Is the Xiaomi Mi 11 Pretending? - Durability Test! By JerryRigEverything

The Xiaomi Mi 11 has been causing a few wrinkles in the smartphone world, mostly due to it's ridiculous specs at a super low price point. The Mi 11 might look good on paper, it also might look good in real life, but today we're going to find out if it's good structurally, and how much abuse we can expect it to survive over it's lifetime. I've had a few Mi phones not survive my durability tests in the past, so this should be interesting. In my box I got a rather impressive 55 watt fast charger, which is definitely something else we need to talk about. Let's get started. At first glance, the Mi 11 looks a lot like other mainstream smartphones.

This color is called the Horizon Blue – aptly named with its golden sunrise vibe. Let's start out with the scratch test. This time around we won't get fooled by the included screen protector. While Samsung provides two, Xiaomi only applies one. At $600 this Mi 11 could fall into the 'everything is made from plastic' category.

Or it could all be glass. Plastic would start scratching at a Mohs 2 or 3, while glass would start scratching at a level 5 or 6. And, of course, sapphire would scratch at a level 8 or 9. I do hear rumors about another sapphire screen smartphone coming out later this year, but this Mi 11 is not it. Using Gorilla Glass Victus, we see scratches at a level 6, with deeper grooves at a level 7.

Perfectly on par with other flagships that are twice as expensive. The front facing camera is 20 megapixels with its little hole punch cut out. It's also got super curved glass along the side edges and the top edge, which isn't really my thing but I don't think it would bother me very much either. Something that does bother me though is people not putting their shopping carts away. Like for real, it's not that hard to do.

The sides of the Mi 11 are made from metal, which is good, along with the buttons. At $600 the body could go either way, metal or plastic, so it's nice to have an official verdict... Even though durability-wise we've found that plastic phones are just as structural as metal phones. So I 'm really fine either way, I just like knowing. The top of the phone does have it's IR blaster, along with, if we zoom in, some Harman/Kardon speakers.

Apparently Harman/Kardon is a premium speaker manufacturer who tuned Xiaomi's speakers and then let Xiaomi slap their brand name on the phone. Normally this is annoying because it raises the price, but it's hard to get mad at a phone that's still half the price of other professional flagships. There is a SIM card tray down at the bottom. No SD card slot, but there is room for two SIM cards. The thing that's most interesting to me though about this Mi 11 is the wireless charging.

We already know that the USB-C at the bottom can do 55 watts, which is a lot of power. Usually, in order to get numbers like that, the battery gets divided in half and each half is charged up at the same time. But we've never seen wireless charging at 50 watts, which is what the Mi 11's claiming. Since the back panel is made from glass, we can't see the wireless charging coil or those split batteries, but I am looking forward to seeing how it all works from the inside. We can see from the outside, however, the cameras.

Once again Xiaomi is using the 108 megapixel sensor, usually reserved for the professional world for Ultra phones that cost twice as much, but this is just a regular old Mi 11 using professional body parts. It also has a 13 megapixel ultra wide camera and a 5 megapixel macro camera. One thing I have a minor issue with is the underscreen fingerprint scanner. These have been common now for a few years, but for me they've never totally been foolproof since my hands seem to always be wet or dirty when I want to use it. And optical scanners aren't good in situations like that.

When I add my level 7 deeper grooves over the glass on top of the fingerprint scanner, it does seem to struggle a little bit more reading my fingerprint, but still does work most of the time... just not all the time. My fingers aren't perfect though so do keep that in mind. I would say that the biggest improvement on this phone that super nerds like us can appreciate is the screen. The 6.8 inch OLED display checks all the boxes at 1440p, 10 bits of color, and 120 Hertz refresh rate. And even though it's not technically a gaming phone, it has a 480 Hertz touch sampling rate, which means it's really quick at sensing your finger and is insanely fast.

For a nonprofessional phone this guy is probably been making a lot of professional phones nervous. And of course it lasts about 20 seconds under the heat from my lighter before going white and not totally recovering. Xiaomi says they have a new liquid cooling heat dissipation system inside which should be fun to check out. Speaking of which, the insides of the phone might very well be the outsides soon since Xiaomi doesn't always pass my bend tests. With the initial bend there was a small unnerving pop but no major catastrophic damage.

Flipping the phone over we get another small bend but nothing permanent, no kinks or cracks. Whether bent from the back or the front, this Xiaomi Mi 11 passes my durability test. In my opinion, judging by the specs, build quality and the price, the Mi 11 is a professional phone that's just pretending not to be. Nice work, Xiaomi. Hit that subscribe button if you haven't already so we can see that 50 watt wireless charging and cooling system during the teardown video.

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Source : JerryRigEverything