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my first xiaomi phone was the mix 2 a cutting-edge nearly full display phone

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that gearbest.com helped me get my hands on last year

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and that i abandoned reviewing after spending four hours fighting with

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bootloader unlocking crap in an attempt to load the english rom on it

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only to find out that xiaomi had

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a bloody english version coming a couple weeks later

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anyway the me mix 2s so called for its

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speedier snapdragon 845 processor

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presumably is better across the board anyway

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including the out-of-the-box support for

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english yes but i still can't figure out why

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anybody in this hemisphere is buying premium phones from brands like xiaomi

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is there something on the surface that i am missing here

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like for example a sponsor for this video like madrina's coffee madrina's

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coffee blends specialty cold brew coffees into 16-ounce grab-and-go cans

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for everyone's convenience check them out and use offer code Linus to save 40

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at the link below

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it's really easy to fall in love with the mix 2s it manages to have the sex

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appeal of a nearly bezel-less design coming just one percent shy of the

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screen ratio of the iphone 10 and that's without resorting to an unsightly notch

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and the work that they've put into their ceramic coated back has paid off in

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spades glass-backed phones are back in vogue

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now to enable wireless charging but

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as hard as you might try a glass back will never feel as premium

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nor be as durable as this and after a similar amount of time in my

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pocket my oneplus 6 is noticeably more

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scuffed up and it's packed full of all the right

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hardware sporting the latest generation snapdragon 845 processor up to eight

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gigs of RAM up to 256 gigs of non-expandable storage blah blah blah

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blah blah so it's super fast like you guys get the point and the price is

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right too lining up right across the oneplus 6 as a flagship grade phone for

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hundreds of dollars less than you would pay a tier one like apple or samsung

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and it's got lightning fast fingerprint unlocking the ability to choose between

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button-based or gesture-based navigation and even wireless charging which as we

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outlined in our video recently has the potential when used properly to improve

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the lifespan of your non-removable but respectably sized 3 400 milliamp hour

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battery so uh

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wait why was i so down on this thing a couple of minutes ago

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i still can't figure out why anybody in this hemisphere is buying premium phones

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from brands like xiaomi that seems kind of unfair doesn't it i

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mean even the dual rear camera absolutely blows away previous

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generation efforts from chinese phone makers like this low light shot here

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does have more noise than any other camera that i tested but it avoids the

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over sharpening of the mate 10 pro and the undesirable flaring of the

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galaxy s9 so i mean at least xiaomi

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isn't actively processing the image to make it worse

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and then in this challenging situation the me mix 2s ends up noisier than

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samsung and with less true-to-life colors than the oneplus 6 but it looks

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better than both the iphone 10 and the pixel 2 xl and under ideal conditions

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you can get some really nice images out of it so let's talk about some of the

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weaknesses of the me mix 2s the earpiece

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speaker isn't amplified for stereo sound

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there's no water resistance at least nothing officially ip rated

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1080p slo-mo only goes to 120 FPS rather

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than 240 the display is ips rather than

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OLED which means almost no potential for burn-in

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but at the cost of ambient or always-on

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technology and there is no headphone jack so you

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will need to pull out an adapter every time you want to watch my little pony at

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the back of the bus without anybody finding out

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so all that is kind of a drag

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but again it's hundreds of dollars less for top

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spec hardware and it's got no display

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notch so i can accept that stuff even if i don't

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like all of it the part that is unforgivable is the

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software miui is like going back in time to when

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samsung still thought that having a bunch of bloat in there okay well hold

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on samsung still has a lot of bloat in there so

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um okay whatever in xiaomi's defense

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some of the stuff that they include is legitimately useful like a screen

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recorder app and a quick link to my downloads

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but there were just so many annoying things that i ran into that ground my

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gears from having in my pocket for two weeks

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let's take google hangouts if i got a message an hour ago but left

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it unread because i wanted to deal with it later every new message that i get or even

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opening up another conversation sometimes will make it pop up again

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why when i create a folder on the home

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screen it doesn't pull up the keyboard automatically for me to start typing

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why the included weather app wants access to

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my phone for some reason when all it

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should need is my location not to mention that it cannot be removed

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or even hidden so you have to create a

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useless crap folder iOS style there's no

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obvious way to expand a notification from the lock screen and reply to it

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which is good for security but i would like to at least have the option for my

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convenience i can't install netflix off the app store the workaround seems to be to

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track down the apk and install it manually

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it wakes the screen for notifications which is nice but not when you lift the

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phone something that i've come to take for granted these days and there is no

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hardware button to launch the camera yuck now taken

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individually every one of those things would seem

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like a pretty insignificant little gripe

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and there are things that their software does reasonably well so their screenshot

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management something that i use a lot blows one pluses out of the water

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and a separate account for another user is super handy if i want to give the

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phone to my kids but i don't want them accessing all my stuff

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the bottom line though is that this device was annoying to use for me

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and not just compared to a flagship one like the s9 plus compared to other

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devices that cost the same xiaomi would do well to take a page out

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of oneplus book on the software side of things

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there isn't really such a thing as stock Android anymore i mean even

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google's own pixel lineup customizes stock Android

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but they would do well to try to get a

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lot closer because the hardware and the design are already really

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impressive so i'm looking forward to seeing continued improvement

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speaking of improvement the only thing that could improve this video is this

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so thanks for watching guys if this video sucked you know what to do but if

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it was awesome get subscribed hit that like button or check out the link to

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