Xiaomi Mi 11i Review: MIUI 12.5 and GREAT Hardware! By JuanBagnell

I feel I can spoil the top of this review. This phone is pretty cool. I like it. Okay, I'm coming to this one. A little later, the 11i has been out for a bit, but it represents a renewed focus on the entry-level segment of the premium tier of smartphones. A lot of companies are trying to walk back from the edge of recent price hikes now Samsung from 2018 to 2020, trying to convince consumers that the MSRP on premium tier phones should start at 9.99. Now we're getting back to the same idea of premium phones around the six to seven hundred dollar window companies like Xiaomi and OnePlus carved out this market segment.

There's a sweet spot for mid-rangers around 300. This is the sweet spot for the premium tier. The main point is having some choice in a market where you can pick and choose the compromises you want to live with. At this point, I think the pros matter, far less than the cons from my experiences using the 11 lite to the Xiaomi black shark, I feel I'm getting a better handle on Xiaomi the lifestyle options we're taking for granted these days a vibrant and fast responsive screen. I think Xiaomi is using the best fingerprint sensor in the game right now on this power button.

It's really fantastic, there's a precise little pop of a haptic motor, and it's decently, accessorized out of the box with a case and a headphone dongle. It's silly how refreshing it is to get accessories in the box on an expensive phone, but using it for a while and reading up on the other Xiaomi phone lines. This is the upper end of the consumer, all-rounder market and above this line, that's where products get increasingly niche and even for a handful of compromises. This is ridiculous. Overkill for handling your daily driver tasks, you're sure to have a nice experience, but you also have a ton of headroom to drive more intense computing needs.

These phones jump us into the feels of buying a nicer phone to that. The mi 11i succeeds rather well, it's an absolute screamer of a phone, but there's a lot of credit to give to Xiaomi's skin, hey all one from the future. Here this part of the video was all about software, and I had these general talking points about this being an expensive phone and how I'm not as familiar with Xiaomi and not being able to predict what updates would be like. I'm not entirely sure what to expect for support it's an expensive phone, so we should see some long-term attention paid to it. I made sure to check for updates the morning.

Furthermore, I shot the original video for the review and then literally that night I got me UI 12.5, the skin was already really fluid. Xiaomi has developed the bounciest most animated UI, I think exists today. I honestly wasn't encountering a lot of bank, maybe the occasional stutter on multitasking, which is common for a lot of phones out there, especially when the multitasking action is so heavily animated. One of the main claims for 12.5 is making the skin more responsive, and I'd say that seems to pan out. This is a surprisingly responsive.

Skin for that level of customization Xiaomi's relationship with software is still something I wrestle with how the phone software inserts itself, in between services and the user, an additional malware scan when installing apps from Google play the pre-installed games. That often nag a lot in your notifications or why a calculator requires a disclosure on using personal data to do basic math I've gotten a little more familiar with setting up Xiaomi phones to avoid some heavier notification and ad spam, but there's still an undercurrent of phone as service that might be off-putting to some consumers. At the same time, mini 12.5 seems to be addressing device privacy for your clipboard file, browser and web browsing. So it is its a nuanced conversation on software. A few other thoughts on this update.

I love Xiaomi's implementation of floating window apps. It's maybe the most directly accessible version of this idea. I've seen yet so many people don't realize their phones can do things like this, because this option is often tucked away in some kind of menu or additional settings. Also, today was talking up to support for live and video wallpapers, which is fun, but I think I'm going to go back to a basic gradient wallpaper when I'm done with this review. Lastly, with this update, I was kind of surprised to see some small drops in benchmarking performance.

There's a whole separate section on compute power later in this video and my overall experiences using real world apps haven't changed much from my initial assessment, but it is curious to see a nearly 15 drops in single core CPU scores. I've been critical about this processor and how every manufacturer seems to be doing something different to keep their phones running cooler. It might make sense to throttle down the CPU for a little better consistency any who. I hope you've enjoyed this message from the present and now back to the older parts of this video already in progress switching gears. So we can talk about some hardware.

Audio tech has been solid. The speakers are mid-pack performers for a phone again. I thought it was charming that they included the headphone dongle, though we're obviously not talking audio file grade processing here, but all in all, I think our ears are well served for the content we might consume. This is an interesting part of the conversation, the camera tech. It makes this one of the craziest wobbliest phones to put down on a table: aka Hakka, Hakka, Hakka, wakka, we're always hunting those price balancing options.

Xiaomi is nudging up the costs of the main camera sensor and that's coming at the expense of the supporting ultra-wide sensor that lower tier ultra-wide can't handle macro duties, so we're also getting a macro camera in the mix. We've got to pick and choose between these options. An iPhone 12 is going to be better balanced between the main and the ultra-wide. The 11i is going to be a stronger performer for the main camera and weaker for the ultra-wide in the core mainstream idea of point and shoot camera use. This is going to be a phenomenal option, especially where most of the photos taken are in reasonably good light in lower light and nighttime conditions expect the main sensor to perform very well, but the ultra-wide to be kind of useless.

