Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra Global Edition Unboxing and Walkthrough By Grant Likes Tech

Housing ground here welcome back to the channel, and today I'm going to go through the unboxing of the 11 ultra. I know it might be a little late, but I finally got my hands on the global version of this phone. It's been out for some time. I believe this was released back in April earlier this year, tons of videos out on it, but I want to wait for the global version here, because it's going to have more of the 4g and 5g bands for the global market and, of course, even print down here.5G connectivity will be based on your local carrier. I'm not sure if I'm going to get it here in the US, but we're going to test it out, and this also comes pre-installed with the Google services and Google Play Store all that stuff. It says right there easy access to google apps, you use most.

So that's kind of why I went with the global version. The one that was released only in China was about a thousand dollars, or so I believe, to import this one's, to run you about 1300, 1400 and up, depending on where you're getting it from so pretty costly device. Considering that their me 10 ultra their 10th anniversary device from last year was pretty much about 700 or half the cost of the meat 11 ultra. So this phone has been really awesome, so the 11 ultra is really going to have to bring it to really make it worth its. While.

I think the only things that were missing from the 10 ultra were the IP rating, and it's got a 1080p display. Otherwise, it's pretty much got all the specs that you're going to want and the camera and everything else about this phone has been great. So I think the 11 ultra, like I've been saying, is really going to have to do something special to prove it's worth there, but the 11 ultra fills all those gaps. It's got an ip68 rating. I believe it also has a 1440 p quad HD display same 120, hertz refresh as the 10 ultra so and all the other current flagship high-end specs that you would expect here.

So let's go ahead and crack this open and this box came in pretty much pristine condition. I was really impressed with how this was shipped. No, usually I get something with some dents. This is pretty much perfect. This is the 12 gigs 256 gig versions here, there's different ram and storage option configurations.

This is 12 gigs of ram 256 gigs of onboard storage that I got, of course, all the other latest specs snapdragon 888 and all that other good stuff. So if you want the specs I'll leave a link in the description, maybe- but I'm sure you already know if you're here- and you probably even know more about this one than I do at this point. So let's go and see what comes in the box and since it's a pretty thick box, it's going to come with all the stuffs, I'm pretty sure so, you're going to get all the normal stuff that other manufacturers are omitting, and this is going to be your type c to three and a half millimeter headphone adapter. So if you want to plug in some headphones, they give you the adapter in the box. You've got your sim tool, so you can get to your sim tray and insert your sim card.

You've got all your usual nighttime reading here, warranty card user guide, all that fun stuff read through that yourself. It does come with a case which is nice because usually accessories are tough to find for phones like this, especially here in the US. But this is a pretty soft, gel CPU style case. It's not a hard back case like the one that came with the b10 ultra. This is a lot stiffer a little more protective.

I think this is just your run-of-the-mill, really flexible, CPU style case. It does have the dot matrix pattern to help prevent it from sticking to the back of the phone, but other than that really nothing too special about the case, but at least they give you one in the box in case you're not prepared with one already again, especially in the US, where accessories for this phone seem to be pretty tough to come by. I'm not seeing a lot of cases online and here's the phone itself here are some of the basic specs really great camera system. I believe this is using Samsung's gn2 main sensor. They went away from the custom OFNI vision sensor, that's in the me10 ultra, which is really awesome.

The camera system in here has been fantastic and, let's see if the new Samsung sensor is going to keep up with the Univision sensor here, so obviously camera comparisons are going to be coming up and in fact this 11 ultra is actually missing. One sensor from the mute ultra this one's got a two times telephoto, as well as a five times optical periscope zoom lens, which is, I think, the same periscope zoom lens. That's that's in the ultra, and obviously they swapped out the 48 megapixel OFNI vision sensor for the 15 megapixel Samsung gn2 main sensor, and they've got an upgraded ultra-wide angle sensor. Although the ultrawide is pretty good on this one here, so we're going to see if the improvements and the additional cost here and that massive camera bump, because they have that secondary display on the back. So you can actually utilize that to use the sensors to take selfies and all that kind of stuff.

