Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra review

Every bit far equally “ultra” phones get, the Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra is hard to comprehend. Its monolithic design, enormous cameras, stunning display and secondary rear display give it an unmistakable look — 1 that shows Xiaomi ways business when it sets its sights on taking down its Samsung, OnePlus and Apple rivals.

Those specs aren’t merely for ticking boxes either. All of them work also as you’d look, with a few, such as the QHD resolution, 120Hz console, zippy 67W charging or the telephoto camera, offering course-leading performance.

However, this model’s ultimate fate rests on how much Xiaomi wants to charge for it. The basic
Xiaomi Mi eleven
is already a not bad value, and uses several identical parts to the Mi 11 Ultra, so arguably the Ultra could be likewise expensive for its own skilful. Nonetheless, with careful pricing, the Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra could brand itself the nearly accessible ultimate smartphone around.

Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra review: Price and release date

We know that the Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra will be coming to the U.G, though information technology will skip the U.Southward., given Xiaomi’s ongoing dispute with the U.South. government over alleged risks to national security.

Xiaomi has nonetheless to name a date and cost for the U.1000. version of the Mi 11 Ultra. Given the basic Xiaomi Mi 11 costs £749, but a little less than the £769 Galaxy S21 or £829 OnePlus 9 Pro, it follows that the Ultra version would price well over £i,000, perhaps similar to the £one,149 Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra and £i,099 iPhone 12 Pro Max.

All the same, the price of the Ultra in Republic of india, the simply market with an announced cost so far, gives us hope. At
70,000 rupees

(opens in new tab), the Mi 11 Ultra costs less than a Galaxy S21 Plus, and the same as a OnePlus 9 Pro. Nosotros can’t account for how regional differences will bear upon that toll when information technology comes to the U.K., merely if Xiaomi can beget to sell the Mi 11 Ultra for less than £1,000,, it would undercut its rivals significantly, and become an incredible bargain for the hardware it offers, fifty-fifty accounting for the already cheap Mi 11.

Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra review: Design

You might mistake the Xiaomi Mi eleven Ultra for the bones Mi 11 from the forepart. The curved dial-hole display looks smart, but it’s indistinct from both other Mi 11 models and other Android phones.

Flip the phone over, and everything changes. You’re immediately drawn to the huge rectangular camera crash-land that stretches almost the entire width of the phone, and the elevation third of the back. The three large photographic camera openings look foreboding, and that’s non to mention the secondary rear brandish sat to their right.

The Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra comes with a tough ceramic body, in either black or white. I prefer the white version since it helps the camera bumps stand out even more, just both colors expect elegant and the Mi eleven Ultra should shrug off scratches better than a glass- or plastic-backed phone.

Both the front and back of the Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra bend into the metal side rails, which makes it fit surprisingly well into your hand and comfortable to use fifty-fifty with just one paw. You’ll notice the weight of this telephone the moment you option it upwardly, though.

At more than than 8 ounces, the Mi 11 Ultra is heavier than the Milky way S21 Ultra or the iPhone 12 Pro Max, though I didn’t detect information technology tough to use over long periods. What did go a petty annoying still was how piece of cake it is to snag the Mi xi Ultra’southward large photographic camera crash-land on a jeans pocket, stopping you from putting the phone away as effortlessly as you’re likely used to.

Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra review: Display

Xiaomi has equipped the Mi 11 Ultra with an exquisite brandish. The half dozen.81-inch AMOLED panel comes consummate with a QHD resolution and a 120HZ maximum refresh rate and has a subtle bend on all 4 edges to go far easier to hold.

If you lot prioritize bombardment life over refresh rate and resolution, Xiaomi has made it easy to tone down these settings. You can set the display to an FHD resolution instead, and the 120Hz resolution can dynamically calibration down to 90Hz, 60Hz or 30Hz if the content you’re looking at won’t be hurt by a lower refresh charge per unit.

Watching the Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings trailer to effort out the Mi 11 Ultra’south brandish, I was not disappointed. The floating water effects, neon lights and burning hot blade that all appear at various points in the trailer all looked fantastic, merely as I watched the teaser for the side by side installment of the MCU, I had a nagging thought — the Mi 11 Ultra’s display is a flake underwhelming. It’s the exact same as the i on the Mi 11, which is far cheaper to buy.

That means despite the display being one of the Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra’s best features, the screen is not a good enough reason to pay up for this phone on its ain.

Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra review: Rear display

The displays don’t stop with the Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra’s half-dozen.81-inch main brandish. The dorsum of the phone features a secondary 1.1-inch panel, about the size of a fitness ring’s screen. Y’all’ll find the secondary display within the camera crash-land, and it’s one of the Mi xi Ultra’s signature features. Unfortunately, the brandish offers surprisingly limited functionality.

