, based on first impressions.

I also don't like the fact that there's no automated desktop backup software. I suppose I can build something easily enough, but there should be desktop backup. Or am I the only one who actually uses a computer anymore? I guess LG's [usually] competent backup software spoiled me.

I'll see if there's a generic Android backup utility out there for Arch Linux or Windows that syncs by WiFi before re-inventing the wheel. It's not rocket surgery; but coding for the sheer joy of coding kind of grew old for me decades ago. I never bothered looking for generic non-root Android automated backup software before because I never had to. There probably are bazillions of perfectly competent solutions out there for Arch (or for Android itself, for that matter).

In fairness, however, I'm a genuine backup nut. I literally have backups of my backups as far as computers are concerned. Within 20 seconds of my saving a document, it has been backed up to an ioSafe USB drive and a local NAS (the ioSafe, which is a backup destination, is in turned backed up to the NAS), and is on its way to BackBlaze. So my OCD about backups may be inflating my annoyance about not including a desktop backup application with the handset.

Back to the Mix 3, I also found the notifications a bit wonky. In addition to having to give permission in multiple places, the notifications use the media volume instead of having their own setting. That doesn't make much sense to me. I can think of plenty of reasons why one might want to control notifications separately from media. The puzzlement, however, is why they coded it out of stock Android. I mean, what advantage is there to justify the time spent removing a slider that was already there?

Then again, maybe the separate notification volume was an LG thing. My last few phones have been LG. Maybe LG coded it into Android.

There's also somewhat more bloatware than I'm accustomed to finding on an unlocked phone, but it seems lightweight and innocuous enough. Some of it might actually be useful. I really haven't done anything to it except push it to the last screen. At least it doesn't include a crap ton of silly games and such.

The only one that annoys me is that I can't uninstall FecesBook (at least not without root). At least, not in the usual way. I can't explain why because of NDA's I've signed, but I'd rather never use a computing device again than have a FecesBook account.

All Things Considered...

I officially have two weeks to decide whether to keep the phone. Micro Center probably would extend that for me because of my long history with them, but I don't want to abuse that relationship. Besides, to weeks will be enough to decide whether my appreciation of the Mix 3's superb (in my opinion) hardware compensates for my lukewarmness toward MIUI.

Based on first impressions, however, I'm pretty sure I will keep the phone. I love the hardware, and I think I can at least learn to live with MIUI (which is more than I can say about my ex, and she was a lot more expensive and quirky than MIUI is). Or I can root it, although that's not something I'd do just because I'm miffed about having to look somewhere else for a setting and having an inactive FecesBook icon hidden in a folder on the last screen.

Richard