As mentioned in the iGeekPhone annual selection article, 2020 is indeed very “magic”. Maybe no one would have thought that before the arrival of New Year’s Day in 2021, Xiaomi would take out the next-generation digital flagship “in advance”, but this is the fact. The product naming continues the rule of increasing numbers and is called the Mi 11 series. The protagonist of this article is Xiaomi Mi 11, which is positioned as the “Middle Cup”.
As one of Qualcomm’s closest partners, Xiaomi has repeatedly released the Snapdragon 8 series flagship chips, and the Xiaomi Mi11 series first launched the Snapdragon 888, which is a continuation of the “tradition.” For manufacturers, it is possible that the benefits of “grabbing the first launch” are mainly reflected in the marketing level. As ordinary users, this also allows us to understand the approximate performance of the Android flagship in the first half of next year.
Design & Appearance
First of all, it is a 2K flexible screen that has passed the DisplayMate A+ certification, with a resolution of 3200×1440 and a pixel density of 515ppi. There is a saying before that the difference between 1080P and 2K screens cannot be distinguished by the naked eye. This is true in the small screen era, but when the screen size is like Xiaomi 11, it does not hold after 6.5 inches to 6.81 inches. The 2K screen looks obviously more delicate.
Manufacturers of course know the advantages of 2K screens, but they also know more about the disadvantages of 2K screens. Looking back at the many mobile phone products released in 2020, in fact, the 2K screen ratio is not high. Regardless of the cost factor, the additional battery life burden may be an important reason why everyone is more inclined to 1080P. As for why Xiaomi chose to equip this generation of digital series with a 2K screen, the core reason is of course that it wants to emphasize the word “top”, but it is not all.
If you have an impression, you should remember that we talked about the E3 luminescent material used in the Xiaomi 10 Pro evaluation at the beginning of the year with low power consumption. The screen of Xiaomi Mi 11 uses the latest Samsung E4 luminescent material, which has lower power consumption than E3 luminescent material, can offset part of the endurance pressure caused by high resolution, and brings a peak brightness of 1500nit.
It’s not over here. Mi 11 also supports a primary color screen and 1.07 billion color display, and the color display accuracy is also improved compared to the previous generation. Its JNCD value is approximately equal to 0.38, and ΔE is approximately equal to 0.41, which is the current top level. By the way, its screen refresh rate is 120Hz, and the touch sampling rate is increased to 480Hz. Although it is difficult to perceive, in theory, the game response will be faster.
Go back and talk about some external things. You may have noticed that because its screen ratio has been changed from 19.5:9 of Xiaomi Mi 10 to 20:9, it looks much longer overall. Another point is that it chose a four-curved design this time, and the screen curvature is very small. The direct benefit is that the screen becomes more immersive after the screen is bright.
Of course, the problem that the curved screen is prone to false touches cannot be completely eliminated at this stage, but it can be almost eliminated through technical means. At present, a relatively common method is to use algorithms to directly block certain pixels, but it will more or less cause some potential impact on the interactive experience. On Xiaomi Mi 11, we saw another solution.
Xiaomi’s approach is to have a new grip sensor built into the top and bottom of the phone. The function can also be known from the naming of the sensor. It is mainly used to monitor the holding status of the phone in real-time. It is used with other sensors such as gyroscope to achieve accurate judgment The purpose of preventing accidental touch area, in this way, largely solves the contradiction between preventing accidental touch and interactive experience. From our actual experience, Mi 11’s false touch probability is indeed low enough.
Mi 11 also has something to say in terms of protection. This time Xiaomi covered the surface of its screen with a brand new Corning Gorilla Vcitus glass. According to the official, its anti-drop performance has been increased to 2 meters, and its scratch resistance is better. It is currently the toughest Corning Gorilla Glass. We were also invited to witness Corning’s actual comparison test offline. Under more severe conditions, Corning Gorilla Vcitus glass did perform better. (The specific test process can be watched by the geek’s choice Xiaomi 11 hands-on video).
In addition to the above mentioned, Xiaomi Mi 11 raises the brightness adjustment level to 8192. The brightness adjustment is more natural than the previous generation. At the same time, it also uses a thinner screen fingerprint module, which is relatively high and one-handed. It will be more convenient to unlock.
In terms of functional experience, after opening the health app, you can also directly use the screen fingerprint to measure your heart rate. In other respects, Xiaomi Mi 11 is equipped with the “AI Master Image Quality Engine”, which can achieve super-resolution image quality enhancement (up to 1440P for 720P and below resolution images), AI intelligent scene optimization, video quality enhancement, and dynamic image compensation And other effects.
In the Mi Digital series, Mi 11 is the generation with the most abundant body-color matching, with 5 different color options including black, white, blue, smoke purple, and khaki. Among the above color matching versions, in addition to the obvious difference in intuitive color effects, the back cover material is also different. Among them, the black, white, and blue versions are AG glass back covers, while the smoke purple and khaki versions are plain leather back covers.
