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06.30.19 telecommunications

Huawei can buy from US suppliers again but things will never be the same

U.S. President Donald Trump has handed Huawei a lifeline after he said that U.S. companies are permitted to sell goods to the embattled Chinese tech firm following more than a month of uncertainty.

It’s been a pretty dismal past month for Huawei since the American government added it and 70 of its affiliates to an “entity list” which forbids U.S. companies from doing business with it. The ramifications of the move were huge across Huawei’s networking and consumer devices businesses. A range of chip companies reportedly forced to sever ties while Google, which provides Android for Huawei devices, also froze its relationship. Speaking this month.

All told, Huawei founder and chief executive Ren Zhengfei said recently that the ban would cost the Chinese tech firm — the world’s third-larger seller of smartphones — some $30 billion in lost revenue of the next two years.

Now, however, the Trump administration has provided a reprieve, at least based on the President’s comments following a meeting with Chinese premier Xi Jinping at the G20 summit this weekend.

“US companies can sell their equipment to Huawei. We’re talking about equipment where there’s no great national security problem with it,” the U.S. President said.

Those comments perhaps contradict some in the US administration who saw the Huawei blacklisting as a way to strangle the company and its global ambitions, which are deemed by some analysts to be a threat to America.

President Trump has appeared to soften his tone on Chinese communications giant Huawei, suggesting that he would allow the company to once again purchase US technology https://t.co/4YNJCyKLTg pic.twitter.com/jr45f40ghP

— CNN International (@cnni) June 29, 2019

Despite the good news, any mutual trust has been broken and things are unlikely to be the same again.

America’s almost casual move to blacklist Huawei — the latest in a series of strategies in its ongoing trade battle with China — exemplifies just how dependent the company has become on the U.S. to simply function.

Huawei has taken steps to hedge its reliance on America, including the development of its own operating system to replace Android and its own backup chips, and you can expect that these projects will go into overdrive to ensure that Huawei doesn’t find itself in a similar position again in the future.

Of course, decoupling its supply chain from US partners is no easy task both in terms of software and components. It remains to be seen if Huawei could maintain its current business level — which included 59 million smartphones in the last quarter and total revenue of $107.4 billion in 2018 — with non-US components and software but this episode is a reminder that it must have a solid contingency policy in case it becomes a political chess piece again in the future.

Beyond aiding Huawei, Trump’s move will boost Google and other Huawei partners who invested significant time and resources into developing a relationship with Huawei to boost their own businesses through its business.

Indeed, speaking to press Trump, Trump admitted that US companies sell “a tremendous amount” of products to Huawei. Some “were not exactly happy that they couldn’t sell” to Huawei and it looks like that may have helped tipped this decision. But, then again, never say never — you’d imagine that the Huawei-Trump saga is far from over despite this latest twist.

Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/29/huawei-us-supplier-ban-lifted/

06.18.19 telecommunications

Huawei says US ban will cost it $30B in lost revenue

Following a string of trade restrictions from the U.S., China’s telecoms equipment and smartphone maker Huawei expects its revenues to drop $30 billion below forecast over the next two years, founder and chief executive Ren Zhengfei said Monday during a panel discussion at the company’s Shenzhen headquarters.

Huawei’s production will slow down in the next two years while revenues will hover around $100 billion this and next year, according to the executive. The firm’s overseas smartphone shipment is tipped to drop 40%, he said, confirming an earlier report from Bloomberg.

That said, Ren assured that Huawei’s output will be “rejuvenated” by the year 2021 after a period of adjustment.

Huawei’s challenges are multifaceted as the U.S. “entity list” bars it from procuring from American chip makers and using certain Android services, among a list of other restrictions. In response, the Chinese behemoth recently announced it has been preparing for years its own backup chips and an alternative smartphone operating system.

“We didn’t expect the U.S. to attack Huawei with such intense and determined effort. We are not only banned from providing targeted components but also from joining a lot of international organizations, collaborating with many universities, using anything with American components or even connecting to networks that use American parts,” said Ren at the panel.

