Xiaomi Mi Mix 4 or Mi Mix Fold could cost over US$1,500 of your folding money but is likely to feature under-display camera technology

Xiaomi boss Lei Jun has been quizzing his followers on Chinese social media, starting with the somewhat telling question, “if Xiaomi released a high-end mobile phone for ten thousand yuan, would you buy it?”. He also offered up a follow-on question, “if we're going to make a high-end phone that's overpriced, what should it look like?”, with the machine translation of “overpriced” being arguably synonymous with “more expensive than usual”. Unsurprisingly, many of his fans would be prepared to pay up such a sum for a Xiaomi smartphone, as long as it delivered value for money and offered years of software support.

There was also considerable speculation about what phone this 10,000-yuan (US$1,548/€1,289) flagship could be, with mentions of “Mi Mix” and “foldable” being reasonably abundant. There have been plenty of signs of Xiaomi preparing to release a Mi Mix Fold, with a foldable smartphone from the company appearing in some leaked spy-shots recently. There’s also a successor to the Mi Mix line apparently in the works, with the Mi Mix 4 turning up in code not too long ago. Of course, it’s even possible Xiaomi’s foldable smartphone and the Mi Mix 4 are one and the same device, with the Mi Mix line being noted for innovation.

Followers offered a bit of a wishlist for this costly device: Snapdragon 888 at least, 2K screen (from Samsung), 120 W fast charge, 5,000-mAh battery, 10x optical zoom, IP68 waterproof rating, 120 Hz refresh rate, etc. There were also requests for an under-display camera at the front, and the image accompanying Lei Jun’s post does hint at this. The smartphone shape might be a meaningless render but it doesn’t have a punch-hole cutout, so this may be a hint that this potential 10,000-yuan smartphone will sport Xiaomi’s vaunted third-generation under-display camera technology. The Mi Mix 4 is expected to feature a full-screen display, and there was no sign of a selfie camera in the leaked live images of the Xiaomi foldable.

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