As far as the Mi 11 version of the smoked purple plain leather in our hand is concerned, its overall color effect is a faint purple, and you can see a more obvious leather texture in the hand. The rear camera has been redesigned, this time focusing on the main camera and ultra-wide-angle lens. At the same time, in order to reduce the influence of the main camera sensor on the thickness of the fuselage, a stepped design was chosen.
It is worth mentioning that although its camera module is made into a stepped shape this time, the surface glass cover is actually processed by one-piece glass CNC, which is more integrated and does not need to worry about long-term use. Dust may enter the lens. But personally, maybe this kind of bright surface treatment is more suitable for the glass back cover.
The material of the back cover is different, the body thickness and weight performance will naturally vary. Specifically, the glass back cover of Mi 11 has a thickness of 8.06 mm and a weight of 196 grams; the plain leather version is a bit thicker at 8.56 mm, but the weight is reduced to 194 grams, but no matter which material it is The version is thinner and lighter than the Mi 10.
The weight and thickness are reduced, and the body is more slender, the Mi 11 is obviously much lighter in the hand than the previous generation, especially the one-handed holding experience is very obvious. In general, this generation of products has achieved a relatively advanced level in the current industry in terms of grip and touch. It is also the most exquisite Xiaomi mobile phone in recent years.
Hardware
About the Snapdragon 888 chip, Geek Choice has made a detailed introduction, here is a brief review of the key points. It uses Samsung’s 5nm EUV production process. Although the CPU part is still the familiar “1+3+4” design, this generation of super-large cores is not only based on the large core but based on Cortex- X1 is deeply customized and the main frequency can reach 2.84GHz.
According to the official information given by ARM, the peak performance of Cortex-X1 is about 30% higher than that of Cortex-A77. The large core of Snapdragon 888 is also upgraded to Kryo 685 based on Cortex-A78, with a main frequency of 2.42GHz. Compared with Cortex-A77, the biggest improvement lies in the significant reduction in power consumption. The small core is based on Cortex-A55. Frequency 1.8GHz.
In addition, the Snapdragon 888 GPU has been upgraded from the previous generation Adreno 650 to Adreno 660. At the same time, it is equipped with a sixth-generation AI engine. The overall AI computing power can reach 26TOPS, which is significantly ahead of the Snapdragon 865. Others such as ISP and network connection (support 5G+ 5G dual-card network), security, and many other features are also superior to the previous generation.
In addition to SoC, the memory specifications of Xiaomi Mi 11 have also been upgraded. When Xiaomi Mi 10 was launched, Mi equipped with LPDDR5 memory clocked at 2750MHz for the first release. In Mi 11, it was changed to LPDDR5 “full blood version”. Simply put, the latter’s main frequency is increased to 3200MHz, and the transmission rate is also increased from the previous 5500Mbps to 6400Mbps.
We used the familiar AnTuTu, Master Lu, and GeekBench5 software to test the Xiaomi Mi 11. Its AnTuTu score is 715852 points, Master Lu scores 919883 points, Geekbench5 single-core 1132 points, and multi-core 3732 points. , The overall performance is significantly ahead of the Mi 10 equipped with Snapdragon 865. Of course, the Snapdragon 865 can easily cope with the daily use and game scenes, and the Snapdragon 888 is even less stressful.
The heat dissipation scheme is the VC liquid-cooled three-dimensional heat dissipation that many manufacturers have mentioned. The inside of the phone is covered with a large-area VC soaking plate. At the same time, the temperature multi-point monitoring design that has been used on many Xiaomi mobile phone products has also appeared on Xiaomi 11. The slight difference is that this time Xiaomi uses a new ultra-thin aerogel thermal blocking material inside to prevent local overheating.
Before the launch of the conference, Lei Jun posted a Weibo “In response to the call for environmental protection of science and technology, Xiaomi 11 will cancel the random chargers”, which triggered a lot of discussions. Let’s look at the final result first: Mi 11 offers two different purchase plans, “Eco Edition” and “Standard Edition”. The prices of the two are exactly the same. The only difference is that the environmental version does not include a charger, while the standard version comes with an A 55W GaN charger worth 99 yuan.
Xiaomi does not have “one size fits all” like Apple. Instead, it gives you and me the right to “support environmental protection”. Some people might say, wouldn’t it be foolish not to choose the standard version? But sometimes if you want to contribute to one thing, you just have to abandon some individual interests, and it is okay to continue using the old charger without affecting the normal experience. Of course, if the charger is crossed out of the packing list, there are still many problems to be solved, so I won’t discuss it here.
Battery
Let’s talk about Xiaomi Mi11 battery life. Its battery capacity is 4600mAh, which is slightly lower than the Xiaomi Mi 10 battery capacity, but it matches a faster-charging scheme, supporting 55W wired fast charging, 50W wireless fast charging, and 10W reverse charging. According to actual measurement, the original wired charger can charge from 1% to 24% in 5 minutes, 44% in 10 minutes, 57% in 15 minutes, and it takes about 48 minutes to charge to 100%.
