Samsung’s new sensor ISOCELL GN2 officially took the first step of the mobile phone’s impact of 1 inch and was first released by Xiaomi Mi 11 Pro.
This new sensor has an area of up to 1/1.12”, which is more than twice the area of the existing mainstream small bottom sensor. 50 Megapixels, supports more advanced Daul Pixel Pro focusing, four-in-one pixel Later, it has a single pixel size as high as 2.8μm. The hardware gap between mobile phones and cameras has never been so small. With the addition of the camera algorithm of mobile phone manufacturers, it can only be said that the era when mobile phones eliminate card machines may really be necessary. coming.
In addition to the advanced main camera, Mi 11 Pro also brings a number of other breakthrough improvements. The first is the battery. Upgrade to a silicon negative battery, which can achieve a capacity of 5000mAh and a charging speed of up to 67W in the case of a single cell.
In terms of heat dissipation, Xiaomi Mi 11 Pro uses a solid-liquid-gas three-state three-dimensional heat dissipation system. On the basis of the original VC liquid cooling + graphite + copper foil, a phase change heat dissipation pad is added. When the processor is working, the heat dissipation pad absorbs heat and liquefies, which can efficiently export the heat to the VC and then dissipate it at the cold end, ensuring that the performance of the Snapdragon 888 chip is full and the temperature is not too high.
In addition, the audio specifications of the Xiaomi Mi 11 Pro have gone further. The dual speakers use a new customized 1014 speaker unit, which is professionally tuned by Harman Kardon and built-in scene recognition to ensure that the best matching music can be provided according to different sound sources and scenes effect. Next, let us experience the Xiaomi Mi 11 Pro together to see how strong the super-outsole GN2 is.
Design & Appearance
The appearance design of the Mi 11 Pro is basically the same as that of Mi 11. The front is a micro-curved design, and the upper left corner is punched for proactive shots.
The back is also similar in style to the Mi 11, and the wide-angle lens remains unchanged. In addition to the GN2 main camera with a super-outsole, a 5x periscope telephoto is also added.
After close-up, the periscope module is very small, and the specifications are similar to those seen on the Xiaomi Mi 10 Youth Edition. The GN2 main camera with a super large bottom can be seen from the lens area.
In terms of interface, the upper and lower double speakers have Harman Kardon certification. There is an ancestral infrared remote control module on the top. The rest is the microphone opening and SIM card slot. The charger module is individually packaged and has a maximum power of 67W.
Phone back
After three rounds of continuous testing, we also looked at the heat on the back of the phone. Excellent heat dissipation is to export the heat in time, so the temperature on the back can also be imagined. The hottest part is concentrated in the upper half, and both the front and back temperatures have reached about 48°C.
Therefore, although the heat dissipation is excellent, the surface temperature of the Xiaomi 11 Pro’s body is not low when it is fully loaded. If you want to play games with higher performance requirements such as “Yuan Shen”, it is recommended to match the ice-sealed heat dissipation back clip and install it in the upper position as much as possible to cool down and assist in heat dissipation.
Screen
The screen of the Xiaomi Mi 11 Pro is similar to Xiaomi Mi 11. It uses Samsung’s latest E4 luminous material AMOLED micro-curved screen, supports 2K resolution and 120Hz refresh rate, supports 10bit colour depth display and MEMC frame supplement functions.
However, some of the screen parameters of Xiaomi Mi 11 Pro are better, such as the peak brightness increased to 1700nit, and it has passed the certification of Dolby Vision, which can provide more realistic picture effects when watching film and television works.
In addition, there is another very important point. That is, Xiaomi has done factory calibration for each screen to ensure that the screen colour display of each mobile phone can reach the accuracy of ΔE≈0.41.
Screen brightness test
In daily use, the screen brightness of the Mi 11 Pro can reach up to 450nit. Generally speaking, regardless of the maximum brightness of various display devices, the brightness will be limited to the range of 400nit in the normal mode.
After activating the HDR mode, the global maximum brightness can be stimulated. After testing, the global maximum brightness of the Xiaomi 11 Pro can reach about 901.75nit. This is very close to the brightness requirement of HDR 1000. In this case, Xiaomi 11 Pro can take advantage of high brightness to present a more realistic and layered picture effect.
Of course, the highest excitation brightness of Mi 11 Pro is 1700nit, but the conditions are extremely harsh. It needs to be triggered by strong light irradiating the screen, and at the same time, it needs to control the size of the display area of the screen to achieve it, and it also has requirements for test equipment. The probe specifications of the instrument used by ordinary users are far from being achieved.
