Xiaomi Mi 11 Review // Six Months Later By Sam Beckman

This is the Xiaomi 11, and I know this is an incredibly light review, but nearly seven months down the line from its launch day- and here we are now the last Xiaomi phone that I reviewed was the 9t around a year and a half ago, believe it or not, and aside from the camera experience which actually wasn't all that bad either. I largely had nothing but good things to say about that phone and so coming into using and reviewing the 11. I was particularly interested to investigate two main things. Firstly, whether the cameras are significantly better compared to the main int and, secondly, how the software experience has evolved in the past 18 months, and I have to say, whilst there have been a few hiccups and a few hurdles along the way, I'm now at a point where I feel quite comfortable to give you a final verdict. So, let's dive in now we'll come to software and cameras a little later in this review. But, firstly I want to offer some comments on this phone's design as a person who doesn't really care for curved displays.

I was surprised at how much I actually quite enjoyed the way that this phone not only looked but more importantly, how it felt in the hand- and I think that mainly comes down to how well it's been built. The back has this beautiful frosted glass finish, and it's been curved in such a way that, in combination with these really premium side rails, what you end up with is a super comfortable phone to hold in the hand. Now it did take a little while to get used to the front of this phone visually because of how the glass at the top and bottom has been curved, which is obviously quite rare. Normally it's just the side. Glass, that's curved! If at all- and I'm not saying that, I do like it.

In fact, these weird corner bezels are a bit off-putting, but I have actually gotten used to it, and it's no longer a problem for me now with that said, if you watched my recent review of the ZTE axon 30 ultra, then you'll no doubt have seen that I actually dropped that phone before I'd, even filmed a single shot as a result. For the majority of my time, using this phone, I've actually been using it in a case from channel sponsor rhino shield. Now I've spoken about rhino shield before on the channel, but their lineup of cases is not only highly protective, but they're also really customizable, which means you can protect your phone whilst having it look really slick. At the same time, if you check out their website, you'll see that their cases come in a huge variety of finishes and styles and on top of their amazing in-house designs, they've actually also done a bunch of big name collaborations as well, including with PewDiePie NASA League of Legends plus a bunch more all of which are available for the Xiaomi mi 11. You can even design your own case with their impressive customization tool to make your phone feel a little more you now beyond that.

The protection you get from using a rhino shield case is top shelf. If you buy one of their impact screen protectors to go with, I mean you're, pretty much set. Their cases are available for a huge collection of phones, and they come with a lifetime. Warranty and rhino shield also offers free worldwide shipping for qualified orders. This time around rhino shield are actually offering 20 off their cases for the next week.

If you use the discount code sam11 at checkout or if you're watching this video after that time period, then you can still get a handy 10 off so make sure that you check out all of their amazing cases and consider picking one up for your own phone using the first link down in the description below now from there. We turn to the display and honestly, it's getting really hard to find a bad display on a phone. These days, like most high-end flagships, the mi 11 also sports, a who plus resolution display with a refresh rate of 120 hertz, and it's really, really good, honestly. No need to dwell on this display any further. It's sharp it's punchy! It's fast and, like I said it's perfect.

Now the phone I was using prior to this one was the axon 30 ultra and that phone had pretty incredible battery life. Despite me, setting it to a fixed refresh rate of 144 hertz, and so given that on paper, both phones have the same 4 600 million power sized cells inside. I was expecting a somewhat similar experience, but that hasn't been the case and battery life hasn't been as reliable as the axon 30. Most days, I'm ending with between five and ten percent of battery left, and yes, admittedly, that is with the resolution set to who plus. So I could of course, get a little extra by bumping that down to full HD plus instead, but it's certainly not going to get me the two days that I claimed the axon 30 would get me if I bump down its screen.

Refresh rate, but where the axon 30 might pit the mi 11 in regard to battery life when we're talking about haptics, the mi 11, absolutely annihilates, the axon 30. Seriously, the haptic motor in this phone is incredible, and after a pretty rough trot with the haptics on the axon 30 using the me11 has reminded me why I value such high quality haptics in a phone. That's not a dealbreaker if a phone doesn't have great haptics, but it's certainly nice to have really pleasing tight haptics like what we have in the mi 11. Now just quickly touching on the fingerprint sensor. Actually, this one was one of the slower in display sensors.

I had used for some time, and that was with my main finger enrolled twice, but after a software update or two, I actually have noticed that it's become quite a bit faster. It does, however, take a bit longer than most phones when unlocking from the always on display. So hopefully, that's something that can be addressed in the future, but I will just mention that the face unlock on this phone is one of the better implementations. I've come across. In fact, right up there with OnePlus face unlock, which is great.

