Xiaomi Mi 9T Review: The Full Picture By Sam Beckman

This is the Xiaomi me 90, and it's one of those phones where it seems too good to be true when you compare the cost and the specs on paper. The thing is, we know how often specs on a sheet can actually sometimes end up translating to poor performance in the real world, and so I've had my sim card in this phone for the past few weeks to determine whether this is a phone you should consider buying whether it's worth forgetting about altogether now coming from using the pixel 3 Excel, which is known for its bathtub like notch. The first thing that I really appreciated about the 90 was the design, but more specifically than display. It is, without a doubt, the headlining feature of this phone and that we have a virtual bezel asst and notch 'less display, and I'm gonna, be honest with you. I really like this display, and I'm gonna, find it hard going back to a phone that has a notch or even a larger than normal-sized bezel and pixel for pattern anyway, having no interruptions to the edges of this display and the fact that it goes pretty much from corner to corner with a very minimal bottom chin as well is seriously nice, and it just makes the experience of using this device spotless and downright enjoyable. On top of that, the display itself is actually an OLED panel and I really struggled going back to phones that don't have OLED panels these days, and so the fact that that's not something I have to sacrifice when using this phone is excellent.

Whilst it's certainly not the brightest panel going around, it does get decently bright, probably just a little less than my pixel 3xl, which is pretty impressive, but it definitely doesn't get dim enough for low-light use. In my opinion, although I've gotten pretty used to using a screen demo application of light, even on my pixel. So this is a fairly innocuous issue for me. So in terms of the selfie cam, II AMI have gone, but they're now somewhat popular approach of placing it in this little pop-up mechanism, similar to the one +7 Pro. Although this one sees the inclusion of this neat little LED light that shines up every time you open and close it, and this actually also acts as a notification LED, which is pretty neat.

The phone does have a glossy glass back with this swirling gradient of color and I, don't mind it, although it's probably not my favorite look, I tend to prefer a matte finish that some other devices have come out with lately and unfortunately, even though we do have a glass back, this phone does not have wireless charging, which may be a big issue for some I. Do miss the feature, although at this price point it's not the biggest complaint for me now, like a lot of other phones coming out at the moment, particularly lots of budget ones. Surprisingly, the 90 does have an in display fingerprint sensor, which is a fun feature to have in one sense, but it isn't superfast or reliable. You have to be quite intentional with the placement and pressure of your finger, and so for me, the jury's still out on in-display fingerprint sensors. There is a face unlock feature on the 90, although it's pretty slow and also unreliable as to when it's even going to work.

Sometimes you have to even tap the face icon for it to launch the functionality. So it's something that I rarely use now, perhaps one of the biggest reservations I had coming into using this phone was the software experience, as many of you may or may not know. I'm a big stock, Android or pixel experienced believer and jemmy in recent years have been known for the pretty heavy skins that they place on top of Android, but get this Xiaomi have obviously been pretty hard at work lately because after using this phone for the past little, while somehow this skin has become actually one of my favorite alternatives to stock Android and I would actually rank it. As my third favorite skin after the pixel experience and oxygen OS, it's very enjoyable, I think one of the biggest reasons as to why I enjoy the experience. So much are the gestures.

Now you obviously have access to your standard, three button navigation, which is fine, but I'm all aboard the gestures trained and the Mew gestures are very, very good. So if you within an app than swiping up quickly from the bottom, will take you home a swipe up and hold or launch into the recent panel and then a quick swipe from either the left or the right side of the display will act as your back button. If you want to quickly switch between your two most recent apps, then holding that left or right swipe, a little longer will do the trick. So, as you can see, they're actually pretty similar to the gestures that Google just launched with Android 10, which I really enjoy as well. And for me, the key to a good gesture based system are the animation.

So whenever you swipe up or swipe up and hold, the application actually follows the movement of your finger, and this just makes everything feel very fluid. Another default home screen launcher is okay, but it's probably my least favorite part of the Mew software experience, and it's pretty much impossible to customize with no app drawer as well. But the good thing is, the gestures: don't become inoperable when you switch to a third-party launcher and in fact they still work pretty well with most of the animations remaining intact. So then, once you switch to using a third-party launcher, it's really only the notification panel and the settings menu itself that look any different, and they're actually pretty good in the way that they function. So now it's really only the way that they look, that's different, the biggest thing I, don't really care for.

