【1979 Archives】

Xiaomi979 Archivesprobably the only company who'd dare launch a new flagship phone one day before Apple's big iPhone announcement.

But the Chinese smartphone maker has done it in style. The company launched the Mi Mix 2, a beautiful, nearly bezel-less device with pretty crazy specs and a moderate price.

Just like its predecessor, the Mi Mix, Xiaomi's Mi Mix 2 has a huge screen with a very narrow bezel on top and on the sides. The only noticeable bezel rim, really, is the chin, where the selfie camera resides. That detail will probably cause many to sigh in disappointment, but read on -- this phone is quite interesting despite the awkward selfie cam placement.

The Mi Mix 2 has a 5.99-inch, 18:9 screen, with a hidden speaker (interestingly, the company gave up on the piezoelectric speaker solution from the original Mi Mix) on top. The package is so compact that the phone is actually 11.9% smaller than the Mi Mix, which itself had an incredibly slim bezel (though truth be told, the original had a significantly larger 6.44-inch screen).

The phone is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor, pretty much standard for Android flagships these days, and 6GB of RAM as well as 64/128/256 GB of storage.

And if that's not enough, you can get the Mi Mix 2 Special Edition, which has a ceramic body and has an insane 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage.

Interestingly, the Mi Mix 2 only has a single, 12-megapixel camera on the back, despite the fact that some other Xiaomi smartphones have a dual rear camera.

In fact, Xiaomi launched its Mi Note 3 alongside the Mi Mix today, which has a bokeh-capable, dual camera setup on the back, a 16-megapixel selfie cam, a 5.5-inch display and a 3,500mAh battery.

But back to the Xiaomi Mi Mix 2. The 64GB version of the phone costs 3299 RMB ($506); the 128GB version costs 3599 RMB ($552), and the 256GB variant costs 3999 RMB ($614).

The Special Edition version costs 4,699 RMB ($721). That's not as affordable as some previous Xiaomi phones, but it's still cheaper than most flagships of this calibre.

And best of all, the Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 will work in pretty much every market thanks to its 43 LTE bands -- something its predecessor didn't have. It'll launch in China on Sept. 15; we don't have the exact date or the pricing for other markets yet.