So then we have the software and at the start of using this phone I was like nope. This phone is not going to be fun to use. Let me explain why. So, if you've been following the channel for a minute, then you'll know that I'm all aboard the gesture navigation train, and so I refuse to go back to three button navigation, no matter the cost. Whenever I switch to using a new phone issue, is the Maui skin loaded on top of android 11, just straight up, refuses to let you use gestural navigation in combination with a third-party launcher, but even if you switch to the three-button navigation in order to use third-party launcher, the experience is still ballsed up as hell there's no animation when going into the recent page.

It's honestly just a super Jacky experience, so, okay I'll use the system launcher, but lo and behold for some unknown reason, not every app is supported when it comes to widgets, and so I couldn't add, custom icons to my home screen without them. Looking like hot trash, because my go-to icon creation app shortcut maker, it's not supported. So I was at a point where I couldn't make the system launcher look remotely close to how I wanted it to, but I also couldn't use a third-party launcher, and so I was like man, let's get in and out of using this phone asap, but at the 11th hour I thought of a new solution. Why don't? I just create an entire quit widget with the home screen setup that I want this wasn't something that I'd done before, but quit was supported in the widgets' menu. So I thought, let's give it a go and, as I'm sure, you've seen many times throughout this review already.

The end result was, if I do say so, myself, a beautifully minimal home screen that I really love the look of, and it performs pretty much just as well as if I'd set it up using shortcut maker. So, thank goodness I didn't have to rush through my experience of using and reviewing this phone and in fact I've since come to really enjoy the overall. My UI software experience animations when using the system launcher are straight butter, in fact, probably the closest to iOS in terms of gesture animations, which is very high. Praise and I've even started to enjoy the split notification panel and control center style that they offer as well. You can go back to the old style if you want, which is nice, that they give us the option, but the new control center is kind of really similar to the recently announced android 12 updates.

But this came way earlier looks like they were onto something now, don't get me wrong. There are some quirks about this software that are a bit odd, like not being able to open up an app by tapping on a group of notifications and even just this clock being way too close to the camera hole punch. But the fact that we have the Google discover page to the left of the home screen and that Xiaomi even lets us uninstall most of the bloatware apps that are pre-installed by default means I've quite enjoyed the software experience. Oh, and if you want to recreate this home screen setup on your own phone system launcher, then I'm planning on putting together a full, step-by-step tutorial, video detailing exactly how to do this so stay tuned. For that now.

I still don't know why. Xiaomi just straight up refuses to let us use third-party launches with gestures. That's a bit frustrating for me and back when I reviewed the me9t. The gestures actually worked really well with third-party launches, so they have gone a bit backwards in that regard, but I'll say it loudly for Google to hear right up the back there. As long as you give us the ability to remove everything on the system launches home screen, then you can always find a way to make the home screen.

Look how you want it to and when that's the case, I will enjoy most software skins. Okay. So then we come to the cameras and kind of like the display situation, I'm starting to find it really hard to find bad cameras on a phone. These days like the axon 30 or the OnePlus 9 pro before that I've been really satisfied with the images and videos coming out of this phone photos. Look sharp and fairly natural, particularly if you're in well-lit scenarios, and I've also been quite impressed with the portrait photos.

This phone takes as well, even though they're a little too wide for my liking. Now, to be clear, the cameras certainly aren't the best I've come across and the ultra-wide is a bit of a step backwards compared to both the ZTE axon 30 ultra and OnePlus 9, pro, which I was using prior to the mi 11, and it is a shame that we don't have any form of a telephoto lens, but look for most people. I think they'll be more than happy with the photos and videos that this phone captures in decent lighting conditions. So look despite an initial hiccup with the software. I've ultimately really enjoyed using the Xiaomi mi 11, and I could see myself continuing to use it going forward.

I feel, like I've said that a lot with phones this year. The only issue is, of course the price depending on where you buy it from this phone can either be a little too expensive or just about right, but either way it does have some stiff competition, whilst it might have felt a little more in its own league when it first launched six to seven months ago. Since then, we've had a lot of smartphones that have been released that make the decision a lot less clear. Well, I like this phone and there are definitely a lot of reasons that make this phone worth getting, but ultimately you just got to decide what you value most in a phone. If you want versatility when it comes to cameras, then this phone might not be for you, but if you want a really well-built and premium phone with a pretty sleek software experience, and you're, not interested in spending thousands of dollars on a really high-end flagship.

Well, this phone might be a solid get a big thank you to rhino shield for supporting the channel, don't forget to use the code sam11 at checkout to get 20 off your order for the next week or 10 after that. Also, a big shout out to panel who were kind enough to send the 11 my way so that I could check it out for this review, if you're from Australia, and you're not sure where to get this phone or any Xiaomi product for that matter, then this is by far the best place to do so I'll leave a link to their website down below. Aside from that, hopefully you enjoyed the video. Thank you all very much for watching, and I will catch you later. You.

Source : Sam Beckman