XIAOMI MI 11 REVIEW: AN ALMOST PERFECT TOP OF THE RANGE

Aiming for the best performance or looking for a compromise with the price? A difficult dilemma for Xiaomi, because a top of the range, as such, should have the best technologies available. The Chinese house, however, owes its success to the always excellent balance between quality and cost , a goal that is easier to achieve in the mid-range than in the high-end.

The new Mi 11 is a smartphone that was born in the sign of compromise, necessary to maintain the same selling price as last year, an " almost top of the range " that contains some of the most advanced hardware solutions but which, for force of things, he has to leave something on the street.

Complete package, nice design but no IP68

Xiaomi has decided to differentiate itself from competitors thanks to a sales package complete with everything . Inside we find in fact a transparent cover and a 55W charger , which allows the smartphone to be recharged in about 45 minutes. At a time when smartphone manufacturers tend to remove accessories from sales packs, Xiaomi focuses on completeness, even if headphones are missing.

Once the smartphone is picked up, the two elements that strike are the weight and thickness, as well as the balance. With its 196 grams it is certainly not light, but having tried several top of the range released in the last year they seem almost few, not to mention that the thickness of 8.1 mm increases the feeling of being in front of a smaller phone than what it is. reality is.

On the materials front, Xiaomi has done an excellent job, also here in the name of the right balance with costs, using metal for the frame and two types of glass, the Gorilla Glass 5 for the backcover and the new Gorilla Glass Victus for the display. , the latter very durable and resistant, and which we have already seen in the review of the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra .

Too bad, however, that resistance to liquids and dust is missing, another element sacrificed on the altar of cost containment. The display features a small hole for the camera on the top left, while the fingerprint reader is installed at the bottom. In this regard, during the presentation, the Chinese house showed an interesting function, namely the detection of the heartbeat , which will only come with a future update. Too bad that the recognition of the fingerprint is not always accurate, just apply a more decisive pressure than that used when saving the impression to incur a failure to unlock. In general, it is a step backwards compared to the fingerprint reader we tested on the Galaxy S21 Ultra, which is much more precise and responsive.

In the backcover Xiaomi has decided to give a little more personality to the phone through a camera module with a different appearance than usual , a trend that we have already seen in other devices and that promises to be central for the phones arriving during the year on the design front. The opaque glass that covers the backcover discreetly resists fingerprints, even if we have seen better.

The SIM trolley supports two and is installed in the lower edge, together with the USB Type C socket (version 2.0) and the main speaker, which works in tandem with the ear capsule to generate a stereo effect.

The collaboration with Harman Kardon is felt all, we are faced with a phone with a powerful sound and which does not lack even the bass, difficult to achieve with cases of such small dimensions: this is one of the strengths of the Mi 11, which stands out from the crowd in this area.

Top hardware and screen, average autonomy

Xiaomi had to make compromises to keep the price lower, with the processor and the screen, however this did not happen. Under the body there is in fact a brand new Snapdragon 888 , the best processor, together with the Exynos 2100, arrived in this first part of the year.

It is an Octa Core with a maximum frequency of 2.84 GHz on a single core, with Adreno 660 GPU. The performance of this CPU is high in every area, from normal use to gaming, in general there is no application that can exploit it to maximum and this is a shame: the power available in smartphones increases from year to year but there are few apps that can really benefit from it, even in the gaming field there is nothing that pushes the Snapdragon 888 to the maximum.

This year Qualcomm has decided to increase the temperatures of use of its processor, in some conditions therefore the dissipation system developed by Xiaomi, very valid, discharges the excess heat on the body , making it feel on the hands. This is a condition that only occurred in the test context, during the launch of multiple continuous benchmark cycles, but which rarely occurs in daily use. A little heat on the body can be felt under certain circumstances but nothing to worry about. Together with the processor there are 8 GB of RAM at 3200 MHz and 128 GB of internal memory of the UFS 3.1 type. There are also all the connection standards available today, from 5G with modem integrated in the SoC, to Wi-Fi 6, together with Bluetooth 5.2 and NFC.