But we're going to see if this, if this 11 ultra is pretty much two times worth the cost of this 10 ultra has been, which has been fantastic. Like I've been saying, but anyway, rest of the box. Here, let's see you got all the other usual stuff you're going to get the USB type c connector, so there's going to be type CD to type a there. As you can see, and then you've got your 67 watt charging brick so fast, charging 67 watt fast charging comes with the brick in the box. Obviously this is the international version.

I've got an adapter plug, but this is even a downgrade from the v10 ultra. I hate to compare it to the meat10 ultra, but I have to because this phone has been awesome, and it's half the price. This had 120 watt charging and Xiaomi's even announced 200 watt charging the flagship slab phone that they have right now has 67 watt charging. It's still fast a bit of a downgrade, though from even the mid-10 ultra, but it does have 67 watt fast wireless charging if you get their proprietary wireless charger, which is pretty amazing, but obviously that doesn't come with in the box. And if you do get that proprietary wireless charger, you get the same speeds as your wire charging, which is pretty impressive, and so I'm going to go ahead and get this all set up, and we'll come back and do a quick tour of the phone all right.

So here we are I'm back with the phone I've set. It all up, so, let's take a quick hardware tour. Obviously the standout feature here is this huge camera module that houses, the main Sony jn2 gn2 sensor the ultra-wide angle sensor, along with the five times optical periscope, zoom lens. It can do 120 times digital zoom, as you can see it printed right on there. It's got that extra, smaller display.

You can see displaying the time right now. Of course, the LED flash and everything- and you can see how much that protrudes out from the back but of course, stick a case on it. I'm sure it'll flatten it all out. This is the white ceramic version. I got this because I didn't want to pick up or show too much of the fingerprints you can see Xiaomi and because this is the global version, you've got all that FTC stuff printed on the back.

Unfortunately, it does say 5g there, and we're going to test that out. Obviously, a little later, I got a Google phi sim card in here, and you've got the power button as well as the volume rocket here. On the right hand, side on the bottom you've got your sim card tray as well as your type c port microphone, and then one of your speakers here it does have a secondary speaker up top. So you got dual speakers, and I'll try to get this into focus, but they are tuned by Harman Kardon, just like the mi 11, and if it's anything like the m11 speakers, they're going to sound great, it may be just branding and all that, but the m11 speakers are outstanding, and I'm sure this is going to be more of the same. You do have an IR blaster at the top, as well as a secondary mic as well and pretty much nothing here.

On the left-hand side you can see how thin or a little thick. I guess the phone is, but this is supposedly, I think, thinner than the 10 ultra is outside that camera bump there. But that's what the hardware pretty much looks like there, and I've got the fingerprint sensor all set up, so we'll test that out same as the m10 ultra and the b11, pretty quick and responsive there and really nice haptic feedback. That's the one thing about these Xiaomi phones. They have incredible haptic feedback.

So if you, if haptic feedback, is important to you uh, I know some people are complaining about the latest, pixel phones and regressing in that these have fantastic feedback, and you can actually adjust that in the settings we'll get into a little later. So this is pretty much how it came. I didn't install any of my apps. This is how it comes out of the box. These are all the default.

Apps! That's going to come with it. You can see. Google is installed out of the box. You got some google apps there and if you swipe up this is all the pre-installed apps that come on it. You do see all the Google apps, but you also get things like Facebook and LinkedIn, and you've got see the mirror remote app, which is nice to control the IR blaster, which is cool, and let's see what other kind of apps we have here.

Furthermore, you do have WPS Office, so kind of like an office, Microsoft, office, suite alternative and just a bunch of your others me apps, google apps. So that's pretty much. What comes stock out of the box pre-installed on your phone and the other thing you'll notice here is with this white background you can see the edges, don't quite line up with the corner shapes. So I don't know some people are picky. You may not like that, but I do that does stand out to me because you can see the bro, the black borders and how their curve versus the really curved shape of the display doesn't really match up.