The founder said these adverse circumstances, though greater than what he expected, would not prevent the company from making strides. “We are like a damaged plane that protected only its heart and fuel tank but not its appendages. Huawei will get tested by the adjustment period and through time. We will grow stronger as we make this step.”

huawei

“Heroes in any times go through great challenges,” reads a placard left on a table at a Huawei campus cafe, featuring the image of a damaged World War II aircraft (Photo: TechCrunch)

That image of the beaten aircraft holding out during hard times is sticking to employees’ minds through little motivational placards distributed across the Huawei campus. TechCrunch was among a small group of journalists who spoke to Huawei staff about the current U.S.-China situation, and many of them shared Ren’s upbeat, resilient attitude.

“I’m very confident about the current situation,” said an employee who has been working at Huawei for five years and who couldn’t reveal his name as he wasn’t authorized to speak to the press. “And my confidence stems from the way our boss understands and anticipates the future.”

More collaboration

Although 74-year-old Ren had kept a quiet profile ever since founding Huawei, he has recently appeared more in front of media as his company is thrown under growing scrutiny from the west. That includes efforts like the Monday panel, which was dubbed “A Coffee With Ren” and known to be Ren’s first such fireside chat.

Speaking alongside George Gilder, an American writer and speaker on technology, and Nicholas Negroponte, co-founder of the MIT Media Lab, Ren said he believed in a more collaborative and open economy, which can result in greater mutual gains between countries.

“The west was the first to bring up the concept of economic globalization. It’s the right move. But there will be big waves rising from the process, and we must handle them with correct rather than radical measures,” said Ren.

“It’s the U.S. that will suffer from any effort to decouple,” argued Gilder. “I believe that we have a wonderful entrepreneurial energy, wonderful creativity and wonderful technology, but it’s always thrived with collaboration with other countries.”

“The U.S. is making a terrible mistake, first of all, picking on a company,” snapped Negroponte. “I come from a world where the interest isn’t so much about the trade, commerce or stock. We value knowledge and we want to build on the people before us. The only way this works is that people are open at the beginning… It’s not a competitive world in the early stages of science. [The world] benefits from collaboration.”

“This is an age for win-win games,” said one of the anonymous employees TechCrunch spoke to. He drew the example of network operator China Mobile, which recently announced to buy not just from Huawei but also from non-Chinese suppliers Nokia and Ericsson after it secured one of the first commercial licenses to deploy 5G networks in the country.

“I think the most important thing is that we focus on our work,” said Ocean Sun, who is tasked with integrating network services for Huawei clients. He argued that as employees, their job is to “be professional and provide the best solutions” to customers.

“I think the commercial war between China and the U.S. damages both,” suggested Zheng Xining, an engineer working on Huawei’s network services for Switzerland. “Donald Trump should think twice [about his decisions].”

Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/17/trade-war-costs-huawei-30-billion/

06.03.19 telecommunications

Foxconn halts some production lines for Huawei phones, according to reports

Huawei, the Chinese technology giant whose devices are at the center of a far-reaching trade dispute between the U.S. and Chinese governments, is reducing orders for new phones, according to a report in The South China Morning Post.

According to unnamed sources, the Taiwanese technology manufacturer Foxconn has halted production lines for several Huawei phones after the Shenzhen-based company reduced orders. Foxconn also makes devices for most of the major smart phone vendors including Apple and Xiaomi (in addition to Huawei).

In the aftermath of President Donald Trump’s declaration of a “national emergency” to protect U.S. networks from foreign technologies, Huawei and several of its affiliates were barred from acquiring technologies from U.S. companies.

Tech stocks slide on US decision to blacklist Huawei and 70 affiliates

The blacklist has impacted multiple lines of Huawei’s business including it handset manufacturing capabilities given the company’s reliance on Google’s Android operating system for its smartphones.

In May, Google reportedly suspended business with Huawei, according to a Reuters report. Last year, Huawei shipped over 200 million handsets and the company had a stated goal to become the world’s largest vendor of smartphones by 2020.

These reports from The South China Morning Post are the clearest indication that the ramifications of the U.S. blacklisting are beginning to be felt across Huawei’s phone business outside of China.

Huawei was already under fire for security concerns, and will be forced to contend with more if it can no longer provide Android updates to global customers.

Contingency planning is already underway at Huawei. The company has built its own Android -based operating system, and can use the stripped down, open source version of Android that ships without Google Mobile Services. For now, its customers also still have access to Google’s app store. But if the company is forced to make developers sell their apps on a siloed Huawei-only store, it could face problems from users outside of China.

