Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra Review (Global Edition) | One Month Later! By Grant Likes Tech

And, I really love that super wallpaper. Look at that how's it going here. Welcome back to the channel, and I've had the Xiaomi me 11, ultra global edition for about a month now. So here's my update after using it for the last four weeks here, so before we get into the whole standout feature like the camera module and everything else, because this is the global version and because I am located in the US, I think a lot of people have questions around connectivity, and so I've been using this on pretty much a T-Mobile network here. As you can see here, I've used it on Google phi I've used it on mint mobile, and I'm now currently testing out us mobile all on T-Mobile's network, and so it's been working. Fine I've been getting 4g LTE speeds, although they've been a little slower than I've been accustomed to, you can kind of see the speeds I've been getting here, and so they're, okay.

But in my area I get slightly faster speeds and I don't really get the best speeds in my area, but LTE is usually maybe a little better than this. So connectivity as far as LTE speeds could be a little better, but this is still more than fast enough for whatever I do, I'm not seeing any lagging videos or checking social media doing all that kind of stuff, but connectivity works is just not the best could be a little faster on LTE, and I'm not getting any 5g. So I wouldn't expect to get 5g at least on any of the GSM networks. I'm not in my era and I do live in a 5g area, so 5g doesn't work. LTE could be a little faster, but calling text messaging all that stuff works just fine across T-Mobile's network.

I don't have any issues, it's not going to work on sprint or the former sprint now, where it's not not going to work on Verizon. So no CDMA compatibility here, but any GSM network should work with ATM t as well here in the US. So that's just kind of a brief update around connectivity. It does work if you're on a GSM provider like t mobile, at tor any of their smaller nuns like mint mobile us mobile, I'm been testing all that stuff out and then working just fine for calls and texts. LTE just could be a little faster and no 5g.

So that's just my quick take on the connectivity questions. I know I'm going to get, and I've been using this particular carbon fiber case to protect it. I've got another video that is either out or coming out on this particular case. If you're curious, but here's what it looks like I've got the white ceramic version right there. You can tell it's a global version, because it's got all the markings on the bottom, even though they advertise 5g, not here in the US at least not here in California, where I'm located, and I do live in a 5g area.

So of course, let's just start talking about design and the standout feature. Obviously, is this big camera module? That's the biggest selling point here of the meal, 11 ultra, because you take that away, and you're basically left with the standard meal.11. , it's the same size. You look at it from the front. You can't tell them, apart at all, so really what you're paying all that extra money for several hundred dollars.

More is for this camera module, and so of course, this houses that 120 times zoom camera. You can see there 120 times zoom they print it right there and, of course, the rear mounted display that little display back there we'll get to that in a second. But of course it does have a main 50, megapixel f over 2.0 sensor with 1.4 micron pixels and those are large pixels for a large sensor, they're, usually around 0.8 microns and so starting out at 1.4 and pixel, bringing them down you're going to get really large pixels, which means good detail, good low light, especially so you don't even really have to use the night mode on this thing and low light situations just without night mode. This is such a large sensor. It pulls in so much light that it has great low light performance.

Of course, it also has the 48 megapixel periscope zoom lens, so that's five times optical zoom there. It also has a 48 megapixel, ultra-wide angle, lens that has a really wide and large field of view, 128 degrees, so very old, wide angle shooter. So if you want a really wide angle camera to fit as much as you possibly can, it's got a really wide field of view. It doesn't have is in it, but it is a large sensor at 48 megapixels, so it pulls in a lot of detail. So a pretty good camera system.

The only mission that I would say that they don't have here is a traditional telephoto lens for more like two or three times zoom, for especially better macrophotography, shots, and we'll get to camera performance. But that's been my disappointment as far as, if you like, macro or close-up shots, the minimum focusing distance on this is not very good. You can't get very close up and there's no real, proper telephoto lens to help you with that macro. Photography, you're just going to have to use digital zoom, but I'll talk more about that when we get to the cameras, but that's pretty much. The whole stand out thing that big camera bump on the back.

That's what separates this out from any other phone and its own standard, me 11. So if you really want the additional camera performance, I don't think it's. You know several hundred dollars better than the v11 as far as camera performance, because it that this does actually have a 108 megapixel sensor with is, and it's very good. It's just not going to have the versatility from the large ultra-wide angle, sensor and additional zoom capabilities, but you know saving a lot of money. It still takes great pictures, but I think for a lot of photo enthusiasts, it might be worth the extra money for you.

