Xiaomi Mi MIX 3 Review

Display

Xiaomi Mi MIX 3 is built around a 6.39-inch AMOLED display. While this is not the first AMOLED screen on a Xiaomi smartphone, for sure it is the first one supplied from Samsung. Actually, when we compare it with the display of OnePlus 6T, it turns out they are quite close. The Mi MIX 3 has the same FHD+ resolution with 1080 x 2340 pixels and the same 19.5:9 aspect ratio. The front is protected by a 2.5D curved Corning Gorilla Glass of unspecified generation. Xiaomi specifies a 60000:1 static contrast for the screen and 103.8% coverage of the NTSC reference colour space. The typical brightness is 430 nits and the maximum - 600 nits. The Mi MIX 3 display offers a Night mode with customizable colour temperature and brightness, a customizable Reading mode, and HDR content support. Samsung AMOLED panels have a VDE (Verband der Elektrotechnik) certificate that they are safe for your eyes. The display of Mi MIX 3 is extremely responsive, easily readable under direct sunlight and offers perfect viewing angles with full preservation of brightness, contrast and colour. The Ambient display option allows you to activate and schedule the Always on Display.

Average Picture Level (APL)

Being a Samsung AMOLED display, it has a Diamond PenTile sub-pixel arrangement, in which the number of green subpixels (small and elongated) is the same as in a classic RGB stripe one, but the number of red subpixels (mid-size and diamond-shaped) and blue subpixels (large and diamond-shaped) is twice as less. Hence, the panel uses subpixel rendering to preserve the number of pixels as in classic RGB stripe displays with only 2/3rds of the number of dots. In theory, Active Matrix Organic LED (AMOLED) displays consume less power and provide faster pixel switching response times. By simply switching off the pixels needed to display the black colour, they are able to display "infinite black". They also have the ability to provide more power to each pixel with the decrease of the white area that has to be displayed on the screen. Therefore, when assessing OLED displays, one must take into account the Average Picture Level (APL) of such units. The APL graph below shows the brightness of the screen of our review unit in the default colour mode according to the percentage of the white area displayed on it compared to a full white display. We use ten APL values, respectively for a white area that takes up 10%, 20%, 30%, etc. till 100% of the display. At 10% APL, the peak brightness of our review unit is 590.908 cd/² when the default display mode is on (default colour, automatic contrast). The peak brightness is achieved with the auto brightness and adaptive display mode on in intensive ambient light conditions - the same we do with the Samsung Galaxy S smartphones. Thus, our review unit almost completely reached the specified peak brightness of 600 nits - of course only at 10% APL. For example, the peak brightness of Samsung Galaxy S8+ at 10% APL reached 986 cd/m² and the one of the Samsung Galaxy S9+ exceeded 1000 cd/m² at 10% APL. The Display menu of Mi MIX 3 offers a total of 9 display profile achieved by combining three colour modes (default, warm, cool) and three contrast options (automatic, increased, standard). Below you will see our measurements of three of the display profiles - Standard colours + Automatic contrast, Standard colours + Increased Contrast and Standard colours + Standard contrast. Our measurements below show that the maximum white luminance is around 430 cd/m² and does not change depending on the display profile. We observe the same maximum white luminance level on the OnePlus 6T and it does not change depending on the colour mode/profile - default, sRGB and DCI-P3.

Standard colours, Automatic contrast

The "Standard colours, Automatic contrast" profile is the default one for the display of the Mi MIX 3. Under this profile, the maximum brightness of our review unit's screen measures 430.777 cd/m² and the lowest white luminance (0% brightness level) is 0.955 cd/m². The temperature of the white point is nailed at around 7500 K. The CIE diagram unveils a colour space coverage that is significantly wider than 100% sRGB.

Brightness	White luminance	Black luminance	Contrast	Color temperature
100 %	430.777 cd/m2	0.000 cd/m2	-	7607 K
0 %	0.955 cd/m2	0.000 cd/m2	-	7139 K

Standard colours, Increased contrast

The second profile - "Standard colours, Increased contrast" - achieves the same maximum white luminance - 430.415 cd/m². The temperature of the white points remains within the 7500 K range. The CIE diagram unveils a slightly larger colour space coverage than the one on the "Standard colours, Automatic contrast" display profile.

Brightness	White luminance	Black luminance	Contrast	Color temperature
100 %	430.415 cd/m2	0.000 cd/m2	-	7582 K
0 %	1.997 cd/m2	0.000 cd/m2	-	7165 K

Standard colours, Standard contrast

The third display profile - "Standard colours, Standard contrast" - shows the same maximum brightness of 430.426 cd/m² but a lower temperature of the white point - around 7000 K. The CIE diagram an almost 100% sRGB colour space coverage. So in case you want realistic colours and perfect colour temperature, you should go for this profile.

Brightness	White luminance	Black luminance	Contrast	Color temperature
100 %	430.426 cd/m2	0.000 cd/m2	-	6719 K
0 %	1.987 cd/m2	0.000 cd/m2	-	7219 K