Huawei and the Chinese government are also retaliating against the U.S. efforts. The company has filed a legal motion to challenge the U.S. ban on its equipment, calling it “unconstitutional.”  And Huawei has sent home its American employees deployed at R&D functions at its Shenzhen headquarters.

It has also asked its Chinese employees to limit conversations with overseas visitors, and cease any technical meetings with their U.S. contacts.

Still, any reduction in orders would seem to indicate that the U.S. efforts to stymie Huawei’s expansion (at least in its smartphone business) are having an impact.

A spokesperson for Huawei U.S. did not respond to a request for comment.

Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/01/foxconn-halts-production-lines-for-huawei-phones-according-to-reports/

05.28.19 telecommunications

Chinas largest chipmaker is delisting from the Nasdaq

The U.S-China trade war is increasingly influencing tech. Huawei has suffered a turbulent past week with key suppliers pausing work with the company, and now China’s largest chipmaker is planning to delist from the New York Stock Exchange.

Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC) announced in a filing published Friday that it plans to delist next month ending a 15-year spell as a public company in the U.S. The firm will file a Form 25 to delist on June 3, which is likely to see it leave the NYSE around ten days later. SMIC, which is backed by the Chinese government and state-owned shareholders, will focus on its existing Hong Kong listing going forward but there will be trading options for those holding U.S-based ADRs.

In its announcement, SMIC said it plans to delist for reasons that include limited trading volumes and “significant administrative burden and costs” around the listing and compliance with reporting.

What it doesn’t say is that this is linked to the frosty relationship between the U.S. and China, and already the company has played that rationale.

“SMIC has been considering this migration for a long time and it has nothing to do with the trade war and Huawei incident. The migration requires a long preparation and timing has coincided with the current trade rhetoric, which may lead to misconceptions,” a spokesperson told CNBC.

Still, it is impossible to ignore the current context. Huawei’s entry to a U.S. blacklist has paused its relationship with key suppliers including ARM, Qualcomm, Intel and Google, which supplies the Android OS for its phones, so SMIC’s decision to remove its financial links to the U.S. fees into fears of a bifurcation of U.S. and Chinese tech, deliberate or not.

SMIC’s shares dropped 4 percent in Hong Kong on Friday. Trading of its U.S-based ADRs crossed one million on Friday, that’s well above an above 90-day volume of nearly 150,000 per day.

The company is China’s largest chip firm, specializing in integrated circuit manufacturing with clients such as Qualcomm, Broadcom and Texas Instruments. SMIC made a profit of $746.7 million in 2018 on revenues of $3.36 billion. Its most recent Q1 results released earlier this month saw revenue fall 19 percent year-on-year.

There has always been tension around Chinese companies using U.S. public markets to go public, and not just from an American standpoint. Chinese companies are increasingly exploring other options, including Hong Kong — where Xiaomi went public last year — while a-soon-to-launch ‘science and tech’ board in Shanghai is hotly touted as an alternative destination.

The board launches in pilot mode next month, but already Chinese bankers and tech companies have found it challenging to deliver on expectations, as a Reuters report earlier this year concluded.

Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/24/smic-nasdaq-delisting/

09.11.17 Merchant Services

Xiaomi’s Mi Mix 2 is more luxurious than any iPhone or Samsung Galaxy will ever be

Apple’s iPhones and Samsung’s Galaxy phones dominate worldwide, but in Asia — and specifically in China — homegrown brands like Huawei, Oppo and Xiaomi are rapidly closing in on them.

Xiaomi, the fifth largest smartphone maker worldwide, in particular is ready to lead, not by repeatedly copying the iPhone, but with industrial design that dazzles. The company started down this path last year with the gorgeous bezel-less Mi Mix, and now it’s following it up with the Mi Mix 2, a ceramic sliver from the future that I can’t stop fawning over.

SEE ALSO: Xiaomi is finally stepping out of Apple and Samsung’s shadows

Xiaomi didn’t just launch another nice-looking premium phone with the Mi Mix. It put a stake in the ground and stepped out of Apple and Samsung’s shadows.

The Mi Mix was a concept phone that pushed the boundaries of smartphone design and innovation. It used ceramic, came with a huge bezel-less screen, and eschewed a traditional earpiece and unsightly proximity sensors for ultrasound technology to hide these things underneath the screen.

Its designers even convinced Google to change Android’s Compatibility Definition Document (CDD) to allow for screens with aspect ratios larger than 16:9 (Mi Mix had a 17:9 ratio) and with rounded corners — two features that are present on many 2017 flagships and wouldn’t have been possible if not for the Mi Mix’s pioneering.

