20 NOVEMBER 2019|COMPUTER SHOPPER|ISSUE 381
Howick Placeand St James’s Park. In the latter
we couldn’t find a5Gsignal at all, even after
almost an hour of searching.
Performance varied quiteabit, reaching
lows of 48Mbit/s and highs of 231Mbit/s.
We never managed to hit anywhere close
to the promised 2Gbit/s, although our sister
websiteITPro managed to record ahigh of
450Mbit/s in Birmingham. Average latency
wasn’t tooshabbyat20ms, however,and
you could saythe same forthe average
upload speed of 21Mbit/s.
Ultimately,wecan’t be toodisappointed
with 5G as awhole,especially as coverage and
speeds will hopefully improve as time goes on.
It’s just ashame that we don’t seem to be
getting the speeds we were hoping forat
launch –and doubly so when you factor in
how much these 5G contracts cost.
Vodafone’s 5G network is currently live
–insome capacity –inBirmingham, Bristol,
Cardiff, Glasgow,Liverpool, London and
Manchester,with atotal of 19 locations
expected by the end of 2019.You can
check if you get 5G in your area by using
Vodafone’s network status tool.
INSTANTGAINS
Another keypart of the attraction of the
Xiaomi Mi Mix 35Gisthat it offers better
CPU and gaming performance over the
non-5G model, thanks to its upgraded
Snapdragon 855. This is accompanied by
6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage.
In testing, it massively outperforms the
original Snapdragon 845-powerered Mi Mix 3,
scoring afantastic 3,519 in Geekbench 4’s
single-core test and 11,320 in its multicore
test. This set of results also puts the Mi Mix 3
5G ahead of the OnePlus 7Pro (Shopper379)
and Oppo Reno 10x Zoom, if only slightly,
and the same goes forgaming power: with
60fps in the GFXBench Manhattan onscreen
test, you’re getting as many frames as the
screen’s refresh ratecan allow.
The 3,800mAh battery is also an
improvement on the original model’s
3,200mAh unit. The Mi Mix 35Greached
an enviable 22h 51m in our video loop
benchmark, more than five hours longer
than the Mi Mix 3. 5G doesn’t seem to
affect the phone’s overall battery life
negatively,either,dropping only 20% after
two-and-a-half hours of heavy use.
The AMOLED display, on the other hand,
seems to have remained unchanged: our
technical tests recorded identical results to
that of the Mi Mix 3. Luckily,that was an
excellent display, and so tooisthis one.It
covers 100% of the sRGB colour gamut and
has alow average delta-E of 1.65, aperfect
infinity:1 contrast ratio and ahigh peak
brightness of 554cd/m^2 .With asufficiently
crisp resolution of 2,340x1,080, there’s
absolutely nothing to complain about.
It also takes outstanding pictures, courtesy
of its dual rear 12-megapixel cameras and
24-megapixel/2-megapixel selfie cameras.
Image quality isn’t quiteamatch forthe
Huawei P30 Pro (Shopper378), nor does it
match the new Xiaomi Mi 9and its
48-megapixel triple camera. All the same,it
takes some very colourful and detailed shots.
LATERRATHERTHANSOONER
All this might sound as if you should rush out
and buy aMiMix 35Gimmediately,but while
hardware-wise this is agreat smartphone,
we’re still not convinced that the current 5G
experience is worth the vast cost of entry.
Higher speeds are nice,naturally,but there
currently aren’t enough benefits over 4G for
it to be worth picking up alengthy and far
more expensive5Gcontract.
Like its4Gcounterpart,the Mi Mix 35Gis
asolid smartphone that’s more than worthy
of adecent score.It’s just such ashame that
5G’s early days aren’t nearly as impressive.
NathanSpendelow
Batterylife
0% -50 Reference + 50 + 100
Seepage94forperformancedetails
PROCESSOROcta-core2.8GHzQualcommSnapdragon855•
SCREENSIZE6.4in•SCREENRESOLUTION2,340x1,080•
REARCAMERAS12megapixels,12megapixels•STORAGE
128GB•WIRELESSDATA5G•NFCYes•DIMENSIONS
158x75x8.5mm•WEIGHT225g•OPERATINGSYSTEM
Android9.0•WARRANTYOneyearRTB•DETAILS
http://www.mi.com•PARTCODESM-A705FZWUBTU
SPECIFICATIONS
22h51m