Screen colour gamut and colour accuracy
Mi 11 Pro provides three preset colour modes in the settings, namely adaptive, vivid and primary colours, in addition to an advanced mode for users to adjust.
Adaptive mode
In the adaptive mode, the colour gamut coverage of the screen reaches 96.7% DCI-P3. In this mode, the wide colour gamut screen has been calibrated, and the colour gamut mapping is done with the sRGB colour gamut, which ensures that the colours correspond to each other, and are displayed in more brilliant colours in the DCI-P3 colour gamut.
In addition, the screen colour accuracy has been tested, and the average ΔE can reach 0.39, which is in line with the official ΔE≈0.41 publicity.
2. Vivid mode
The colour gamut of the screen in vivid mode is basically the original colour gamut of this AMOLED screen. The colour gamut is extremely large, which is 20% more than the colour space of DCI-P3. Although the colours may be oversaturated in various ways, they must be They will be very gorgeous. The colour standard of this mode is also very accurate, with an average ΔE of 0.42.
3. Primary colour mode
The primary colour mode is the sRGB mode, and the colour gamut of the screen is strictly limited within the sRGB colour space, which can ensure that the materials transmitted on the network can be displayed in true colours without losing details due to oversaturation.
In this mode, the colour temperature of the screen will change from the original 7600K-7800K to about 6600K, and the overall look is warmer. The average colour standard is 0.3, which is also a very good level.
6. Heat dissipation: the performance of solid-liquid-gas three-state three-dimensional heat dissipation is still outstanding under multiple rounds of tests
In order to give full play to the performance of Snapdragon 888, the heat dissipation of this generation of Xiaomi 11 Pro has also been greatly upgraded. In addition to the previous VC liquid cooling, graphite, and graphene, a new type of thermally conductive material, a phase change heat dissipation pad, is added this time, which directly covers the core heating area, and will gradually liquefy when absorbing heat, and fully conduct the heat to the liquid cooling. The VC plate then vaporizes the heat-conducting material in the liquid-cooled VC, flows to the cold end and liquefies to release heat to complete the heat transfer.
In the new heat dissipation design, the most important improvement is in the core SOC part, the addition of phase change silicone grease can better conduct the heat generated sharply when the SOC is working under high load, and effectively and quickly conduct the heat to the cold end. , So as to ensure that the core temperature will not have much impact on performance.
In order to test the effect of the new type of heat dissipation, we used the most loaded GFXbench to conduct three rounds of tests to see how effective the heat dissipation is.
In the three rounds of tests, the core temperature reached the highest 60°C in the last round, but after the heavy load, the temperature will drop rapidly, indicating that the heat conduction efficiency of the heat dissipation design of the Xiaomi 11 Pro is still very high.
After three rounds of GFXbench testing, the score of Xiaomi 11 Pro did drop to a certain extent due to heat, and the maximum rate could reach about 10%.
However, even so, compare the performance of the Mi 11 Pro in the overheated state with a flagship Snapdragon 888 that is known for its conservative scheduling and non-heating in past tests. The worst third-round score of the Mi 11 Pro is compared to this flagship. Compared with the results after the frequency reduction in the second half of the single round, the results are still slightly better. This is enough to see that the Mi 11 Pro is powerful in performance release and strong in heat dissipation configuration. Under this heavy test, it can stand for three rounds without falling.
Cameras
This time, Xiaomi Mi 11 Pro brings us Samsung GN2, the largest bottom sensor in the history of mobile phones, which is definitely the top priority.
Its size reached an astonishing 1/1.12 inch, breaking the record for the largest in the mobile phone industry in one fell swoop. If you don’t have an intuitive feeling about this number, let’s compare it.
GN2 is currently the world’s largest mobile phone image sensor. Its area is 1.4 times that of the HMX used by Xiaomi’s previous generation, 1.37 times that of the previous GN1 in the same series, and 1.63 times that of the IMX 689, which is famous for focusing. Even last year, the two models of IMX 700 and OV48C, which broke the largest record, respectively, GN2 reached 1.3 times and 1.35 times their size respectively. N2 compares the current several outsole main camera CMOS.
In the face of the apple, which has always adhered to the small bottom, the area contrast of GN2 is even greater. Even with the 1/1.8″ “bigger” iPhone 12 Pro Max, the area of GN2 has reached 2.5 times the size of its rear camera.
