For the past 15 months or so, the dominant design trait of many smartphones has been the notch. The notch, which has various shapes and sizes depending on which phone you’re looking at, allows phone makers to put a larger screen inside a phone and still include the necessary front-facing camera and earpiece speaker. But it’s safe to say that the notch is not universally liked — in fact, it’s perhaps the most polarizing design trait in years.

So this year, phone makers are going out of their way to avoid the notch, while still providing a large, edge-to-edge screen on their devices. We’ve seen hole-punch designs, phones with two screens, and even phones that fold in half. In other words, the desire to avoid the notch has made phone design get weird, as Lauren Goode noted in Wired last week.

One such design attempt is to bring back the slider, as Xiaomi has done with the Mi Mix 3, announced late last year and recently hitting shelves in the UK and Europe. The slider design allows for an edge-to-edge screen with no cutout, because the camera hardware is hidden behind the screen until you need it. Once you’re done taking a selfie, you can hide the camera away and enjoy your full, uninterrupted screen. Rumors are circulating that the next OnePlus phone will have a similar sliding design and I wouldn’t be surprised if we see it crop up a few more times from companies like Oppo and Vivo this year.

At first glance, the slider design addresses the problems of the notch and even the hole-punch display rather nicely. The Mi Mix 3 has a completely uninterrupted 6.4-inch screen that stretches all the way to the top and sides of the phone, with a slightly thicker border at the bottom.

In order to use the front-facing camera, you have to slide the whole screen down about a half inch. That reveals the camera and launches the camera app into selfie mode.

The process is quick: push the screen down, the camera app launches right away, and if you have the sound turned on, there’s a little electronic sound effect. Snap the screen back up and the camera app closes automatically. You can even do it right from the launch screen.

The Mi Mix 3 is a bit different than the Oppo Find X or Vivo NEX, both of which have powered motors to raise and lower the camera module — this is all manual. It feels a bit like the sliding keyboard mechanisms on old messenger phones or, more recently, the BlackBerry Priv. Give it a little push and a spring helps push the screen down all the way.

All of that sounds good, but in practice, the sliding feature on the Mi Mix 3 can be awkward to use. This is a big phone, and opening the camera one-handed without dropping it can be hard to do. Since I have to slide the screen down with my thumb, it’s less natural than, say, the Priv, which I push up to reveal the keyboard. I also have to move my pinkie out of the way so the screen can actually move down.

On top of that, when I touch the screen to push it up or down, I often select something by mistake, open the notification tray, or move an icon around on my home screen without meaning to. You might be able to get proficient at doing this with practice, but after a few weeks of using the phone, it’s still super awkward for me.

The slider design makes the phone thicker and heavier, without increasing battery capacity

There are other compromises with this, too. The slider mechanism makes the phone thicker and heavier than other phones, and you don’t get a giant battery like you might expect with a thick and heavy phone. The slider is also a possible point of failure — it’s not as delicate as the motorized mechanisms on the Oppo or Vivo, but it’s definitely got more moving parts than, say, an iPhone, and it could certainly get jammed up if you get enough dust or gunk in there.

It also means it’s hard to make a case that really, fully protects the whole phone. Xiaomi includes a simple snap-on plastic case in the box with the Mi Mix 3, but I wouldn’t expect there to be many other options available.

So even though this sliding design eliminates the compromise of the notch, it introduces a lot of other compromises which, in my opinion, are worse. Fortunately, the Mi Mix 3’s back camera isn’t hidden by the slider and there’s a standard fingerprint scanner on the back, so the only time you really need to use the slider is to take selfies.

But you still have to deal with a thick and heavy phone that only has average battery life, and you have to worry about whether or not that slider mechanism is going to break someday. Much like the hole-punch design, which just offsets the cutout to the side, or a folding phone design that’s thick and clumsy, the slider doesn’t solve the problem of the notch so much as introduce other problems. I’ll stick with the notch for now.