Xiaomi Mi 11: A 2021 review! By Ryan-Thomas

When Damien Wilde sent over his Xiaomi me 11 for me to review. It was something that I was really looking forward to. I always liked the looks of one of these and to put it through its paces, made me pretty eager to try it out, however, spoiler alert, although the mi 11 is a fantastic smartphone at 699 pounds in a very competitive space at the moment, is it worth buying and picking up over its competition? Well, hey, I'm Ryan, Thomas, and thanks for Damian wild for sending out this review unit. Today we're going to answer that question. As I mentioned in the intro there, you can get one of these brand new for around 700 pounds, which might sound like a lot of money, but today for a high-end smartphone, that's just kind of the going rate you can pay above a thousand for a hyper premium, one you can pay sort of 500 for a flagship killer or what might have been known as a flagship killer before so 700 pounds is around the starting point: you'll be getting sort of the iPhone 12, the OnePlus 9, with some extra storage stuff like that for this kind of money, that's some stiff competition for a brand that isn't well recognized for quality over here in the UK. A lot of my friends and family who buy Xiaomi smartphones, buy them because they're, cheap and relatively reliable, not because they're specific flagship smartphones that they want to spend all their money on.

If they've got a lot of money to spend, they tend to either buy a Samsung or an iPhone. This one, though, does have all the flagship, buzzwords and specs that you'd expect from a high-end device, including the top-of-the-range snapdragon 888 processors.8 or 12 gigs of ram 128 or 256 gigs of storage, a 4 600 million power battery with 55 watt fast charging, a 108, megapixel main camera and a 6.81-inch quad HD 120, hertz AMOLED display now, let's unpack what all of that means and how Xiaomi customers are going to be using this thing, starting with performance, the MIA 11 was flawless for me during my review period of about five days, I tried a myriad of games on it, including gen chin impact real racing, 3 and PUBG mobile, to which I found a smooth gaming experience, and this is likely accentuated by the 120s display. It's not all about that processor and ram combination, but I found the me11 to be a delight to game on and the same goes for day-to-day usage. Guys I mean come on. This is flagship hardware, we're talking about swiping around the screen.

Switching between apps all your usual stuff was absolutely not a problem for the me11 and that's to be expected for the top of the range processor and ram. It will stay fast for a number of years, so there should be no concerns when it comes to longevity of performance, at least over the next 24 months. This thing is rapid. I had to mention the screen there because it does feel like it adds to the experience. That's an almost 7 inches, 120 hertz AMOLED display, oh add in the quad HD resolution as well.

What does that mean? Well, it's really high resolution, so seeing individual pixels unless you're, really holding it close to your eye, and unless you have an incredible eyesight, is going to be a task of a and a half. The fluidity is fantastic thanks to 120x, refresh rate pixel response times are brilliant too thanks to the AMOLED display, meaning that you're not going to get a lot of ghosting and the overall display is very bright. It's very big! I found it to be absolutely phenomenal during my time with it, there is one niggle I have with the display, and it's something that's really annoying and actually voiced my concerns about this on Twitter. I'm verified now by the way, so I'm officially important with my 700 followers anyway. My huge concern with this thing is: it's in display fingerprint scanner.

Now I've not got on with a lot of in-display fingerprint scanners. I honestly find them atrocious. I'd. Much rather have a capacitive one on the side, the back, I don't care if it ruins the aesthetic I'll just rather have one of those. However, that's not to say that I haven't tried some very good in display fingerprint scanners.

The one Samsung's tend to do the one Samsung sent to do the ones that Samsung tend to do have been fantastic for me, so I've actually used the s10 plus the s10, the s20 ultra and all of those ultrasonic, I believe, is the technology they use there. The in-display fingerprint scanners have worked a dream. However, the capacitive is what I'm guessing. This technology is in here and uh. My me, edit Ryan, will put a confirmation on the screen.

It's just not very good. It's unreliable, it's slow, and I'm sure on this b-roll. Furthermore, it looks really fast, and it's just one of those things that you just when you're getting your phone out of your pocket. You want to be able to have it unlocked almost before you're, even looking at the display, and this thing just takes forever a lot of the time you need to get the placement just right. It's really picky on that.

You have to hold it down in a very certain pressure amount. You can't push down too hard. Furthermore, you can't push down too little, it's just really, really annoying, and it's something that kind of ruins the experience for me not gonna lie like. I would not daily this smartphone purely for that fingerprint scanner issue. However, there is face unlock and, if you're more of a pin guy, then you can use that as well.

But for me this is kind of a dealbreaker. It is just that annoying also. This is a slightly different issue, but no double tap to open the camera by default is annoying. You can go into the settings in additional settings and like a load of sub menus, and you can enable it, so I did, but this is something that I think should be on by default, and this isn't exclusive to the me11. I think just Xiaomi skin should be doing this.

I think Samsung has been doing it for ages, always been doing it for ages. It's just an annoyance for me. I know a lot of people aren't gonna really worry about that. But for me, I like to have that instant access to the camera app by double pressing the power button and that's something that you can do, but it's just not on by default. Let's talk about software.

This is an area where I think the me11 gets mixed opinions as mini 12.5.1 on android 11 looks very clean in my opinion, but, like previous comments, I do have a few issues with it. Firstly, why is it that you have to swipe on a side of the top of the screen to get either notifications or the quick settings toggle? I really don't like this. I like stop swiping down once to get notifications swiping down twice to get the full quick settings. Toggle it's been like that for years, and I think people have become quite used to that. It's quite intuitive now.

