Xiaomi phones are known for their exceptional value proposition. You can always find the latest specs and features in a flagship phone from Xiaomi, and it won’t cost an arm and a leg. It’s something you don’t see often nowadays, when $ 1,000 became the standard price for next-generation hardware. But that’s not how Xiaomi works. With the Mi 11, Xiaomi has one of the best flagship phones on the market, offering killer specifications and great value, unless you’re in the United States.
Design, hardware, what’s in the box
The construction of the Xiaomi Mi 11 is typical of a Xiaomi phone. It has a frameless design with a hole punch in the upper left corner. The Mi 11 has a curved screen, but instead of the classic left-right curve, they opted for a quad curve. This places a slight curve in the glass at the top and bottom of the screen, as well as on the sides. In the corners, Xiaomi bends the metal to help protect the screen, so I don’t think it will be more fragile than most phones. I think this quadruple curve is a little better for sliding up and down to see notifications, so I’m willing to take the risk.
The Mi 11 screen is a 6.81 inch, 1440p and 120hz AMOLED screen with 10-bit color. The 10-bit display means that it can produce 1.07 billion colors compared to 16.7 million colors on an 8-bit display. The peak brightness of 1500 nit puts it on the same level as the S21 Ultra, making it one of the brightest monitors on the market. The Mi 11 also has a touch sampling rate of 480 Hz. This should make everything, especially games, look more responsive. Honestly, I couldn’t tell the difference between 480 Hz on the Mi 11 and 240 Hz on phones like the S21 Ultra, OnePlus 8 Pro or OPPO Find X3 Pro.
The build quality of the device is very good. The chassis is all glass and aluminum – no plastic frame like the OnePlus 9. The Mi 11 looks as premium as most major phones, but still not as solid as something like the Galaxy S21 Ultra or iPhone 12 Pro.
The Mi 11 has an optical fingerprint reader on the display that is very fast and also functions as a heart rate monitor. Using the Xiaomi Health app, you can keep your finger on the fingerprint reader for about 15 seconds and it will record your heart rate. It also needs to be about ± 3 bpm from my Apple Watch.
I absolutely love what Xiaomi did with haptics. The haptic engine is one of the best I’ve ever felt, which I would say is almost as good as Apple’s Taptic engine. There is effective tactile feedback spread across the UI. When you are scrolling and accessing the top or bottom of the page, a soft humming occurs so that you know it is there. When using the fingerprint reader, it vibrates while you hold it and finally emits a good explosion as soon as it is unlocked. When moving the icons on the home screen or removing them, the haptics correspond almost perfectly to the UI and animations. It’s such a small feature, but it makes the phone a lot more enjoyable to use.
The global model of the Mi 11 has a 55W charger in the box, something that Apple and Samsung cannot say. Along with that, it has a clear plastic box and the usual manuals in the box. There is nothing really surprising here.
Software, performance and battery
I know that many will disagree with me on this, but I think the MIUI 12 based on Android 11 is one of the best Android ROMs today. From visual design to personalization, it’s just wonderful to use. It’s one of the fastest and smoothest versions of Android I’ve ever used, and Xiaomi doesn’t include a lot of redundant Xiaomi-branded apps, relying on standard Google apps whenever possible. There are about 10 applications and bloatware games, which are incredibly annoying to see included in phones in 2021, but they can be uninstalled.
I’m happy with MIUI 12, but Xiaomi is launching MIUI 12.5 soon with less CPU usage and better battery life. Xiaomi is also adding a dedicated rendering thread for the UI, to give the already smooth interface a little more speed. MIUI 12.5 even allows you to uninstall or remove all applications except the seven main ones on the system. It’s not a major makeover, but it should make the phone even better, and it’s nice to know that Xiaomi is working to let these phones age harmoniously. This is especially good because Xiaomi is not promising more than 2 Android and security updates. It usually backports newer versions of MIUI to older versions of Android, but this is an incomplete way to update phones.