The Mix Mix collected critical acclaim, but there were just two problems: It wasn’t sold in the U.S. and it didn’t support U.S. 4G LTE networks. You could only drool over it from afar, and even if you managed to import the phone, you’d be constrained to Wi-Fi.

Xiaomi’s new Mi Mix 2 still won’t be sold in the U.S., but at the very least it now comes works with U.S. 4G LTE networks like AT&T and T-Mobile, making an import actually worth it. The phone’s available in select markets on Sept. 15. 

The 64GB will cost for 3,299 RMB (about $506); 128GB for 3,599 RMB (about $552), and the 256GB variant costs 3,999 RMB (about $614). These prices are unreal for a phone of this caliber, especially when Apple and Samsung are pushing prices into the $1,000 range.

Forces of attraction

The back is made of scratch-resistant ceramic.

Image: RAYMOND WONG/MASHABLE

I’m fortunate enough to have held almost every premium phone ever made, but nothing prepared me for the Mi Mix 2. It’s in a luxury class of its own.

As much as I love my Jet Black iPhone 7, the glass-and-metal Galaxy Note 8, and even the titanium and ceramic Essential Phone, the Mi Mix 2 just feels so polished.

The glass display and ceramic back spills flush into the aluminum frame with zero gaps. The Mi Mix 2’s materials are as luxurious as a Swiss-made watch, and there really is nothing about it that feels cheap. 

The standard Mi Mix 2 comes with an aluminum frame.

Image: RAYMOND WONG/MASHABLE

Xiaomi’s paid careful attention to all the details — all of the lines and ports and speaker holes are perfectly symmetrical — and I appreciated it every moment I held it in my hand. It’s truly one of the most elegant phones ever made.

Ceramic, as you may already know, is virtually scratch-proof, but it’s not an easy material to work with. Even though ceramic is so difficult to mass produce (yield rates are notoriously low for ceramic-based products), Xiaomi decided it needed to master it to stand out.

I can’t stress enough how nice the standard Mi Mix 2 looks and feels.

Donovan Sung, Xiaomi’s Director of Product Management and Marketing, explained to me during a briefing how over 200,400 tons of pressure is applied to ceramic in its raw, mushy, pounded down state. Then, the material is baked in an oven at nearly 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit for about 10 days. After that, you wait up to 12 hours for it all to cool down and shrink to the right volume, see if it meets quality assurance, and then apply CNC techniques to further shape it.

It’s an excessive amount of work for a phone, but it’s worth it Sung says. “After every 3-4 samples, the blades [used to cut ceramic] get so dulled you have to replace them because it’s just a really, really hard material to work with.”

The screen’s 5.99-inches, but the whole phone feels so small because of the virtually non-existent bezels.

Image: RAYMOND WONG/MASHABLE

I’ve handed the Mi Mix 2 to several colleagues and they all were awestruck by how dense, and solid it felt. There’s just something about the slightly cold-to-the-touch ceramic back that just feels better than glass or metal. 

Xiaomi also says it applies an anti-fingerprint coating to the ceramic, but honestly they’re still quite visible on the mirrored finish. Another downside to ceramic: It’s incredibly slippery. I dropped the phone and dented a corner while photographing it. But putting a case over the Mi Mix 2 defeats the point of its design.

The Special Edition, all ceramic model, feels even better.

Image: raymond wong/mashable

Still, I can’t stress enough how nice the standard Mi Mix 2 looks and feels. Better yet, there’s going to be an even better model, the Mi Mix 2 Special Edition with a unibody ceramic case in place of the aluminum. I only had a few minutes to hold the SE model and it’s even more luxurious. The all-ceramic version will cost more than the aluminum/ceramic version, but Xiaomi didn’t say by how much.

Death to the “notch”

You won’t find a “notch” on the Mi Mix 2.

Image: RAYMOND WONG/MASHABLE

Stunning design aside, the Mi Mix 2 has a bezel-less edge-to-edge screen that sucks you in the second you power it on.

Like the original Mi Mix, the phone’s display stretches to the edges on three sides, with a single narrow bezel below the screen. It’s a design I’ve seen before on Sharp’s Aquos Crystal, but is all the more magnetic because the corners are rounded and there’s no notch that cuts into the display.