So, just let me point out: some people are picking that way, but the rest of it really goes up the edge of the borders there so really edge to edge display, which is really nice, and you do have the Google discover feed here. So just the normal swipe over to the left. You have Google access to google discover and, of course you can turn that off. If you don't like that, and we have all our normal access settings up here, so the quick settings panel, you have access to all your usual quick settings. You do have NFC on board, as you can see right there NFC a bunch of other things.

Screen record is also a feature here, just like the rest of your normal Xiaomi features and suites. If we go into settings, you'll notice that we go into about phone out of the box is running mini 12.0.3. The latest version is 12.5, so there is an update waiting that has version 12.5.3 on it and, let's see what's new in there, so increases in stability and system lag, so you're going to go at least up to 12.5.3. Out of the box, I think there's might be another update after this one, but that'll get you to the latest mini 12.5 and those features. This does have, let's see, 256 gigs of storage, let's go to all specs.

So again you can see 12 gigs of ram 256 gigs of stores like I was showing you right there at the bottom. It is running android 11 with the march security patch, of course, that'll be updated. Once I install the update should bring it up to at least the May security patch, and then let's see what else do we have here? So that's pretty much it from a spec's nine point: what comes out of the box from software standpoint and let's go into. Let's see that's about phone system updater we can go into display. We can check that out.

So all the boxes on light mode, you can switch it over to dark mode, I'll, keep it on light mode. So you can see this a little easier, and it does have the refresh rate at 60, hertz out of the box. You can change that to the 120, smooth, refresh rate that it comes with, and then it also is a quad HD display that's preset of a box, and you can obviously turn that down to full HD. If you want to save some battery, and you do have an option that says save battery with quad HD plus, which will do resolution switching automatically just to save you a little of battery life there and now other settings, let's go into sound and vibration. This is where you can actually customize your haptic feedback and with the 12.5 update, this menu will look a little different. The haptic feedback will have its own little panel.

That lets you fine tune it even further and, like I said, if you like, haptic feedback, you'll love it on these Xiaomi devices, the latest ones have the feedback is really nice, and you can adjust the level here. You also have sound effect settings, so this is where you can set your Harman Kardon settings. You also have some presets and an equalizer. So if you actually plugged in some headphones, you could customize and fine-tune your sound settings to your own custom equalizer settings, which is really nice, because not all earbuds have apps to customize the EQ. This has a built-in EQ, so you don't have to worry about any of that.

Other settings. Let's go to notifications and control center. This is a new thing with mini they have their new control center style. Now the global version has it to the old version, because that's what most people are used to this quick settings panel with your notifications, but they also have the new version, which is going to look more kind of like IOC. So I think if we install that now you can see that's what your quick settings menu looks like.

It looks more like apple iOS, so if you want bigger buttons and a little bigger, UI uh, maybe easier to see easier to manage, you can enable that control center. I'm just going to leave it on the old style, because that's what I'm used to- and I prefer and the other thing to keep in mind on Xiaomi devices- is- I would recommend that once you install all your apps go into app notifications and go into each app that you really care about getting notifications and make sure that its control notifications is toggled on the china ROM or the round that comes in China. Basically has all this most of the stuff turned off by default. The global version, I think, is more liberal and by default may have more of these things turned on, but I will just go in and double check to make sure all the apps that you want to get notifications for are showing notifications and that you're, seeing them on the lock screen. If you want to see them and the other place that you're going to want to go to, if you're not getting notifications on Xiaomi phones, although the global version should be a little better about this is if you go into battery and performance, and you go into the settings, and you go into app battery saver I'll, go into every single app here that you really want to get notifications on and then make sure that you put on no restrictions because that'll all also make sure that it doesn't put things to sleep, and you may not miss your notifications.