Other things about the design here is that, of course, like I said it's made of ceramic I've got the white ceramics, so it doesn't really pick up and show too many fingerprints there. It's got an aluminum frame here, and it's very well-built. It's got dual speakers. You can see one speaker up top. It has an IR blaster there and another speaker here on the bottom, and they are tuned by Harman Kardon.

If you can kind of see that- and that's not a gimmick, these speakers are very loud and sound very, very good. It is hefty as you'd expect with that big honking module on the back. It's like 234 grams. I think so a bit top heavy because of this camera module, but really not as bad as I thought. It's not like.

It feels like it's going to slip out of my hands because it's so top-heavy. Nothing like that. I'm totally used to the weight, and I don't really notice it as much until I go to a different phone where that phone feels just a ton lighter, it does not have a headphone jack but, like I said it does have an IR, blaster great set of speakers. It does have an under display fingerprint scanner so which is very fast. The animations make it look a little slower than it really is, but you don't even have to have the screen on you can see if you know about where the fingerprint scanner is it'll just register and go right in so very responsive and quick, fingerprint scanner just animations make it look a little slow face.

Unlock is superfast, as you can see here, unlocks right away, try again so really fast face unlock as well, so you've got some really nice options as far as security, as all that goes there, and so now that we're in the phone, you can actually see this large 6.81 inch AMOLED display very vibrant, very bright. It's a 120 hertz refresh rate as well. It has gorilla glass victim on the front. Furthermore, it is quad HD 1440p resolution, that's 1440 by 3200 resolution with a 20 to 9 aspect ratios. Furthermore, it does have curved display, so the edges are a bit curved, as you can kind of see there, but I'm not getting any kind of false touches on this.

I think really false touches are mostly, I think, of the past. I think some people will get them on curve displays, but high quality curve displays now you're not going to really get a lot of false touches. They have perfect palm rejection on the sides, and so I'm not really running into a lot of that, and I actually prefer curved displays, because it kind of drops off the side and makes things look and actually feel a little more narrow than the phone really is so just a little more comfortable to hold. For me personally, like I said it's super bright, it gets up to 1700 nits max brightness, and that may be a number, but usually really bright is about 900 to 1000. This is 1700, so it does get very, very bright.

Visibility indoors and outdoor is not a problem. I mean I can crank it all the way up, and it's too bright for the camera to even handle right now. So indoor outdoor visibility is not a problem with this phone, the display is gorgeous, it looks fantastic, and it does have some color calibration settings. So if we go into settings into display, you can see here under color scheme. You can change kind of the color saturation and calibration with some presets.

You have advanced options. Furthermore, you can even mess with the color temperature. Here with the rainbow slider, you can do a warm cool or your own custom tone, so you can go as cool or warm as you want with this display, which is really nice. It also has refresh rate options and resolution options. So if you don't want to run it at the max resolution, which is quad, HD, plus 1440p, you can be dumb that down to save some battery life.

If you want, it also has an option to smart switch, the resolutions which I've been keeping on so that can help you save a little better life while still getting the most out of the display, and you do have refresh rate options. So I've got it at the full 128 hertz for the max smoothness effect, which it does really look smooth, and you can really notice it. If you dumb it down to 60 hertz, it will save you some battery life, and I'll get to that in a bit um. It does save you battery life by going to 1080p and 60hz, but after using that setting for a while and coming back to 120hz, I may not notice the resolution bump to quad HD as much to be honest, but the 120hz refresh rate the smoothness moving around you do notice it after not having it for a while. So that is always definitely a nice touch and, of course, other display settings here.

You do have an always on display here, so we go to ozone display. I have it off, but it does have a lot of options, so you can go to always on display, and here you have themes I mean you have signatures. If you want to use kind of text, you can use, do custom text. If you want, you can hit that, but you can change it to whatever you want. You can change the color scheme on this.

You have a bunch of clock options as well as kaleidoscope options. Digital clocks, I mean there's a lot of customization images, um that you can do with your always on display. So if you like always on display, you can even use your own custom image there. So a lot of customizations to this always on display. If you really like the ozone display thing, I don't, I usually turn it off, but a lot of customization here for always on display and of course the other unique feature.

Is this tiny little rear display in the back, and you can actually customize this? If you want, you can say, if you want to use it or not, you can have it indicate if you've got notifications, which is actually handy. If you have your phone face down, you can actually see when you get a notification which is actually kind of nice. You can actually double tap to wake that if you want. So, if it's down here on this, you can double tap to wake and to sleep like I just did: wake double tap to sleep, so that is there as well. You can also do display themes just like you're always on display.