From the charging line chart we drew above, we can clearly see that the charging speed is very fast in the first 15 minutes, and it can quickly recover the blood of the phone in a short time. Although the speed slows down in the second half, the 4600mAh is charged to 100% in 48 minutes. This result is still satisfactory. In addition, its wireless charging speed is also good. When used with the Xiaomi 55W vertical wireless charging pad, it can be fully charged in about 53 minutes.
For Xiaomi Mi 10, we think it is equipped with a great mobile phone screen, but when it comes to Xiaomi Mi 11, it is not an exaggeration to describe it as a top. Let’s talk about this screen of Mi 11 “from the inside to the outside” specifically.
Cameras
In terms of selfies, Xiaomi Mi 11 is equipped with a 20-megapixel front camera. Due to the use of an “ultra-small lens module”, this also makes the screen aperture control small enough. In functional applications, it supports both video and picture beautification effects, and also provides a wealth of filters to choose from.
The rear camera uses a three-shot design. The main camera is the same as the Mi 10, which is still 108 Megapixels. The ISOCELL Bright HMX sensor has a large photosensitive area of 1/1.33 inches and supports OIS optical image stabilization; the ultra-wide-angle lens is 13 Megapixels and the maximum viewing angle is 123°; For the macro, the highly acclaimed 5-megapixel telephoto macro lens on the Redmi K30 Pro was used.
From the proofs we took above, we can see that Xiaomi Mi 11 has excellent control over the distortion of the ultra-wide-angle lens, and there is no distortion at the edges of the picture. At the same time, in night scene mode, it does not pursue brightening too much but achieves a relative balance between brightness and texture, and the overall picture feels very clean.
Cyberpunk Filter
The camera itself is also very playable. For example, Xiaomi has added a very popular cyberpunk filter to this product during this period, and the AI magic sky change function has been further upgraded. Now not only has a lot of new weather effects added, but it can also randomly generate cloud elements in the sky. , Other functions such as front and rear dual scene shooting and magic avatar have not fallen.
Video-related, Xiaomi Mi 11 supports super night scene video and brings 8 film effect filters. In addition, in the film lens, Xiaomi provides this phone with a variety of special effects such as sliding zoom, fast and slow doors, time still, long exposure delay, and parallel dreams. It can easily shoot video materials similar to blockbuster movies. It’s interesting.
Read Also: MIUI 12.5 First Experience With New Xiaomi Mi 11
Verdict
According to actual measurement, the performance of the Snapdragon 888 5G platform on Xiaomi Mi 11 is quite strong. Relying on Samsung’s 5nm process and the addition of the super large core architecture Cortex-X1, in the evaluation system of GeekBench, compared to the Snapdragon 865 model CPU single-core Performance and multi-core performance increased by 23% and 8% respectively.
GPU graphics technology has always been the characteristic longboard of Qualcomm’s flagship core. This generation integrates Adreno 660 GPU. The Manhattan 3.0 1080p off-screen sub-item tested by GFXbench reached 160FPS; the Aztec ruins Vulkan 1080p/regular off-screen score is 81FPS even exceeds A13. Compared with Snapdragon 865, the performance is higher than 33% and 50% respectively, and the improvement of graphics capability is the most powerful.
It is worth mentioning that Snapdragon 888 has finally concluded the history of external 5G baseband on Qualcomm’s flagship platform by integrating the third-generation 5G solution Snapdragon X60.
Since Xiaomi Mi 11 is only an upgraded “Middle Cup” flagship relative to Xiaomi Mi 10 (the “big cup” flagship Xiaomi Mi11 Pro that should still be on the road may have a bigger big move), so the machine is in the imaging system specifications and imaging The effect has not changed much. Using the classic 100-megapixel HMX main camera with a combination of ultra-wide-angle and macro sub-cameras, the addition of the Snapdragon 888 platform with a more powerful ISP improves the imaging speed.
What is more surprising is that Xiaomi’s pursuit of top-level screens has reached the extreme. This is the first time that Xiaomi’s digital series is equipped with a 2K resolution screen. It complements the last regret of Xiaomi’s flagship on the high-end road in these years, and the E4 luminous material, refresh rate, Screen elements such as color accuracy are at the top level, and even got the “A+” evaluation of DisplayMate.
In general, Xiaomi Mi 11 is a flagship masterpiece after the initial success of Xiaomi’s high-end strategy. As the Snapdragon 888 model that should have appeared in the spring of 2020, it has arrived months ahead of schedule. The 865 models formed a wave of dimensionality reduction offensive, which was caught off guard. Relying on the mature video system, the pinnacle of the screen, the battery life without shortcomings, and other “extreme bucket” specifications, Xiaomi Mi 11 will inevitably not fail in the flagship hegemony throughout the year 2021, very sincere. Catch it at $873.99 by using Coupon Code: 5BKXYKHJ