That way. So just anything you want to get notifications, make sure that you're getting the notifications in your app settings and also put no restrictions here in your battery saver settings as well and a few other customization home screens when you first get it I'll go into your home screen, obviously to customize that you can change out your home screen by default. This came with classic, so you're not going to have an app drawer. I enabled that app drawer there I'm going to turn off app suggestions, because I don't want that eating up real estate on my display and that's pretty much it actually I'll also turn off place new apps on home screen. I don't like that when, as I install them, google discover this is where you can turn that off.

If you don't, like, a Google discover feed system navigation by default, it comes with the touch screen buttons. As you can see there, I'm used to the android gestures and swipes. So I'm going to turn that on. You can see that you can learn, but it's pretty much going to be your must. Your stock android swipe gestures, so I'll just skip all that stuff, and I don't think I need gesture confirmation.

So now I can swipe on the edges on my screen to go back, and I get the real estate on the bottom back from the buttons any additional home screen layout settings here I like to do max home screen, grid 5x6 and pretty much up to you. If you want to go ahead and customize anything else, I'll turn off suggestions. So that's some quick home screen, customization and wallpapers. This is kind of nice um once you upgrade to. I think the mini 12.5 you'll see some more live wallpapers in here, but just to show you the pre-installed ones that come out of the box. Xiaomi has some really nice wallpapers actually for you to choose from, and so I would highly encourage you to check these out.

You can see here, they've got a bunch of them here, and you can tap to kind of preview. What that looks like here. So these are some really, really nice wallpapers here that they have available for you, so really nice that that's their out of the box. Some manufacturers wallpaper, aren't that great looking, but Xiaomi has really nice ones. Actually, here it is the super wallpapers, that's what I was talking about.

You can download each of these actually uh and at least the ones you want. So you can download things like home, which is going to give you some views of the earth, which is pretty cool, also red planet which is going to be Mars. You can update that if you want as well but yeah that'll, give you a little more of these type of action. Wallpapers live wallpapers, as you can see here, and these will change over the course of the day based on the time. So this is what Mars looks like and if you download the others, you can see what those look like as well and a few other settings, Xiaomi's UI, is packed with a lot of features.

You can see here. Special features. You've got things like game turbo video toolbox, which gives you some additional video kind of settings as well as floating windows where display second space. So if you want to create a secondary home screen with a select view of your apps, you can do that so Xiaomi's software is packed with a ton of customization and features. I know I took a bunch of time to go through some of that, but that's just the tip of the iceberg.

There's actually a lot of different customization features that you have in mini and even more in UI 2.5. So I would highly suggest you to go through all that stuff. It's a bunch of extra stuff. Some people may not like Xiaomi's UI, but I've gotten used to it and I do like the additional features that they give you. They are actually pretty useful and pretty nice to help customize your phone and fine-tune how it works.

And, lastly, before we get out of here, let's check out the camera app, and this is pretty much gonna- be Xiaomi stock camera app, let's not give them access to location, and you can customize what you want your shutter button to do. If you want to press and hold for burst, shoot or press and hold to record video, you can program that shutter button for press and hold, but this is pretty much Xiaomi's stock camera app. This is what it looks like on the mi 10 ultra, the m11, all their latest Xiaomi phones. So you've got the auto mode for photo. You have portrait mode, you've got video, you've got pro mode for photo and then, if you tap this button here, you have access to pro mode for video as well, so full controls over photos and videos through pro mode, and then you have additional modes here, a ton of other modes night mode.

You can use a full 50 megapixel sensor. So if you don't want it to pixel bend down to roughly around 12 16 megabyte photos, you want to use a full 50 megapixel sensor. I would recommend you do that when you have optimal light conditions, because then you'll pull in the most amount of detail, and you can choose to crop and do whatever you want after so that's what 50 m is you've got things of short video panorama documents, vlog mode, slow motion, time-lapse, movie effects, long exposure. So if you want to create those light trails that you see in some fancy photos where you've got fast, moving objects like cars, and you have those trailing light tails, that's what long exposure can do for you. You've also got supermoon.