I do think this camera software could do with just a bit more polish pixel binning isn't easy on quad Bayer sensors, but this 9 to 1 pixel bin certainly brings additional challenges for detail. There are a handful of my tests, shots that have a bit more of that paint dab effect and when the ISO climbs some output can look a little smeary. I don't believe this to be a deal. Breaker concern for the core camera use, but it pops up and especially, is more noticeable when you're pushing the camera harder in more challenging conditions. Video from the main camera is similarly crowd.

Pleasing 4k at 60 frames per second looks, vibrant and crisp and smooth. There is an option for 8k at 30 frames per second, which is also kind of funny, because there is no option for 24p video recording, and this is nitpick, but I love the way Xiaomi lays out their camera app. The menu doesn't disappear when you toggle one setting and being the camera nerd that I am, I'm always going to dig on manual modes for photos. This is a fantastic feature. Rich layout focus peaking, even while using autofocus, zebra stripes for exposure and one of the better explainers for what all the modes on the camera do.

Plus focus and shoot mode is one of my favorite ways to control a phone camera. You tap to focus and tap again to capture your focus indicator becomes your shutter button, regardless of where you focus. You never have to reach or adjust your grip to get to the shutter button. I think someone appropriately picks their preferences here is in for a treat. This is strong performance, and it only starts to struggle when you have higher tier content.

Creation concerns like manual video controls, where there's little support here for advanced camera modes in an app like film. The focus of this phone is not on content creation, but the main sensor here is so good. I wish we had more control over what it could do. Of course, these features are only as good as long as you can keep them running out in the field. So battery life has been good, but obviously we're using a high refresh rate screen with a real power, thirsty soc.

Turning down the eye, candy helps you can use one of the advanced power settings if you have more modest power needs, but after how wonderful? The experience was on the mi 11 lite I'd wonder if those folks who prioritize battery life over outright horsepower might not just be happier shopping, more middle mid-range phones and for a phone that exists in something of a gray area for distribution in the United States. I've been really happy with support and performance on T-Mobile's network, I'm using the US mobile sim in this 11i, and it makes me grin in my neighborhood when that 5g icon fires up Wi-Fi performance also handling my home network, a little better than my current crop of OnePlus phones, so we're in very good shape. There too, where I wanted to wrap this review up. The performance conversation is really difficult. This year, Qualcomm's snapdragon 888 is a tricky chip to tame it's crazy, powerful.

But it's crazy, thirsty, and it runs, I mean not crazy, but it does run a little hot. My expectations on this price tier aren't as high as the phones that cost more, and I'm not a surprise when the performance here isn't quite as stable or as consistent. Whether this phone truly represents an upgrade over last year's phones or even phones from 2019, really comes down to the very specific needs you have and the apps you really use. You should not assume this is more powerful across the board, because it's newer and has the processor, with the bigger numbers on the label gaming really difficult to pin down. On a more intense title, like undead horde, we see worse performance here than we saw on the galaxy s21.

The s21 was previously my example of phone. What not very good at gaming, and now we've got more data to pick apart. Some of these trends, both this phone and the s21 spike to incredibly high frame rates, but then crater to distracting low frame rates, the difference over sustained play, though Samsung eventually settles down. They throttle down into a more consistent, mid 30s frame rate where the 11i kept swinging higher and lower. The game doesn't look great in the mid-30s, but it's way less distracting when controlling your units, the 11i banks and turns into a slideshow.

So the game is legit unplayable. When you've got tons of minions on your screen, the flip side playing a less demanding game that has been beautifully optimized for android, a platformer like dead cells, just pegs at the full 120 hertz of the display, and it looks amazing. So I really need folks to stop putting much stock in synthetic benchmarks. Looking at geek bench scores, there's no way to properly predict which games will play better. Also, we're getting to a point on phone chip sets where we really could use more customization options and making these options more accessible.

Samsung likes to CPU throttle their phones, OnePlus puts on a GPU limiter. Some apps give you graphics and performance options. Some games will only whitelist specific phones for better performance. It's a bit of a mess right now. I didn't want to get so modeling at the end here, but this is about where we should put a pin in this video, because I really have enjoyed my time with the Xiaomi mi 11i, it's a phone that wonderfully validates my opinion that we should talk about.

Phones more, like we talk about cars, it's not enough to have one nicely: trimmed mid-sized sedan in a market. We want different manufacturers to bring different strengths to the table at these more mainstream prices. As soon as I picked up this phone, I got really excited for how it was different from an OnePlus, 9 or a s21. I want to see those different options at play, because it's the only thing that's going to keep these brands innovating and fighting for our hard-earned cash. I really think I need to shoot a showdown.

Furthermore, I don't shoot as many comparisons as I used to, and these two feel like they should try and duke it out. Furthermore, I don't know is that something you'd want to watch drop me. Some comments down below I'll, of course drop a link down below for more info on the mia11i, where you can maybe shop one of these online, especially if you can find them in your region. As always, thanks. So much for watching for sharing these videos subscribing to the channel supporting your favorite content, creators never been more critical than it is today.

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Source : JuanBagnell