KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 13 — The thing about the Mi MIX 2 is that for what it costs, it shouldn’t look as good as it does.

For just under RM2,000, this phone is the follow-up to Xiaomi’s first attempt at making everyone make their phone screens wider.

A first look

While the first Mi MIX was a stunner but limited in availability and prohibitively expensive, the second time around the price is right and the screen is lovely.

Despite many phones now being in the sub-RM2,000 bracket and offering the new screen paradigm of an edge-to-edge display the Xiaomi MIX 2 is a real contender.

Designer Philippe Starck had a hand in the first MIX as well as its successor and the care to its design is obvious. While the rest of Xiaomi’s phones aren’t exactly hideous, the Mi MIX 2’s design screams premium.

It says something when someone already jaded by handling most of this year’s flagship phones can still say, “Oh this is gorgeous.”

It was Xiaomi who made bezel-less phones sexy – phones that had their screens take up almost all of the front with barely any extra surface area. While Samsung’s Galaxy Note 8 might have this year’s best screen, the Mi MIX 2 is the Miss World to the Note 8’s Miss Universe. It’s that gorgeous.

The 5.99-inch display takes up nearly all of the front of the phone with even the front camera moved to the bottom so as not to disturb the visual aesthetic of the top of the phone though there’s still a portion at the bottom of the phone to grip.

A combination of ceramic and aluminium, the build quality is undeniably good – you would think it costs at least 1.5 times the price. Of course the gorgeous IPS screen, protected by Gorilla Glass 4, makes it both beautiful and durable.

Quirky camera

Remember that front camera? Xiaomi moved it to the bottom of the phone so to take a selfie you need to flip the phone upside down. It’s somewhat hilarious and can result in some fumbling.

Still, the results of the back and front camera are decent though not amazing. In the back, you get a 12MP camera with OIS while the front has a 5MP camera with no flash, sadly.

The cameras aren’t in the league of Samsung’s higher-end Galaxy series and Huawei’s Honor 8 Pro. But so far as social media sharing goes, they do the job and thanks to the high-end specs, the fast autofocus provides  decent performance outdoors and you also get passable low light pictures.

Power under the hood

For RM2,199, you get a high-end Snapdragon 835 octa-core processor and 6GB of RAM as well as 64GB of storage. Throw in the 3400mAh battery and that’s a lot of power for the price.

With all the memory and that processor, the Mi MIX 2 can comfortably handle whatever application you throw at it. And it delivered as far as the battery life was concerned despite the huge screen — it could last about a day before needing to be charged.

To buy or not to buy?

If you want the best camera, this might not be the best phone. But if you want an all-rounder and plenty of power for your money, the Mi MIX 2 might fit the bill. What can’t be denied is that it easily ranks in the top three of the year’s best-looking phones. You want a gorgeous screen without an ugly bill? Then the Mi Mix 2 is hard to beat.