So if you want to do kind of like what Samsung is advertising with their phones, those clear shots, zoomed up shots of the moon, you can do supermoon zoom in take the photo, and you'll use AI to clear up the photo, and it looks pretty comparable actually to what Samsung's doing on their s21 ultra. And then you also have multicar here. So you can choose from all the different lenses. Any two uh combined to you know show at the same time, so I can have the ultra-wide angle lens here. If I want- and I can combine the selfie camera or any other camera and then hit next, and then it'll arrange it.

So you have view of one here or the other. I can do a combined view if I wanted to as well so lots of options with multicar. That's actually a cool feature that I don't see being talked about too much and the front camera, I think, is a 20, megapixel front selfie sensor, which I think is pretty much the same sensor as the mu10 ultra and actually that's taking some really nice selfie photos on that meet and ultra. So I would expect the same here on the 11 ultra, and it's pretty much rivaling Samsung's front facing camera, which I think has made leaps and bounds of improvements which could contend for the best selfie camera on the phone right now. So, even though it may be the same selfie camera, I do have high expectations for that image processing and what that's going to look like video from the front facing camera.

If it's anything like the previous phones, nothing special, because it crops in too much and the quality isn't very good from the front-facing camera. It's capped out at 1080p as well, but the photos should look pretty good. You do have access to auto HDR which I'll just keep on, or you can force it on. If you want, you have AI mode, which I choose not to use too much any of your different filters here at the bottom as well, and then you have Google Lens, which I don't use too often, and then you have quick access to toggles, so your timer modes, as well as yours, overall camera settings. This comes in handy if you're in video mode.

You have quick toggles for your resolution and for your frame rate, so you can shoot up to 8k 24 frames per second video. You do have 4k at 30 and at 60 frames per second. If you want as well and then, of course, you still have access to your other settings. You have a macro mode here. You can turn that on.

If you want really close up shots and then all your other usual camera settings, so we can go back, and you have image stabilization if you want to toggle that on or off, which is helpful, because if you're shooting rear facing video- and you don't want that crop because maybe you're stationary- you can turn off image stabilization to get a wider field of view. And then you also have other things around audio encoders, codecs, HDR 10 support all that other stuff, shutters whatever shutter, sound, etc. So a lot of other basic camera settings there as well. So obviously I'm going to be testing out the cameras. That's the highlight feature of this phone and I really want to see if it's going to be any better than this me 10 ultra.

So that's definitely one comparison. I do obviously I'll probably put it up against the Samsung s21 ultra, because this may be the most complete camera system on a phone. I'm sure people are going to argue with me on that. It's not maybe the best at every single lens, but from a complete package. It's probably one of the best, if not the best overall camera system package in the market today, so we're gonna, see if the 11 ultra is rivaling it, because this phone here definitely stood total toe with it.

And, of course I've got the meat 11 ultra, and you can kind of see what that looks like in comparison here as far as size as well, so the mi 11. We can also compare if that's what you want. I've also got some other phones like the iPhone OnePlus 9 pro. We can bring that in here real quick for a quick size comparison as well. We can do that camera comparison.

If there's enough interest as well and of course, we've got the iPhone 12 Pro max, which I don't know, some people may think it's getting longer to tooth, but it still produces great photos and videos. We can compare it to that, because that is the current king from iPhone right now, but any other camera comparisons. Let me know I'll see if I've got the phone I'll try to do them. That's going to be a lot of work, but that is the main standout feature here. Is that camera module, so we're going to test it out and compare it against some of the best on the market, even from some of the other selections that Xiaomi has available for you today at lower costs? So there's my unboxing and walkthrough of the Xiaomi mi 11 ultra global editions here in ceramic white.

Let me know if you have any other questions drop them in the comment section, and I'll try to answer what I can and as always, thanks for watching you.

Source : Grant Likes Tech