Not that the notch is a problem — I quickly stopped noticing it on the Essential phone — but it’s just aesthetically more pleasing without one. 

You’re basically holding just the screen.

Image: RAYMOND WONG/MASHABLE

The Mi Mix 2’s 5.99-inch screen is not OLED, and its resolution is only 2,160 x 1,080 (FHD+), but it never bothered me at all during my first week of testing. It’s still plenty bright and colors are vibrant thanks to DCI-P3 wide color gamut. While it’s no Note 8 display, it’s still better than the Essential Phone, which looks rather dim in comparison.

The display specs might disappoint the hardest-to-please of geeks, but it also means one perk: excellent battery life. I easily got up to 1.5 days of usage on a single charge from its 3,400 mAh battery. And besides, it comes with Quick Charge 3.0 so you can always top it off quickly if you need to.

Flagship features and specs

The fingerprint sensor might be the fastest I’ve ever used on a phone

Image: RAYMOND WONG/MASHABLE

The phone still uses ultrasonic proximity sensors in lieu of those ugly black dots found on all other phones, but the earpiece is now a regular one. Sung says Mi Mix users didn’t like how the piezoelectric speaker that vibrated sound off the glass display and into your ears dispersed sound in all directions instead of directly forward.

On the bottom “chin” bezel, you’ll find a selfie camera (more on that below) tucked in the bottom right corner. And around the back, there’s a fingerprint sensor that’s one of the fastest I’ve ever used (it seriously unlocks almost too fast) below the camera. 

Sadly, you won’t find a headphone jack or a memory card slot for expanding the internal storage. The Mi Mix 2 comes with 6GB of RAM and either 64, 128, or 256GB of storage, and the Mix 2 Special Edition with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. But why no headphone jack or card slot?  

Do you see the selfie camera tucked into the lower right corner?

Image: RAYMOND WONG/MASHABLE

Sung says they dropped the headphone jack because most of its users have already gone wireless. As for why there’s no storage expansion, he blames it on poor compatibility, the same reason why OnePlus’s phones don’t have them. “We feel memory cards are very prone to error and they’re one of the largest source of customer service complaints. So we don’t put memory card slots in our flagship phones.”

On the plus side, the Mi Mix does come with dual SIM card slots, if you really need to juggle two numbers and networks.

3D games are buttery smooth and look incredible.

Image: raymond wong/mashable

All of these features mean nothing if the phone’s slow and performance stinks. Fortunately, that’s not the case on the Mi Mix 2. It’s just as fast and smooth as any flagship Android phone. Underneath the hood, it’s powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 chip and 6GB of RAM. 

Xiaomi’s still crazy about its MIUI (version 9.0 now) interface that sits on top of Android 7.1.1 Nougat. I didn’t like it as much years ago when I reviewed the Mi Note and Mi 5, mainly because it looks like an iOS knockoff, but I can tolerate it now.

The Recent Apps UI looks like an old version of iOS’s App Switcher.

Image: RAYMOND WONG/MASHABLE

MIUI 9 has a minimalist design with nice flat icons, and some of the Xiaomi customizations like Quick Ball, a little floating onscreen button that resembles iOS’s onscreen accessibility button gives you shortcuts for things like opening the Recent Apps window and taking screenshots. There are a bunch more very small, tiny things you can turn on within the Settings app, but overall, I like how MIUI doesn’t slow anything down.

LTE speed is also solid so you’re definitely not getting gimped cellular antennas. I popped in my T-Mobile SIM card and ran the Speedtest app and got 27.92 Mbps download and 28.77 Mbps upload speeds. It’s about as fast as my iPhone 7, which 28.23 Mbps downloads and 29.64 Mbps uploads. An Essential Phone managed 27.76 Mbps downloads and 30.91 Mbps uploads. And the Galaxy Note 8 managed 31.19 Mbps download and 23.02 Mbps upload. 

Some sharp, pretty photos

The back camera has 12 megapixels with an f/2.0 aperture.

Image: RAYMOND WONG/MASHABLE

The Mi Mix 2’s cameras are good, but not what I’d call great. The 12-megapixel sensor is fast to shoot and autofocus is pretty quick, but I noticed details are a little soft and not as crisp as on an iPhone 7 or Samsung Galaxy S8 or Note 8. Colors are also on the muted side and not as vibrant. HDR processing is also slow and low-light photos have some noticeable image noise.