Although I am a fan of MIUI, the ads shown in some regions are an ongoing frustration. I don’t receive any ads on my European model defined for the US as a location, but they are prevalent in some markets and seeing ads for different apps while installing apps is just annoying. It is usually very easy to disable them, especially in India, where there is a dedicated option. Even with the opt-out, there is no reason to have ads built into a $ 750 phone.
As for performance, the Mi 11 is as fast as any other Snapdragon 888 phone. There is no slowness or stuttering and apps load almost instantly. I realized that the phone was heating up with extended tasks, like recording a video or taking lots of pictures, but it wasn’t uncomfortable or worrying. I don’t play many games on my phones, but when I loaded Fortnite, it worked well at the highest settings. It got a little toasted, but it didn’t stutter or dropped frames.
MIUI has historically had a very aggressive RAM management, and that still seems to be true. I wouldn’t be able to close any music apps in the background, but when I open my email, Twitter or even Chrome after a few minutes, everything will reload when I open it again.
Battery performance is good, allowing me to spend most of the day, but I occasionally had to recharge it before bed. Charging is really fast at 55W (wired) charging with the included charger. I would fully charge the phone in about 50 minutes in most of my tests. The phone also supports 50W wireless charging with Xiaomi’s custom charger (which unfortunately I don’t have to test). Xiaomi says it should take about 50 minutes to fully charge the Mi 11 wirelessly at 50W, however. By USB PD, it ends up using only Qualcomm fast charging technology at 18W.
Cameras
Xiaomi put the one-year-old Samsung ISOCELL HMX sensor on this phone. It has 4 in 1 pixel binning and produces 27.1MP photos, producing detailed photos in well-lit situations, but the quality decreases in the worst light, resulting in dark and diffuse photos. The dynamic range is good, but it does have some problems with extreme highlights and shadows.
With the Mi 11, Xiaomi has spent a lot of time focusing on videos and tricks around it. There are some magical movie modes that are fun to play with (and make good TikToks), but that’s about it. On the most useful and professional side, Xiaomi supports video recording in a PRO LOG format, which does not apply pitch and extends the dynamic range for better editing. It’s all very good for video.
I am impressed with the main sensor, but the ultra-wide and telemacro cameras leave me indifferent. The ultra-wide lacks details compared to other phones. The telemacro is a strange combination of the macro and the telephoto camera, which seems to work well as a macro camera, but not as well as a telephoto shooter. Xiaomi increases the sensor from 5 MP to 12 MP for the telemacro, only increasing the general strangeness of the camera. Xiaomi could really have used a suitable telephoto camera and a closer focal point in the ultra-wide, like most of the other flagships this year.
What i would truth I liked to see it is better software integration with apps like Snapchat, Instagram and TikTok. These apps are very important and, honestly, the camera looks like crap when using these apps. You shouldn’t have to figure out how to record on the main camera, export from there and then import to another application to be able to get great image quality in some of the most popular applications worldwide.
You must buy?
Yes, if you are not in the U.S. The Mi 11 is one of the best phones I have ever used. Even though it is not the top of the Mi 11 product line, it easily competes with the OnePlus 9 Pro, S21 Ultra and Find X3 Pro.
If this phone supported United States networks, I would probably do this on a daily basis until the Mi 11 Ultra or Mi 12 is released. I like it so much that I will tolerate the lack of cell phone bands in the United States. I can connect to the T-Mobile network, but most of the time it is 3G and has almost unusable speeds. He only gets LTE occasionally for me, and US 5G is not supported. If you are in a city, it may work a little better, but you should just buy a phone designed to work on mobile networks in the United States.
For $ 750 (£ 649.00), I think this phone has a very good value. It is still expensive compared to some other Xiaomi devices, but it is probably the best value on current Snapdragon 888 phones. Despite the system announcements and the weird telemacro camera, I still recommend the Mi 11 to anyone in Europe or Asia looking for the latest mobile hardware without breaking the bank.
Buy if …
- Do you want a good cheap camera
- Do you like the MIUI interface like me
Don’t buy if …
- Do you live in the USA
- Do you want 3 or more years of Android updates