With the phone locked, the rear panel acts as a miniature always-on display when yous tap information technology, showing you the time, date, battery level and whether you have notifications. When the phone’south open, y’all tin utilise the rear screen as a preview window for the rear cameras, allowing your subjects to see themselves earlier you hit the shutter button. Unfortunately, you lot tin can merely enable this when in normal photograph mode, not when taking portrait mode shots.

Both of these are applied applications for a secondary display, putting us in mind of how the foldable Samsung Galaxy Z Flip or Motorola Razr use their mini external displays. I can’t say I’thou convinced this is going to exist the adjacent hot trend in smartphone design though — information technology feels besides low-cal on features to get in worth adding a second screen. Plus the Xiaomi Mi eleven Ultra’s rear panel is very dim. Whatsoever in a higher place-boilerplate amount of low-cal makes information technology impossible to read, peculiarly from extreme angles.

Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra review: Cameras

The Mi 11 Ultra aims for camera quality over quantity, offering but iii rear sensors. The ones that are in that location feature impressive specs. The main camera uses a 50MP sensor, with the ultrawide and telephoto cameras both featuring 48MP sensors. The telephoto photographic camera, every bit text on the back of the phone reminds you, is capable of 120x zoom, although you’ll exist better off sticking to its 5x optical or 10x hybrid zoom levels instead.

The Mi 11 Ultra’s front camera has a 20MP sensor, but it almost doesn’t need to be in that location. The secondary display allows all the rear cameras to exist practically used for selfies.

To put the Mi xi Ultra through its paces, I compared it with shots taken past the iPhone 12 Pro, i of the all-time photographic camera phones around. In this first comparison of the phones’ principal cameras, I took a shot of the London Middle that turns out to be a narrow win for the iPhone. The Mi 11 Ultra’s image is oddly dark, while the iPhone manages to capture the heaven only too as it recreates the detail of the Eye’s structure.

In a slightly darker environs nevertheless, the Mi xi pulls ahead. Encounter how the colors of the leaves and grass in the sunken square of Paddington Fundamental are much richer than that of the iPhone’s shot, plus how the Mi 11 Ultra still manages to capture the sky without the lite blowing out the color.

Withal when it’southward a proper dark manner shot, I think the iPhone has the edge. The Mi 11 Ultra’s epitome of the Euston Station war memorial is brighter only fails to capture the color of the sky or the street lamp light cast on the stonework in quite the same fashion equally the iPhone.

Switching to the ultrawide sensor, the Mi eleven Ultra’due south larger sensor has produced a brighter image that too retains the detail of the light playing on the metal installation and physical bridge in a higher place. All the same it is more than plain distorted than the iPhone’s image, which looks all right overall.

The Mi xi Ultra’s strongest photos come from its telephoto lens. Xiaomi’s phone has 1 of the largest, highest resolution sensors combined with a powerful periscope zoom, so information technology’s unsurprising to see that it takes a clearer image at 2x zoom than the iPhone’s 2x optical zoom lens does.

Even increasing to 10x zoom, the Mi xi Ultra all the same keeps the Elizabeth Belfry, a.k.a. Large Ben, looking sharp, even from the other side of the River Thames.

The maximum 120x zoom is impressive, every bit you lot tin run across beneath. However it’s not a good quality image, and I found information technology difficult to aim without a tripod due to the subtle movements of your mitt causing the view to bob and weave.

The last test is to look at how the selfie camera performs. We see the Mi 11 Ultra’s paradigm is not equally saturated, and has a more subtle bokeh effect in the background. While I prefer how I look in the shot from the Xiaomi telephone, the iPhone’s done a better job with the groundwork.

I as well tried taking a selfie using the rear display and the Xiaomi’s main photographic camera. This was fairly piece of cake to manage on the Mi 11 Ultra, and resulted in the highest resolution selfie I’ve ever taken.

It’s this kind of shot, along with the telephoto camera, that sets the Mi 11 Ultra apart from all other flagship phones. Even the images where I picked the iPhone version as the better one, there was nothing actually wrong with the shot from the Xiaomi. Information technology seems condom to say the Mi 11 Ultra has earned the right to its colossal camera bump.

Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra review: Performance

Xiaomi has shoehorned a Snapdragon 888, 12GB RAM and 256GB storage into the Mi 11 Ultra. There aren’t many phones with better specs, so you can rest assured the Mi 11 Ultra will handle any app or game you want to run on it.

On the Geekbench v app that measures general performance, the Mi 11 Ultra posted a single-cadre event of 1,136 points, and a multicore score of iii,724. That’southward slightly ahead of the OnePlus ix Pro (1,126 and 3,685) and the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra (one,123 and 3,440), only still a ways off the iPhone 12 Pro Max (1,603 and 4,111) and its all-conquering A14 Bionic chipset.