You can theme out your rear display, so you can do clocks, you can have it represent a signature or whatever text that you want it displaying there. Furthermore, you can pick an image, and you can of course pick any of these color tones that you want so heavy customization there you can even have it show your battery life. So if you like to lay your phone down on the table, that can actually be slightly useful as far as seeing battery time and when you get some notifications there. So that's the utility of that rear display if you happen to use your phone that way, and we'll get more into how it's been used or not used so much in the camera. When we get to the talking about camera now, just to close off the display in the speakers, I've got a YouTube video cued up, Dave west media.

If you haven't checked him out, he does great photography. Great videography go check out his channel. If you want, I'm going to go play some of his sample footage that he's been getting on his OnePlus 9 pro, and we'll go ahead and check that out. I think it's going to show off this. This display- and speakers very nicely, so let's go here and make sure that we get this up to max resolution.

So we got at 4k 60 frames per second, and we'll crank up the audio and let's get the display a little brighter, not too bright, because the the camera probably won't handle. It won't look as good and let's give you a sample here so there you go really super loudspeakers, I'm not sure how that's coming across with my microphone, but the speakers are very loud, very rich sounding some of the best speakers. I've heard on any phone so that harmony card in tuning is definitely not a gimmick. It's definitely making a difference here in the speakers very good set of speakers, and you saw the display very immersive, with the full screen display. Colors look great, it's very bright, very vivid, so very nice viewing experience if you like to watch a lot of video a lot of movies with this display, coupled with those great speakers now as far as performance.

This is running the latest snapdragon 8 chipsets. It's got 12 gigs of ram 256, gigs of storage. So we go to about phone. You can see here it's all specs 12 gigs of ram 256 gigs of onboard storage. On this model there are options for less ram, 8 gigs of ram and max 512 gigs of storage in different configurations, but because of that it is definitely fast.

It's super snappy, very quick. Moving around everything you can see. Launching apps very fast scrolling through it is superfast super smooth thanks to the 120 hertz refresh rate, but also because mini 12.5 is supposedly bringing some optimizations really making everything really fast and snappy as well. I can really feel it opening apps. Yes, you know.

Most phones are going to open apps fast enough, but using this it is definitely fast. Everything is very smooth, very snappy. You can see the media doesn't even slow it down, while it's loading so very good response times there. Everything loads up YouTube looks great, very fast, so moving around scrolling the interface, of course, more than fast enough. Now, as far as gaming I'll admit, I'm not really maxing out this kind of CPU gaming.

I don't do intensive games more casual gaming and in the games that I play, I'm not finding any kind of issue, and I'm pretty sure because it does have a snapdragon 88 you're not going to have any issues with pretty much any game. That's in the play store it's going to play it just fine, coupled with the 12 round performance gaming is not going to be any kind of problem here and being a snapdragon 888. A lot of people say they're getting heating issues on that chipset on other phones. This phone does get a bit warm I'll, be honest, but not more warm than a lot of other phones, maybe just a little warmer. To be honest, but nothing to be alarmed about nothing shut down.

It hasn't gotten really hot. Where I couldn't hold it so nothing uncomfortable at all. I will say it gets a little warm! That's about the extent of the experience I have with overheating. It's not really overheating to the point where it's harming performance. I don't feel like it's too hot to hold, none of that.

It just gets a bit one to the touch and that's about it, but other than that. I think, as you can see here, gaming looks pretty good, at least in the games that I do haven't, had any problems. I'm sure that you probably won't either. It just depends on how you're going to use your phone and what you're kind of really pushing your phone to do, will dictate performance and what kind of heating problems you may or may not get. So for me overall experience with performance and this phone has been absolutely fantastic, everyday use scrolling moving around apps playing my basic games.

Nothing has given this phone any kind of problem or any hint of a slowdown. Now looking quickly at software, it is running like I said. If you go to about phone mini 12.5.6 is the latest version. There are no more updates, not the latest version of me UI, because I think my standard m11 here is running mini 1257. This has gotten a couple updates to get a lot closer uh.

It is running, and that is the skin on top of android 11, as you can see here, android 11, and it's got the June security patch June 1st security patch. We are now just starting July at the time of this recording July, 2nd, so we'll see if I get any other updates, but so far it's been fairly up-to-date as far as security patches, as you can see, and it's catching up to the latest mini 12.5 version there and with 12.5 you're, getting a lot of features like I said: to optimize, the software, so you're getting a little less taxing on some battery operations, a little more efficiency, a little smoother experience here, better performance and in my unboxing and first impressions, video. I walked through the whole software. So if you want to see all the software features and what it has to offer from the different themes and different settings and how to make sure you're getting your notifications all that stuff, I went through in the unboxing and first impression. So I won't re-walk through the whole software here just go check out that video.