When it comes to this software, though other notifications, whilst they look and feel pretty similar to stock Android, they can sometimes be a little inconsistent. So some notifications don't come in at all. Even with battery optimization settings switched off and oftentimes a notification won't behave. The way I expect it to when I either tap it or swipe it. It'll ever do something else completely, or it just ignores my touch altogether.

But apart from that, this is actually a very decent software alternative to stock Android, and on top of that, it also feels very snappy. Indeed, I would even go as far to say that it feels snappier than my pixel 3 cells. Now it does come with 2 gigabytes more of RAM, but you certainly notice that apps are held in memory for longer, but then also opening and closing apps fills faster than my 3 Excel, and so, whilst I initially thought that I was going to unlock the bootloader straightaway and install, perhaps the pixel experience, ROM or something similar onto this device. I've actually been pretty happy, and so it looks like I can leave things just the way that they are. The other thing.

You'll no doubt appreciate about this. Phone is the battery life. It has a four thousand William hour cell inside and for me, I've been able to consistently get over five and a half hours of screen on time each day and that's with navigation and the screen at full brightness for large portions of the day. So if battery life is important to you, then this phone definitely holds its own in that regard. So up until now, everything we've talked about points to this phone being an astounding device, particularly given its price point.

But there are some cons that we need to talk about the first being the speaker now, one downside to having a virtual bezel s design is that there's limited space for a decent speaker setup and unfortunately that is the case with the mean on T, as we only have this single bottom firing speaker here and look it's okay, but it's definitely not a highlight, and it's really easy to block and cover as well, and it also sounds a bit muffled depending on what you're listening to. And so, whilst you have this great full screen visual experience from watching videos, the audio experience definitely falls flat. The vibration mode inside is also a little lackluster, particularly coming from the perfect haptics of my pixel through Excel and look I know it's a subtle feature, but for me, it's one of those things that goes a long way to making a device feel either really premium or a little more budget oriented which this one obviously is. So then we have the cameras and look it's not necessarily that these are bad cameras. They can capture a decent image in the right scenario and in fact, I've taken quite a few images that I think look pretty impressive and the fact that we have three different focal lengths are wired and ultra-wide and a two x telephoto is great and makes snapping a photo super fun.

But it's the inconsistency in the quality of the photos that makes the camera performance less than stellar. So there have been more than a few instances where, in the space of let's say, 10 seconds, I've taken one photo that looks pretty phenomenal and then another where the colors look a bit washed out, and the overall image even looks a bit soft. This is particularly evident when taking photos indoors, but it does happen outdoors from time to time as well, just a little less so. But what this means is I end up taking a few photos just in case otherwise I get home and realized that one photo I took was actually no good. The selfie cam is the same story.

Some photos are tack, sharp and look great whilst others are super soft and washed out, and look pretty atrocious really, and so it's this inconsistency that leaves a little to be desired. When using the cameras on this phone. Now, as I said, you can capture very decent photos in good condition when using this phone. But if you're looking for a low-light beast or something that's going to deliver consistent results, then this phone, probably isn't the one for you. But aside from that, I've got to say this is a very solid purchase of a phone it's affordable and yet it hardly compromises, and it feels like a much, much more expensive phone and so, if you're in the market for an upgrade, but you don't want to fork out $1,000 or even half that then this phone is seriously worth considering, so before we finish up for today.

I just wanted to give a huge shout out to bang good who are nice enough to send the 90 my way for review. They have this phone plus a bunch of other super, affordable tech available on their website, and they're, not sponsoring this video, but they have been nice enough to give me and you guys, a $100 off discount code for the 90. So if you're interested in picking up this phone then make sure you check out that and the link down in the description below, but it's sorry from that that is it for this video. Thank you all very much for watching, and I will catch you later. You.

Source : Sam Beckman