The feedback on the processor is therefore positive, however the leap forward compared to the Snapdragon 865 and 865+, although present on paper, is not perceived in practice, a factor to be taken into account in the coming years: it makes sense to increase performance if this is not do they have any impact in the vast majority of uses? Isn't it better to improve efficiency, on the other hand, thus improving autonomy? Questions that we hope CPU and smartphone manufacturers also ask themselves.

Another strong point of this Mi 11 is certainly the screen, a 6.81 inch AMOLED with WQHD + resolution and variable refresh from 30 to 120 Hz, with aspect ratio 20: 9 and support for HDR10 +. This panel is able to reach 1500 nits peak, remaining perfectly visible even under sunlight, and has excellent responsiveness, thanks to the Touch Sampling Rate of 480 Hz.

Characterized by very thin edges, the screen of the Mi 11 manages to best represent all types of content , all with a color fidelity at the top of the category.

On the autonomy front, on the other hand, the Mi 11 defends itself discreetly, without however standing out. The 4600 mAh battery always manages to make it to the end of the day but nothing more, however fast charging is an important plus , which makes the presence of a larger accumulator less essential. The choice of 4600 mAh is not accidental, Xiaomi has tried to balance the duration and thickness of the device as best as possible, until there are smaller and more capacious batteries it is difficult to do more.

Cameras and software

Compared to the more expensive top of the range there is only one thing missing from the photographic sector of the Mi 11: the zoom. No periscope optics, the magnification capacity is reduced, however this is another choice that has allowed us to maintain the lowest price, without sacrificing the quality of the shots. The main sensor is 108 Megapixel and is manufactured by Samsung, with aperture f / 1.85, seven-lens optics and OIS stabilizer. This is a sensor with great potential but difficult to manage, Samsung knows something about it given the not always excellent results obtained with the S20 Ultra. However, Xiaomi was good at keeping the problems that characterized it last year at bay, especially in the speed of focus, excellent in this Mi 11.

We strongly advise against the use of the full 108 Megapixel mode , which generates huge and difficult to keep images, better to use the automatic one, which through pixel binning generates still large photos, from 27 Megapixels, which can then be zoomed in without too many problems. case of need. The quality is very high and the sensor manages to capture a lot of details , all with a good color balance, both day and night.

Next to the main sensor there is a 13 Megapixel wide-angle cam, with an f / 2.4 aperture. The color rendering is similar to that of the main camera, however we are faced with a sensor that does not stand out particularly, reaching the levels we have seen in many medium-high-end smartphones released in recent months. In short, positive feedback, but nothing that can shift the balance. The situation is different for the camera dedicated to macros, from 5 Megapixel with opening f / 2.4. The shots taken with this cam are excellent compared to the average, of many phones we have seen with a similar module it is certainly the best.

Despite this, after more then days of use, we have never felt the need to use this cam , difficult to find the opportunity and the right context in which to exploit it. Finally, there is the 20 Megapixel front cam, which manages to take good quality selfies even in low light conditions.

On the video front, the main camera goes up to 8K at 30 fps but much better to stay on 4K at 60 or 30 fps, which maintains excellent quality and excellent stabilization, albeit not at the level of that seen on the S21 Ultra and on iPhone 12 Pro. Still on the video front, Xiaomi has added the possibility of using different effects managed by the Snapdragon 888 ISP, which allow for example to clone the subject of the video in real time, or to zoom in with a cinematic style. They work well, however it is not easy to find them in the application dedicated to the camera and the shots must be done with precision to obtain good results.

 

Speaking of software, Mi 11 arrives with pre-installed Android 11 and MIUI 12.0.2.0 customization, at the time of writing the update to 12.0.3.0 is already available. We got along well with the OS of the Chinese house, really full of options and constantly updated. Some graphic bugs are encountered here and there and there have also been a couple of Chrome crashes, not to mention that pre-installed there are several unwanted applications , which must be deleted manually. Then there is no desktop mode, seen in Samsung and Huawei smartphones. Something more on the software front could be done, however the MIUI is updated often, it is no coincidence that version 12.0.5 will bring important news.