Doogee Mix 2 review – in pictures

Doogee calls the Mix 2 a “bezel-less” smartphone. In pictures it looks about as exciting as a Samsung Galaxy S9, but only costs about £200/$200. The Mix 2 also has monster specs for the price and there’s no plastic in sight. Sounds a dream, right? Unfortunately the reality is a bit less appealing. This is a chunky beast of a phone, with camera autofocus that isn’t great – and in the metal, it doesn’t really look like it does in Doogee’s rendered pictures. Cheeky. However, it’s still good value if you want a phone with a massive screen, and lasts a long time between charges.

Doogee Mix 2 Design & build: Not quite bezel-free

Look at the official site and Doogee sells you the idea of a bezel-free phone, just like recent top-end Samsungs. In person, though, there’s actually a fair bit of space around the screen. Not as much as other similarly-priced phones, of course, but Doogee is still selling something different to what it actually delivers. And that’s a bummer. That said, there’s glass on the front and back, and the sides are aluminium rather than plastic. For all the disappointment of the not-really-bezel-less design, the Mix2’s front is still mostly screen.

Doogee Mix 2 Design & build: Heavyweight

The Mix 2 is also very heavy, weighing in at 219g according to our scales. That’s 30g heavier than the Samsung Galaxy S9+ it wants to seem a match for. Sure, there’s a bigger battery here, but the greater weight also points to less careful design. The relatively rectangular design adds to the impression of heft, too. Get those design bits out of the way, though, and there’s plenty to like. The Mix 2 has a fast fingerprint scanner on the back, 64GB of storage to play with, and the phone feels solid. And not just because of the weight.

Doogee Mix 2 screen & sound: A 6-inch show off

That screen is huge, too. It’s a 6in, 2160×1080 LCD panel with the en vogue ultra-wide shape. It’s sharp, colours are vivid and there are no obvious tells of any major cheaping-out with the panel. Contrast and brightness are both decent. There are a few issues, though: the automatic brightness is all over the shop and there’s a significant blue shift to the white balance. As for sound? It might have two grilles on the bottom edge, but there’s only one speaker driver hiding behind them and sound quality is just OK.

Doogee Mix 2 OS & software: MediaTek fest

The Mix 2 runs Android 7.1.1, not the latest Oreo version, and it has a light MediaTek-made skin on top that makes a few minor, but annoying, changes. Animated transitions between screens are far more obvious here, cheapening the look of the software. There are custom icons, the settings menu looks a little less professional than normal, and this interface makes almost zero use of the extra screen space. Only four rows of icons fit into the Mix2’s apps menu, making them look like a handful of Cheerios floating lonely in a bowl of milk. It also feels more sluggish than vanilla Android, or any of the best custom interfaces.

Doogee Mix 2 performance: Decent

Given all the MediaTek software on-board, you’ve probably guessed the Mix 2 has a MediaTek CPU. It has eight Cortex-A53 cores, just like almost every well-known phone at the price, and produces the performance you’d expect. It is paired with a massive 6GB RAM, but peering into the memory usage stats reveals that the phone rarely seems to use all that much of it. Still, it roughly matches the Moto G5S Plus for gaming power, and actually beats the rival Huawei P Smart.

Doogee Mix 2 battery life: Whopping

The Mix 2 has a such a giant battery, it’s almost enough to make you forgive its weight problem. The 4060mAh cell is 1060mAh bigger than the Moto G5S Plus’s, and it means you can abuse this thing all day and it won’t conk out. After a full day of heavy use, including well over an hour of solid web browsing, a few hours of podcast streaming, some gaming and the usual WhatsApp messaging, the Mix 2 still had 37% charge left at midnight. It’ll also last for about 15 hours of movie playback if you have files stored on your phone. This is the kind of stamina you want.

Doogee Mix 2 camera: Missed opportunity

The Mix 2 packs four cameras: two on the back, two on the front. It’s just a shame that they are so frustrating to use. The hardware is clearly capable of some great results, and when you’re already focused there’s almost no shutter lag – but the software and optimisation doesn’t nearly bring the best out of the hardware. Even in daylight shots have a haze of fine noise over them, a sure sign that limited processing is happening. There’s also nothing like the auto HDR optimisation you’ll find on more costly phones.

Doogee Mix 2 verdict: Beaten by Huawei

The Mix 2 is big. It’s heavy. And its camera and software don’t have the optimised feel of a phone from one of the big names. This will easily be enough to put a large chunk of you off buying one. However, you also get a lot of screen and storage for the cash – and the battery life is great if you’re tired of a phone that runs out of charge before bedtime. The Honor 9 Lite is still the better phone overall, though – and it’s a lot easier to come by.