With the support of the outsole, the number of pixels of GN2 is 50 million, which makes it have a single large pixel area of up to 1.4μm. After the four-in-one pixel is able to achieve a single pixel of 2.8μm, it can provide a better dark part imaging effect and higher dynamic range, avoid the large base and high pixels like HMX, which causes the unit pixel to be too small, which is the result of general imaging.
In addition to the inherent advantages brought by the super-outsole, GN2 also brings two new features, Dual Pixel Pro and Smart ISO Pro.
1. Dual Pixel Pro
On the previous GN1, Samsung adopted a full-pixel dual-core PD focusing scheme. Each pixel is vertically divided into two parts. Under a lens are two left and right photodiodes. When focusing, GN1 will switch the left and right photoelectric. The diode uses the phase difference of the image to determine whether the focusing is successful, thereby realizing the fast focusing ability of all pixels, and the focusing speed can reach up to 0.3s.
Although the full-pixel dual-core focusing is fast, it also has its weaknesses. The horizontally arranged sub-pixels are very sensitive to the phase change in the vertical direction, but it also means that the phase focusing in the horizontal direction will become difficult. Once you encounter a special scene, such as a large area of parallel horizontal stripes, the focusing may be difficult. Not as fast and accurate as it used to be.
In order to solve this problem, the new Dual Pixel Pro debuted.
Dual Pixel Pro brings a new cutting method, which is different from the previous vertical division of pixels in the centre. On GN2, the green pixels are cut at an angle of ±45°, which allows them to distinguish the vertical phase difference. At the same time, it is also given the ability to distinguish the lateral phase difference.
When encountering a vertical pattern, GN2 will still use the traditional dual-core focusing method. The left and right long sides of the 45° division will participate in the work to identify the phase difference and complete the focus.
When encountering the thorny horizontal pattern of traditional arrangement, only these 45° bevelled green pixels come into play. The diodes on the upper and lower long sides will play a role, using the up and down phase difference, even the horizontal pattern can quickly capture the focus.
Through this special operation of 45° beveling of green pixels, Dual Pixel Pro can still play 100% of the original full-pixel dual-core focusing performance when facing vertical patterns. When facing a horizontal pattern, although only 50% of the pixels will participate in dual-core focusing, it is faster and more accurate than the original arrangement.
However, in terms of focusing performance, Samsung’s Dual Pixel Pro is still not an opponent of Sony’s 2×2 OCL. The reason is simple. Samsung’s craftsmanship uses a combination of small pixels and small lenses, and 2×2 OCL is the real four-in-one-one-pixel mode. On the one hand, there is a certain disadvantage in quantum efficiency, on the other hand, 2×2 OCL is that all pixels can participate in all-around focusing and imaging. Although Dual Pixel Pro has improved focusing performance, it is still not the strongest.
2. Smart ISO Pro
GN2 supports Smart ISO, which can automatically select the appropriate ISO value for shooting in different scenes during the day and night, and in particular, it also supports the Smart ISO Pro function, which can set the highest ISO and lowest ISO of the scene, and use both at the same time. This kind of ISO shooting imaging, and through multi-frame synthesis, the image has a higher dynamic range, and finally produces a finished product with rich highlights and less noise in the dark.
Rear camera module specifications
After talking about the main camera, let’s talk about the rear camera system of the Mi 11 Pro. In addition to the amazing GN2, Mi 11 Pro is also equipped with a wide-angle and a periscope telephoto.
The wide-angle model is consistent with the Mi 11, OV13B10, with 13 million pixels and a 123° field of view.
The periscope telephoto is OV08A10, which is the same type of periscope telephoto equipped with Xiaomi Mi 10 Youth Edition, with 8 million pixels.
To put it simply, in the rear camera system of Mi 11 Pro, compared to the main camera that climbed to the top of GN2, the remaining two sub-cameras are very different from it and appear to be unbalanced, so when using the sub-camera, There will be some gaps in imaging quality.
In particular, choosing a 5x periscope lens will cause a certain fault in the continuity of the focal length of the Xiaomi 11 Pro. After all, even the 100-megapixel Mi 10 Pro uses a 2x portrait lens and a 3.7x fixed focus lens to achieve zoom relay. It is difficult for the Mi 11 Pro to achieve a perfect focal length between 1 and 5 times through digital zoom. filling
It can be said that Mi 11 Pro is a flagship video flagship featuring the GN2 main camera. As for the secondary camera, their role is only a supplement to some special situations.