Moving to the 3DMark graphic criterion and its Wild Life Unlimited test, and the Mi 11 Ultra scored 5,617 points and managed an average of 33.8 frames per second. Comparing to the same phones every bit before, the OnePlus 9 Pro and S21 Ultra beat out information technology (v,755 and 34.5fps, five,739 and 34.37fps) every bit does the iPhone 12 Pro Max (9,113, 54fps).

I tested the Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra’s functioning for myself past playing Mario Kart Tour, and I didn’t notice the performance gap between this Xiaomi device and the other phones. The game plays excellently, and Xiaomi’s Game Turbo software streamlines the phone’due south performance to make sure you get the all-time from the device, and can play without being disturbed.

Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra review: Bombardment and charging

The Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra is fitted with a 5,000 mAh bombardment, a hefty power pack for virtually phones. The Mi xi Ultra’s battery is unique in that it uses nano silicon oxide, which allows it to stuff the same capacity into a smaller footprint compared to a traditional lithium-ion smartphone battery.

I tuckered the battery with my informal YouTube binge-watching test, and after 6 hours of not-stop video, the Mi 11 Ultra had gone from 100% charge to 64% charge. Every bit you’d expect from a telephone with ii screens, the main one beingness among the best currently on offer on any phone, the battery life takes a severe knock. Even with the phone sat on my desk with the always-on brandish enabled,

Impressively, you lot can charge at the same 67W speed with a wired or wireless connectedness, assuming yous have the right plug and Xiaomi’s sold-separately charging stand. While yous will get the wired charging block in the Mi 11’due south box, sadly Xiaomi was unable to provide us with either of these for testing. Its own figures claim that charging with 1 of these fills the phone 100% full in just 36 minutes. That beats both the Galaxy S21 Ultra and the iPhone 12 Pro, neither of which come up bundled with chargers. However, the latest OnePlus 9 flagships can pull off the aforementioned feat while taking a few minutes less, due to their dual-prison cell 4,500 mAh battery designs.

Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra review: Software

The MIUI 12 spin on Android 11 is a expert one, and then we’re glad Xiaomi kept this interface for the Mi xi Ultra. Xiaomi has successfully balanced the straightforward stock Android experience with its own exclusive features, such equally floating windows, always-on displays, and an bonny await with nicely animated transitions.

The only new characteristic worth mentioning is the options menu for the rear display, found within the special features department on the Xiaomi Mi eleven Ultra. It allows y’all to pick whether the display shows a clock, signature or image, what colour it uses, which notifications testify, if you want to plough it on with a double-tap and how long it stays on for earlier disappearing. You can also disable it completely, which seems like a waste of one of the phone’s biggest features.

Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra review: Verdict

The Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra is a powerful telephone that’s either going to be the smartphone bargain of the year or repakcage what the Xiaomi Mi xi already offers. Because of how generous Xiaomi was with the basic Mi 11, which shares the same main brandish and chipset while withal offering competent photography, the Mi xi Ultra offers less additional value to the Mi 11 compared to what a Galaxy S21 Ultra offers on acme of a base of operations Milky way S21, for example. Therefore, Xiaomi volition brand or break the Mi 11 Ultra based on how much information technology charges for the new phone.

This is a moot betoken for U.S. users, who notwithstanding take to wait at other phones by default, such as the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra or OnePlus 9 Pro. U.Grand. users all the same could notice themselves in one of ii worlds. If Xiaomi sells the Mi 11 Ultra for around the £one,000 mark like the Indian retail cost suggests, and so we will be offered an Android phone with iPhone-rivalling photo quality, two displays and some of the fastest charging speeds around for the price of a mid-level Samsung flagship. Information technology would be hard to deny the Mi 11 Ultra a spot on our
best photographic camera phones
or overall
best phones
guides if this comes to laissez passer.

Nonetheless if Xiaomi follows the example of the S21 Ultra and iPhone 12 Pro Max and charges around £1,200, then the Mi 11 Ultra becomes an overgrown Mi 11 that doesn’’t offer the extra £400 to £500 of value. In this case, information technology’s all the same a great phone, simply one that gets outshone by the about identical Xiaomi Mi eleven.

If you’re convinced of the utility of the extra display, the 67W charging and the power of the rear cameras, then buy a Mi 11 Ultra, you won’t find these features replicated anywhere else whatever fourth dimension soon. Nearly users in the market for a premium phone might desire to wait though, in instance we live in the timeline where Xiaomi is virtually to driblet the best value flagship phone of the twelvemonth.