People who are used to android would just instinctively do that and swiping left and right to get between your quick settings and your sort of notifications is, I don't know, just not intuitive. It does remind me a little of control center and of the notifications on iOS, which, if they're going to copy that or going for that copy, then I guess that makes sense, but on the android side we're just not used to that and maybe that's different with the android 12 dev preview and stuff- maybe that's all integrated. But honestly I don't follow the latest and greatest android news. Secondly, the whole settings menu is a bit of a mess like getting to that thing where you can double tap the button for the camera. That was an absolute pain in the butt.

I've tried Xiaomi's me UI. Before and honestly I just don't like the settings menu it doesn't. The wording doesn't seem to be right. I have an example here, yeah the navigation gestures. You know the ones where you go from sort of three buttons to swiping up and swiping to hold to get the uh recent and stuff, that's all under full screen display, which, in my opinion, is absolutely not where it should be, because full screen display to me sounds like sort of you're taking a game or an application.

That's designed for 16x9 and making it full screen sort of adapting it, maybe punching in or doing some kind of trickery, not the navigation gestures. That should be its own thing, like navigation should be its own menu. I don't know, maybe I'm rambling. Let me know in the comments, if you think this is an issue too or if I'm just being an idiot. Otherwise, the interface is very clean.

It works, and you'll likely get android, 12 and 13. The 8 got android 10, despite being launched with 8.1, so it won't get 11 for what I've seen on forums. It's not going to be the most longeves. It's not going to have the most longevity compared to like a Samsung, but it's still going to be pretty good. I would expect to get like I said: android, 12 and 13 on this thing: the battery life.

Now it's its honestly, not bad. It's not amazing.4 600 William hours sounds about right for the size of the phone. I was able to get a full day, probably a day and a half on my usage. If you're a real power user, then you will need to stop up at lunchtime. You know talking 55 what fast charging and when I say power user.

I mean screen 100 using lots of 5g or LTE Bluetooth connectivity. The lot like you would need to push this thing pretty hard. What I tend to do is I will put my earphones in for around 15 minutes a day walking to and from work. I would use 4g for maybe an hour or two a day, but actually overall I would be using Wi-Fi sort of screen on 50 to 75, and I'm getting a full day and a half. So that's to kind of gauge your thing.

I don't do screen on time metrics on this channel, if you're new to here, because it's honestly a mess like you cannot really use screen on time as a metric to determine battery life, because people's environments and use cases are so different. Let's check cameras now, and I hate to say it, but it's another one of those heavily imbalanced camera setups from China, big high resolution, 108 megapixel main sensor, a more basic 13, megapixel ultrawide, a 5 megapixel depth, camera for fluffing out the spec sheet and a 20 to I wouldn't say: 12 megapixel, 20 megapixels, selfie shooter for a 700 pound phone. That's pretty poor when you look at the actual balance of the thing, but let's not judge a book by its cover. What about the samples? Well, there is a clear difference in quality between the main and the ultra-wide. The colors and contrast, look more washed out on said camera, while the main looks richer in those areas with more detail to boot.

I have to say, though, the main camera, even in tricking conditions, did impress me. It took nice looking images in a whole host of environments, including low light. It still does struggle at night and that's been a trait of many Xiaomi smartphones, because the software doesn't seem to capture enough light. I've personally tested this on many phones, but there we go, and also it does tend to under expose if you're in a brighter environment- or maybe you've not got so much light, and it's just like a highlight or something it will try and expose for the brightest point of the image, making the whole thing a lot of times underexposed after using a phone with a periscope zoom for so long. I really don't think I can go back and this isn't a big knock to Xiaomi, because it's not an ultra premium smartphone, and they have an ultra variant.

That has one of those, but I think that even a more traditional three times, telephoto would have been nice to see here. Having let's face it, a gimmick camera where a telephoto should have been for a 700 pound phone is a bit of a mickey take. If you ask me, Xiaomi has definitely stepped up its game when it comes to computational photography, and I'm impressed with how far they've come. It's no longer a case of dismissing them for their processing. It is good it just isn't quite as good as Samsung's apples or Huawei's.

The lack of even a normal telephoto seems like a missed opportunity in my opinion, but there we are so. Let's answer the question: should you actually be buying one of these? Well, if you're really into a pretty looking smartphone, something that looks really nice and premium with a decent, a good quality main camera, a fantastic display, the top specs, and you don't want to spend four figures. This is a good smartphone to buy it's a very well-rounded smartphone with not quite a such well-rounded spec sheet. When it comes to the cameras, however, overall, I think that many people will be happy with one of these, of course, you're. Getting the Google Play Services, there's not that sort of Huawei issue getting fantastic performance battery life.

Camera screen, I mean you're, getting the full package now, whether you want to use mini on a daily basis. That's going to be something you have to work out in your head before buying the smartphone. Personally, I would probably spend the extra and get a s21 just because of one UI, but then I value that software experience more than you might, or maybe you even prefer me UI, so it really is up to you at the end of the day, but thanks to Damian wild for sending over this smartphone to review, I really do appreciate it. Thank you for the sort of week off I had before the P30 Pro review uh that was a nice week off. I actually started a new job uh just about a month ago now, and so I've just been getting used to it, and the back catalog of videos has slowly dwindled anyway.

Thank you all so much for watching I've been Ryan Thomas. Please do like dislike comment and subscribe. If you're new around here never miss a video like this one also check out all my social related media links in the video description, and I want to give a massive shout out to my Patreon supporters for being continually supportive. So thanks for watching I'll catch you later, peace.

Source : Ryan-Thomas