The main camera GN2 is the focus of attention this time. On Xiaomi 11 Pro and Xiaomi 11 Ultra, the specifications of GN2 are exactly the same, with an 8P lens and OIS optical image stabilization. At the press conference, Xiaomi officially even directly compared the GN2 with the Sony black card with a 1-inch bottom, which shows that the quality of the GN2 is strong.
If you are only interested in this super-outsole main camera, then Xiaomi 11 Pro can let you fully experience its full strength.
1. During the day
To be honest, it is basically difficult to see the difference between GN2 and other main cameras when taking pictures during the day. In the case of good lighting, the difference between mobile phone photos depends more on the algorithm and the colour palette style.
But like the last one, when the sky is getting darker, Mi 11 Pro can still have excellent picture quality, and there is no strong smearing feeling after zooming in. This is the fundamental difference between the big pixels on the big bottom and the small pixels on the small bottom.
Night view
In fact, using the advantages of the GN2 outsole and Smart ISO Pro, the night can highlight the advantages of the super outsole.
At night, the experience of taking pictures with the main camera GN2 is amazing. The camera of Xiaomi Mi 11 Pro tends to increase the brightness in the automatic mode, while the night scene mode tends to suppress the highlights. The imaging styles of the two modes are completely different. When taking pictures in a lighted scene, glare will definitely appear in the automatic mode. So if you want to take a perfect photo, you may need to be more careful, manually adjust the exposure or focus point, or try several more modes to get the best results.
In the daytime and night scenes with good lighting, the imaging quality of the Mi 11 Pro’s wide-angle lens is also visible. However, it is recommended to avoid using the wide-angle lens at night as much as possible. Although it also supports night scene mode, the imaging effect is not satisfactory.
The situation of 5 times periscope is similar to that of wide-angle. With a smaller CMOS area, it has stricter requirements for light.
Insufficiency
The rear camera system of the Mi 11 Pro is not perfect. After the actual experience, some shortcomings can also be found.
The first is the focal length setting. There is a big fault between the main camera and 5x periscope. From a practical point of view, 3x fixed focus may be a better choice.
With the new outsole blessing, the close focus of GN2 is difficult to control. This is because its minimum focusing distance is actually about 1 to 2 cm longer than the average main camera. It is easy to focus on the background when composing a close-up.
Some flagship opportunities choose to automatically switch to wide-angle for close-range shooting, but due to the wide-angle quality, Xiaomi 11 Pro cannot take this approach. It might be better if the focus peaking function can be added from the professional model to the automatic mode.
In addition, because the lens of the mobile phone industry has not broken through, the problem of deterioration of image quality at the edge of the main camera at close range of the outsole still exists.
At present, this problem will not be solved unless there are revolutionary advancements in mobile phone lenses. The only way to slow down is to use digital zoom to shoot at a longer distance or use a wide-angle instead of the main camera.
Hardware & Performance 
As mentioned above, Xiaomi Mi 11 Pro has put a lot of effort into heat dissipation this time, so the performance scheduling of Snapdragon 888 is also more radical. On the basis of Xiaomi Mi 11, the score has also been improved to a certain extent.
1. Master Lu
In the test of Master Lu, Xiaomi Mi 11 Pro scored 901993 points, ranking first in the performance rankings.
2. Androbench
Xiaomi Mi 11 Pro is equipped with UFS 3.1 flash memory. The test shows that its continuous read speed is 1955.38 MB/s and the continuous write speed is 237.95 MB/s, which is the normal performance level of UFS 3.1.
3. Geekbench
Generally, in order to avoid the interference of storage performance, we will choose the Geekbench 5 score as a reference. Xiaomi Mi 11 Pro scored 1010 in single-core performance and 3132 in multi-core performance in Geekbench 5, basically in line with other Snapdragon 888 flagships.
4. GFXbench
Thanks to the improvement of heat dissipation, the performance of Mi 11 Pro in GFXbench has also been enhanced compared with Mi 11. There has been a significant improvement in the first few tests of GFXbench. Even if the running score comes to the end, under the premise of fever, the score still has a weak advantage.
Game Test
1. Glory of the King
When playing “Honor of Kings” in the 90-frame mode at the highest image quality, the average frame rate of Mi 11 Pro is 90.2FPS, and the frame rate is stable throughout.
2. The Peaceful Elite
With the 90-frame mode turned on in smooth image quality, the average frame rate of Mi 11 Pro playing “Glory of the King” is 88.6FPS, which can be maintained above 59FPS throughout the entire process, and it is stable at 90 frames half the time.
