Xiaomi dares to go fabric-backed with its woven nylon Mix Flip

What’s your favorite material to feel when you’re holding a phone? Durable, resilient plastic? Cool, firm, (explosion-proof) metal? Occasionally we’ll outfit our phone in cases made with something more exotic, like fabric or wood, but it’s increasingly rare that we ever get a phone itself crafted from such materials. Still, “rare” doesn’t mean “never,” and just this week we say Xiaomi introduce its new Mix Flip foldable in, among other finishes, a woven nylon option. Now founder and CEO Lei Jun is talking a little about that choice on X, while showing off the ultimate design.

The Mix Flip is Xiaomi’s first attempt with this clamshell foldable form factor, and it sure seems to be pulling out all the stops for this effort. On the top half of the phone, that means equipping it with an expansive edge-to-edge exterior display that gives Samsung and Motorola a run for their money. But today we’re looking at the bottom half, and while our hands-on focused on the phone’s more traditional exposed-metal variants, the hardware also comes in this nylon fiber edition.

Checking out the images Lei shares, this option looks pretty dang smart. The texture, while monochromatic, still has some fun with a basic pattern, and we can’t help but look at this hardware and think how nice it must feel to hold. Lei identifies this as an in-house Xiaomi nylon that “retains the soft, smooth feel of natural nylon, while demonstrating incredible durability.” (Don’t ask us what “natural” is supposed to mean in the context of fully synthetic, man-made nylon, either.)

Nylon is, indeed, a pretty durable plastic — though that’s largely when we’re thinking about it in bulk, solid form. Woven into fine threads like this, we can’t help but feel a little concerned that the smooth, silky finish will inevitably start fraying away over time. That’s one problem when we’re talking about a fabric-backed case, but another entirely when it’s a $1,200 smartphone.

How will the Mix Flip hold up a few months down the road? We very much look forward to finding out.