Xiaomi Mi MIX 2S Review

Primary camera photo and video samples

Xiaomi Mi MIX 2S is the first Mi MIX smartphone with two rear cameras. The primary shooter on the back uses a 12MP Sony sensor like the Mi MIX 2 but this time it is the brand-new Sony IMX363 Exmor RS sensor. It has a larger size and pixel - 1/2.55" and 1.4 μm against the 1/2.9" size and 1.25 μm pixel of the Sony IMX386 Exmor RS sensor found on the Mi MIX 2. It makes photos with a resolution of 4032 x 3024 pixels and is capable of shooting HD, FHD, and 4K videos at 30 fps, time-lapse and slow-motion videos - 720p or 1080p at 240fps. The sensor is combined with an f/1.8 lens. The camera is aided by a dual-monochrome LED flash, Phase detection with Dual Pixel, EIS for videos and a 4-axis OIS (optical image stabilisation), which achieves image stability via the accelerometer and gyroscope built in the device and providing a high-speed detection of 8 directions of jitter with a real-time drive micro motor. In reality, the OIS works excellently. The second rear camera employs a telephoto lens with an f/2.4 aperture and a 12MP Samsung S5K3M3+ ISOCELL sensor with a 1/3.4" size and a 1.0 μm pixel size. There's no OIS for that shooter. The camera supports up to 2x optical zoom and up to 8x digital zoom. The optical zoom creates quite acceptable images. The autofocus on the main shooter works fine but is not as sharp for the telephoto camera. The Portrait mode creates a natural-look bokeh effect. The dual 14-bit Spectra 280 image signal processor (ISP) inside the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 mobile platform offers multi-frame noise reduction and because of the machine learning makes possible shooting with a background blur effect even without a secondary camera sensor. So in terms of hardware, photo and video quality, the main cameras of the Mi MIX 2S are a definite improvement over the Mi MIX 2. The camera has received 101 points from DxOMark for taking photos and an overall score of 97 points. For comparison, the iPhone X has the same 101 points for still photography and the Galaxy S9+ has achieved 104 points. The Samsung S5K3M3 sensor is used by the second rear camera on the Mi 6 and Mi Note 3.

Secondary camera photo samples

The front-facing camera of Mi MIX 2S is the same as the one on the Mi MIX, Mi MIX 2 and Redmi 5 Plus. It uses a 5-megapixel OmniVision OV5675 PureCel sensor with a 1/5" size and an f/2.0 lens. The camera takes photos with a resolution of 2592 x 1944 pixels and shoots 1080p videos at 30 fps. It works fine for selfies and makes a fairly nice in-depth effect but tends to overexpose the background. The curious thing is that the front camera offers face recognition but no face unlock.

Camera app

The Camera app in this version of MIUI has been restructured and re-designed to a certain extent. The main screen contains a circular shutter button at the bottom's centre. To its left, there's a shortcut to the list of photos and videos and to its right, there's the camera switch. Above those buttons, you will see the list of shooting modes - Photo, Portrait, Video, Short Video, Square, Panorama, Manual. The zoom level icon appears above the list of modes. The top of the screen is occupied by the flash and HDR options, AI on/off button, filters icon and a hamburger menu that opens additional options depending on the type of shooting modes and a shortcut to the camera settings. One of the most interesting features here is the Portrait mode, which manages to create a very natural-looking bokeh when shooting portraits (the object must be within 2.5 meters from the camera). The Manual mode allows you to adjust the white balance, ISO, shutter speed and switch between the wide and telephoto camera. A good feature when it comes to AI cameras is the option to switch off the AI function. For example, the Honor V10 does not have such an option and when the AI turns on automatically for scenes that you think don't need optimization than the effect turns into a defect. Xiaomi has provided an option to switch on the AI feature which works well in scene recognition. According to the manufacturer, the camera can detect up to 206 scenes across 25 categories and AI is also used for portrait shots and beautification. An AI intelligent real-time translation is available as well but not on the global MIUI version. As mentioned earlier, the additional camera options available from the hamburger menu depend on the type of mode you're on. When you open the default Photo mode you can access the timer, tilt-shift, straighten, group selfie and beautification, which has two levels. When you're in video shooting mode you get access to slow-motion and time-lapse options from this menu. The camera settings are also different. From the photo mode, you get access to the photo shooting settings such as gridline, time stamp, watermark, mirror front camera, camera frame, picture quality, exposure, saturation, contrast, and sharpness settings. From the video shooting mode, you get access to video shooting settings such as EIS, video quality, a video encoder (H.264 or H.265), video HFR, focus mode, time lapse interval. There are settings that are common for all modes such as location info, camera sounds, anti-binding, auto exposure, fingerprint shutter, volume buttons function. The main screen of the front camera contains the same shortcut to the list of photos and videos, shutter button and camera switch. It lists the same shooting modes but not all are supported - the Portrait, Panorama and Manual modes switch to the rear camera when selected. Above the shooting modes, there's an icon for beautification effects. These are AI-powered ones and you can choose from two ways of applying them. The first is selecting the degree of a pre-set combination of beautification effects. The second allows you to apply manually the degree of each beautification effect - eyes enlargement, cheeks slendering, skin tone correction, etc. On the top of the main screen you get the HDR options, the In-Depth Effect button - creates a blurred background similar to the Portrait mode, a list of filters and the hamburger menu with additional options. For the Photo shooting mode, these additional options include a timer, group selfie and age & gender info. There are no additional options for the other shooting modes. The photo and video settings are the same as the one for the rear cameras. Photo editing can happen either in MIUI's Gallery app or in Google's Photos app. The photos open by default with the Gallery app. Its editing options include adding beautification effects, cropping, adding filters, stickers, text, mosaic effect, or doodle. You can also adjust the brightness, sharpness, contrast, saturation, vignette. There's an Erase option as well for objects and lines. The Photos app editing options are already widely known and include Google Lens, which designed to bring relevant information using visual analysis based on deep learning routines. All in all, it can intelligently recognize objects from an image and show relevant search results and information.