WHAT do you do when an upcoming smartphone’s own designer releases a concept video of the said device? Believe that the end product will be close to what’s in the clip, of course.

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French designer Philippe Starck, who was tapped by Xiaomi for the Mi MIX project and is now back onboard to help design the Xiaomi Mi MIX 2, has published this concept video of the successor to the first MIX.

Concept video of the Xiaomi Mi MIX 2

The caption, “Even less,” suggests that if you think the bezels of the Mi MIX are insanely thin, then be prepared to be amazed by the Mi MIX 2. And the clip posted on Starck’s official Facebook page confirms this. The bezels are indeed thinner than ever, chucking out about half of the one found at the bottom of the original Xiaomi Mi MIX. To say that it looks good is an understatement.

It seems that the front camera is still in the same place as on the first MIX smartphone: at the bottom right of the lower bezel. A USB Type-C connection is present as well.

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Announced in China in October 2016, the Xiaomi Mi MIX popularized almost-bezel-less displays. It features a 6.4-inch screen with 1080 x 2040-pixel resolution, 16- and 5-megapixel rear and selfie cameras, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 chip, a 4,400mAh battery, and the Android Marshmallow-based MIUI 8 interface.

Two variants are available: one with 4GB of RAM and 128GB of internal storage — which was priced ¥3,499 (roughly P26,975 or $524) at launch — and the other with 6GB of RAM and 256 GB of built-in memory, which cost ¥3,999 (P30,829 or $599) back then.

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The Xiaomi Mi MIX 2, on the other hand, is rumored to come with 3D facial recognition, a 6.4-inch AMOLED display with 2,540 x 1,440-pixel resolution, 19- and 13-megapixel back and front cameras, a Snapdragon 835 processor, a 4,500mAh battery, and MIUI 9, which is based on Android Nougat. These are its alleged prices and configurations:

• 4GB RAM + 128GB of internal storage: priced at $848.91 (P43,660);
• 6GB RAM + 128GB of internal storage: priced at $951.37 (P48,930); and
• 8GB RAM + 256GB of internal storage: priced at $1,094.81 (P56,307).

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If we were you, we’d take those prices with a grain of salt. But that concept video? Again, there’s an almost 100 percent chance that what you’ve seen there is close to what you’ll be getting when the Xiaomi Mi MIX 2 is announced a month or two from now.

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