But I will say being the global version here: it, google services has been a lot better. So I know you can load google services on non-global versions, like my m11, I've got it on here: side, loaded, the APKs and all the services it works, and even if you do all the settings to make sure that you get your notifications, sometimes the um battery management is too aggressive. No matter what settings you put on this, if you say, don't put any kind of battery saver and always get my notifications, I'll tend to get it, but sometimes it does go into a deep sleep, and it takes a bit of time to get the notifications with this one. It works just like any other us android phone that I have running google services, so no complaints. As far as you know, not getting any kind of notifications.

Everything runs smooth. It feels just like any other android phone that I can get here through us retail channels. So I do notice that difference in the global version, and I suggest that you get it. If you are in the US or in western countries um. It does make a bit of a difference, so it's just up to you if you want to spend the extra money or if you prefer, just a side, load and kind of you know take a chance with some of that experience there, but just to note something with the software and the global version.

Google services fantastic, because it's all preloaded runs great so now moving on to battery life, this has a very large five thousand William hour battery high capacity battery, which it really needs because it's uh demanding from power from the processor to the high resolution display 120 hertz display. So it's drawing a lot of power. It needs that big capacity battery and with mini 12.5, like I said before, it's tried to optimize its software to the hardware, to give you a little smoother performance, but also a little better battery life. Now. For me, how is that translated? I'm actually getting pretty good battery life, but nothing amazing.

I'm definitely getting at least one full day off the charger which is bare table stakes these days. If I can go a whole day without worrying about charging. That's great, I am getting an average about five to five and a half hours of screen on time. That's with quad HD, 1440p and 120 hertz, refresh rate on when I turned it off. I was getting to eight hours of screen on time at 1080p and 60 hertz, so you do get better battery life in that regard.

You know about one and a half, possibly two hours, a bit more screen on time. If you dumb down the resolution and the refresh rate and in either configuration I'm averaging about one to one and a half day off the charger, so it's pretty much a one-day battery phone. So but I don't really worry about charging over the course of that day. So you'll get a full day, at least the full day off of this battery, sometimes a day and a half. Sometimes I maxed out at two days with a little less screen on time when I wasn't using it as much so again.

Battery life will be good, not fantastic or great, but you'll definitely get at least one day and in the event that you are a very heavy user, and you might not be seeing a full day like I am. You do have that ultra-fast 67 watt, fast charger, that's bundled in this box and that charges your phone in just over half an hour about 35 minutes or so, almost as fast as the OnePlus 9 pro pretty much half an hour, zero to 100 charging with that 67 watt charger that you get in the box with the phone. So that's fantastic! So if you go harder than I do when you're not getting a full day, you can top off extremely fast. If you need it and for all you wireless charging fans, this does have wireless charging. So if I bring in my wireless charger, we can lay it down on here, and it will charge.

Wirelessly Xiaomi does have their own fast wireless charger. It's they have a 67 watt wireless charger as well so charge it practically the same speed as wire charging, but you have to buy their proprietary wireless charger to get that and the other charging option you have here is reverse wireless charging. So if your fan of reverse wireless charging- and you like being able to top up your earbuds or someone else's phone through wireless charging, you can activate reverse wireless charge, and you can grab anything that charges wirelessly. Stick it on the back, and you can see it charging up right there, so good for earbud top-ups. If you want to share some battery life with another phone, maybe, but it doesn't really charge too fast, so you're, better off charging things with lower capacity batteries like wirelessly charging, earbuds or something, but that is an option there.

If you like to use that and if maybe you're in a pinch, it can't help you out. And lastly, let's talk about that standout feature which are those cameras. I already ran through all the specs, so you know what the camera's in here and what it's packing it can shoot up. The for 8k video 24 frames per second from that rear. But ultimately you know how do the cameras really perform with all the specs? Are they living up to the hype, because that was probably the most hyped up thing about this phone? Were those cameras and, like I said you take away the cameras and you pretty much only have the m11, I'm not gonna, say only.