These things aren’t really as noticeable if you’re posting to Instagram, but on a computer screen, you can see the difference. If anything, perhaps a software update can fix these things.

Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 camera samples

  1. Image: RAYMOND WONG/MASHABLE
  2. Image: RAYMOND WONG/MASHABLE
  3. Image: RAYMOND WONG/MASHABLE
  4. Image: RAYMOND WONG/MASHABLE
  5. Image: RAYMOND WONG/MASHABLE

I’m a little disappointed there aren’t dual cameras — this is a flagship phone, after all — but Sung says they would rather have a really great single camera than a dual camera that is half-baked. There are many kinds of dual camera systems, and he thinks anything less than a wide-angle + telephoto, like on the iPhone 7 Plus or Note 8, is inferior. 

That said, if you really want dual cameras, then maybe get its Mi 6 phone instead.

Now, about those selfies. As I mentioned earlier, the selfie camera is located in the lower right corner. You can totally take a photo from that angle, but you probably won’t. I found my inner palm always blocked the lens (you won’t have this problem if you’re a leftie) and the angle (looking up into your nose) was always unflattering.

The age guesser within the camera app is a Xiaomi classic. It thinks I’m 15 with a hat on. I’ll take it!

Image: RAYMOND WONG/MASHABLE

Instead, the phone actually recommends flipping the phone upside down before taking selfies. It’s a minor annoyance, but once you get used to it, the camera’s up top and the angle’s correct again. (This is one reason why the Essential Phone has a notch for the selfie camera and the company wasn’t willing to move it to the bottom bezel.)

Xiaomi’s finally making moves

Image: RAYMOND WONG/MASHABLE

In Asia, Xiaomi products are hugely popular and getting more so as the company expands into more countries (it now sells phones in 40 countries compared to seven just two years ago). 

Its phones continue to sell out almost immediately. The Mi Note sold out in three minutes and the first batch of Mi Mix in 10 seconds. You may not have heard of Xiaomi in the U.S., but you will soon.

While the company still hasn’t officially started selling its phones in the U.S. — it’s dipped its toes in with fitness trackers, accessories, and the Mi Box, to name a few non-phone devices — it still plans to in the future. Xiaomi’s already selling phones in Mexico and some South American countries.

So what’s taking so long when its so popular worldwide? Sung says it comes down to resources. He says the U.S. phone market is extremely saturated compared to India, Indonesia, and Russia, three countries it’s expanded to and is quickly rising to the top in.

Supporting U.S. 4G LTE bands is a baby step, but an important one if ever wants to play in the U.S.

“When we look at a new market to enter, we look at a couple of things. The first thing we look at is the population of the country so it helps us understand the total addressable market. Obviously the U.S. is a very large market. We also look at the number of internet users and how fast that’s growing. Then, we look at how many of those users already know about Xiaomi and the Xiaomi brand.”

At seven, Xiaomi’s still pretty young. It doesn’t need to enter the U.S. to become a global tech superpower. There are plenty of big lakes to fish at, and that’s where it’s concentrating its efforts on.

But the U.S. is a market it can’t ignore forever. “We will enter the U.S. at some point in the future. Just not right now. We really want to make a big splash,” Sung says.

Xiaomi’s been towing this line for years, but it’s finally making the right moves. The Mi Mix 2 may not be sold through the company’s online store in the U.S., but if you really want it, it won’t be hard to find find it online some other way. Supporting U.S. 4G LTE bands is a baby step, but an important one if ever wants to play in the U.S.

I’ve reviewed several of Xiaomi’s previous phones, but I could never whole-heartedly recommend them because you couldn’t use them in the U.S., but now I can with the Mi Mix 2. It’s just so beautiful and unlike any other phone. 

Xiaomi Mi Mix 2

The Good

Ceramic back feels incredible • Flagship specs and performance • Finally supports U.S. 4G LTE networks • Sharp bezel-less display • Great battery life

The Bad

No water resistance • No headphone jack • No dual cameras • Camera takes soft photos

The Bottom Line

Xiaomi’s Mi Mix 2 is a ceramic sliver from the future, and best of all, finally works in the U.S. even if it’s not sold here.

WATCH: This tiny electric skateboard is perfect for getting you around town

Read more: http://mashable.com/2017/09/11/xiaomi-mi-mix-2-review/

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