3. Ace fighter
“Ace Warrior” supports a 120-frame mode to play, with the highest image quality, it can maintain an average frame rate of 119.3FPS during battle.
4. The original god
Highest picture quality + manually turn on the 60-frame mode to play “Yuan Shen”, use the route shown in the figure to test, the average frame rate of Xiaomi 11 Pro is 56.5FPS, there will be certain fluctuations in the battle, but it will recover soon normal.
The performance release of the Xiaomi Mi 11 Pro is very radical. Although it is a traditional flagship phone, it also has a similar performance in the game. This is also due to the new heat dissipation design adopted this time. However, while running at full load, the temperature of the upper part of the phone and the middle frame should not be underestimated, so as that said, it is recommended to use it with an ice-sealed heat dissipation back clip.
Battery
In terms of battery technology, Xiaomi Mi 11 Pro also has a major breakthrough, which is to bring the silicon-oxygen negative electrode battery used in the electric vehicle field into the mobile phone. On the basis of improved safety, the silicon-oxygen anode battery solves the problem of a long battery cycle under high silicon content, and the low first charging efficiency is also solved through the technology of pre-filling lithium on the surface of nano-silicon particles.
The Mi 11 Pro is equipped with a battery that uses a new type of silicon anode technology. Although it has only a 6C single cell, it achieves the coexistence of a large capacity of 5000mAh and a high power of 67W.
Wired charging test
During the wired charging process, the charging power is very stable, so the curve in the first half is almost straight. It takes a total of 38 minutes to fully charge a 5000mAh battery.
Wireless charging test
Mi 11 Pro also supports 67W wireless charging, so it is also claimed that wired charging is as fast as wireless charging. The actual test can charge up to 99% in 36 minutes, which is basically the same as the wired charging speed.
Endurance test
Use bilibili to play the 1080P 60-frame video online to see how the Xiaomi Mi 11 Pro performs with a 5000mAh battery.
After playing the video for one hour, the battery will drop from 100% to 90%, and the video battery life is expected to be about 10 hours.
Verdict
Although today’s mobile phone photography is no longer absolute hardware, it is a world of algorithm-led computational photography, but it is undeniable that more powerful hardware can indeed leave more room for mobile phone manufacturers to optimize their photos.
What’s more, when the hardware gap reaches the level of GN2, no matter how powerful the algorithm is, it cannot be compared with the expansion of the photosensitive area that is close to double or even twice.
The GN2 with super-outsole, the difference when taking pictures during the day is not obvious. After all, in the case of sufficient light, the various algorithms of the manufacturers have sufficient room for display, so it is generally difficult to see that the super-outsole is compared with the ordinary outsole What are the obvious advantages? Everyone’s difference depends more on the manufacturer’s algorithm and colour palette.
But once it comes to the night scene, it will have an immediate improvement in picture quality. With a large pixel size of 2.8 microns, combined with native dual ISO synthesis, the Xiaomi Mi 11 Pro can record all of them, whether it is the neon scenery with complex lighting or the invisible extreme night. While imaging has the texture of the camera, there is no trouble in the post-production process, and thousands of beautiful scenery can be included in the bag.
But what needs to be said is that the current camera algorithm of Xiaomi Mi 11 Pro is not stable, and it will take some time to optimize it to the best. Therefore, if you want to use the full strength of GN2 at present, you may need to perform some additional operations when taking photos.
For example, in terms of exposure, the photos in the automatic mode are generally brighter and the saturation is a little too high. I personally feel that when taking pictures in many scenes, the image quality of manually lowering the exposure will be better.
In addition to GN2, the improvement of the image is not all of the Xiaomi 11 Pro. While bringing the stunning GN2, we also have a stronger battery, charging as fast as wired and wireless, better heat dissipation and audio, and minor parameter upgrades, adding a 2K 120Hz perfect screen that supports Dolby Vision. Even setting aside the camera, Xiaomi Mi 11 Pro is not useless.
With a 1/1.12-inch ultra-large bottom, with more advanced focusing technology, 8P lens and optical image stabilization, Xiaomi Mi 11 Pro is not only a standout in mobile phone photography, but it can also even be straightforward compared to some card cameras. More qualitatively the upper hand.
If you don’t have much demand for super-telephoto and super wide-angle, you just want to experience how strong the main camera of the next generation is, and you are more price-sensitive. Then, starting at only 4999 yuan, the Mi 11 Pro, which has the same main camera specifications as the super cup, is definitely the most cost-effective choice.