This is a great phone, but they're charging a ton more money for those rear cameras for that rear display and really is it worth it, and I think that's going to be really up to you. I think, if you're really into cameras- maybe it's a maybe a slight step up from the mi 11, not huge step up to me, but as far as pros and cons and what I like and don't like about the camera, really, I think photos do look pretty good. They come out very true to life very natural, looking colors, but so do their other Xiaomi phones, like the m11, I think, like the mi 11 also, I think, is the same. Selfie, camera and so selfies actually look pretty good, including the portrait photos that come out of this thing, and it has a very good ultra-wide angle. Camera, like I said very large sensor, very wide field of view, a lot of detail with the 48 megapixels, and so I think it's a very good ultra-wide angle camera.

So, if you like ultra-wide cameras, you need that wide field of view. You want good detail in your photos as well, very good, ultra-wide angle. Camera also, like I said earlier, the photos with that super large sensor and those really large pixels, really great low light performance. You don't even need to turn on night mode if you don't want to it pulls in so much light without it low light performance is perfect. So those are all the good things I think about this camera.

Not everything is roses. I think what I don't really like, or things that could be improved, is that the minimum focusing distance isn't very good because of the large sensor. So with most large sensors, you can't get super close and take close-up or macro photos. That's where a traditional telephoto lens can come into play where you can actually zoom in maybe two times get some really nice macro photos. This lacks that type of telephoto lens.

It just has the long range periscope, zoom lens, and so not the best for macro photos. I know not everyone does that. But if you do you like to take close-up photos, this probably will not be the best real option there and also in general. What I found is that it takes more work to get good photos or equivalent photos that I get from other really nice camera phones. So, while I can take great photos, I found that I had to work a lot harder to get those photos with this phone, whether because it was the shutter speed or just getting the photo right or because I couldn't get the right focus.

When I was doing those macro photos, it just worked a little harder than I have to with other phones like pixels iPhones, even the s21 ultra, but it can't take photos up to par with those phones or very close to it, or at least compete with those phones. But you just have to work a little harder. I think, and so the potential is there. I think with a few more tweaks, it can get there, but not really the best camera phone to me. In my opinion, it is very good, but it doesn't quite live up to the hype to me and that, as far as that rear camera is concerned, you can only use it in auto mode.

So if you go into photo, and you go to auto mode for your photos, you can see here- you can see rear display. You tap that, and it'll activate that rear display. So you can kind of see it right there, and you can take your photo. I have it programmed to just when I click the volume button to take the photo, so it can help frame it. But honestly, if I'm just I'm kind of able to take rear selfies from any other phone by just pointing at me engaging this does help a little, but you can only do it in auto mode.

So, yes, you can use it with ultra-wide. You can use a telephoto lens, but you cannot kind of here's ultra-wide. So you can see what that looks like here. You can see that works right. It's much wider field of view and five times telephoto everything is very close up, so you can use that if you want for whatever reason, but it's only good in that mode.

So if I move into video mode, for example, I cannot activate that rear display it's supposedly coming in a software update. But it's not here yet so only in auto mode, not able to use it in night mode, not able to use it in portrait mode because portraits only use the telephoto lens so portrait. You don't have the option of using a wider angle lens, if you want to, which is probably why they won't use it with the rear display, because it'll be way too cropped in any way. Unless you have tremendously long arms or have a longer selfie stick, but so the utility of that rear camera isn't really that great. As far as I'm concerned, as far as with the camera app itself, you can only use it in auto mode would be nice to get that software update to use it, maybe in video mode, but really, I think it's a better utility as far as if you lay your phone flat on the table to see.

Maybe when you get notifications time or anything like that, but it's nice to have it's not. I hate to use the word gimmick, but it is a bit gimmicky, but it's there. It can be useful, but again with the camera experience it's not as useful as you would expect, or, as I had personally expected. So there you go. That is my one month.

Review of the Xiaomi me 11 ultra, and I really love that super wallpaper. Look at that when you have it locked. This is on earth. It starts out the earth and zooms all the way in so maybe a slow animation but looks really cool, but I digress anyway again. This is my 30 days with the mi 11 ultra.

What my thoughts are what my experience has been. I think it's a really fantastic phone. Uh, it's priced! Okay. I think it just depends on what you, what you can import it for the global version is about thirteen fourteen hundred dollars to import or more. You can get the uh version.

That's only sold in China without Google Play Services for about a thousand dollars, which is a lot more affordable, but, like I said, I prefer the Google services already pre-loaded with the global model, because it just actually works a little better, even if you side load them like on a version that's only available in China. But again, that's just my two cents again, like I said very great phone, any other questions or comments leave them down below try to answer what I can and as always, thanks for watching.

Source : Grant Likes Tech