Xiaomi Mi 11 Review - Android

The Xiaomi Mi 11 is now about to hit the Philippine shores. It’s bringing the first Snapdragon 888 chipset together with more upgrades such...

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The Xiaomi Mi 11 is now about to hit the Philippine shores. It’s bringing the first Snapdragon 888 chipset together with more upgrades such as a 120Hz quad curved display, Harman Kardon stereo speakers, and a 108MP primary camera. On paper, it looks like Xiaomi raised the bar high, living up to its bang-for-your-buck standard, but let’s see what it got when it comes to everyday use.

Design and Construction

Starting with design. The Xiaomi Mi 11 screams premium with its curved Gorilla Glass back and front with a thin metal frame. Even if it’s taller than its predecessor, it still fits the palm well, although people with small hands might prefer to use both to get a better grip. The unit we have is in the Horizon Blue colorway, but you can also opt for the Midnight Gray or the Cloud White variant.

The rear has a matte finish on it, and it is sealed with Gorilla Glass 5. On the upper left is a protruding square with rounded corners triple camera module that’s far from current iPhone camera modules. Below that is some Xiaomi branding.

Upfront, we get an almost bezel-less 6.81-inch WQHD+ AMOLED Dot Display with a 20:9 aspect ratio and an extra sharp pixel density of 515ppi. We get a tiny punch hole notch on the upper left for the front camera, and we also get an under-display fingerprint sensor that’s easy to reach. The screen is protected by the new Corning Gorilla Glass Victus — which is actually two times more scratch-resistant than Gorilla Glass 6 and can survive drops of up to 2 meters. On top of that, it also has a pre-installed screen protector, so thanks for that.

There’s nothing to see on the left side, but on the right are its power button and volume rocker.

Up top is the noise-canceling microphone, together with an IR blaster, and the secondary speakers by Harman Kardon. Looking closely, there’s a Harman Kardon branding embedded beside it.

Underneath, we’ll find the Type-C port, speaker grills, primary microphone, and the SIM slot. Inside the slot is a dual SIM tray, both of which are 5G capable. Unfortunately, there’s no microSD card slot here.

Overall for design, the Mi 11 is charming and high-quality. There’s no doubt that it’s got the most flagship touches, except for an IP rating that we hope to see soon in future Xiaomi smartphones.

If you’re not a fan of glass phones, well, the Mi 11 is also available with an eco-leather back in either a Violet or Gold color.

Display and Media

The Mi 11 sports a stunning 6.81-inch WQHD+ AMOLED screen with a resolution of 3200 x 1440px and a pixel density of 515ppi. It has HDR 10+ support and, of course, that smooth 120Hz refresh rate option. It is an AdaptiveSync display, so once you turn on 120Hz, it will automatically adjust the refresh rate depending on current demand so you can save more battery. Although it has a curved display, we didn’t experience many accidental touches from the sides, and that’s good. If, for some reason, the notch still bothers you, well, Xiaomi always gives you the option to hide it in the settings.

More in the display settings, there’s seriously a lot to tweak around. First, there’s the light mode and the dark mode that can be scheduled if you want to have a dark scheme every night time. Even for the brightness level, it has a Sunlight Mode to adjust the brightness to intense ambient light when automatic brightness is off. The brightness for every time you use night mode is also separated, and it’s something we appreciate.

Other than that, there’s Reading Mode on board, and besides reducing the amount of blue light, it has a Paper mode that gives an additional paper texture for your reading sessions.

There’s the option to turn on Anti-flicker mode and choose your preferred color scheme. As for the display resolution and refresh rate, you can reduce the resolution to a 1080p display and reduce the refresh rate to the standard 60Hz to save more battery. You can also play additional settings to enhance your photo and video viewing under the AI image engine. The Always-On Display feature is also available, and it is packed with numerous themes that are all customizable.

As for audio quality, it’s actually terrific. Sounds come out well-rounded with a decent amount of bass. It can get loud enough for a medium-sized room, and with Harman Kardon dual speakers, we get rich tones with some slight vibrations that make playing games more exciting. The sound quality can also be customized in the settings under Sound Effects, and you even get additional options once you connect a headset.

Cameras

Now taking a closer look at the camera system. At the rear, its triple camera module is composed of a 108MP main sensor with PDAF and OIS, a 13MP ultrawide, and a 5MP macro lens. Meanwhile, on that tiny notch is a single 20MP shooter.

As for other camera features, we get a couple similar to the Mi 10, including Pro, HDR, Portrait, Google Lens, Portrait, and Movie Frame, to name a few. You can even customize the Camera’s interface’s colors and layout and save images in HEIF or high-efficiency image file format, which is nifty.

Quality-wise, images produced by the rear cameras often look sharp, clear, bright with natural-looking colors, and show good dynamic range. When you turn the AI on, it gives a subtle boost that mostly focuses on the vibrance and saturation part. By default, the standard mode gives a nice depth effect, giving those professional-looking photos. However, if you want to bring your camera A-game on then, we suggest using the Pro mode that even allows you to save shots in RAW file formats.

The ultra-wide lens does an excellent job in closely matching the colors as in standard mode. But there can be some fisheye effect sometimes. Nonetheless, this is still highly useful for us. Taking macro shots, on the other hand, can be a hit or miss. But once you get the right focus, you can expect an amicable subject-background separation and high-quality details. So if you may have noticed, there’s no dedicated telephoto lens on the Mi 11, but it does compensate with the 108MP high-resolution lens if you want that digital zoom quality. It is quite a hassle, but if you don’t mind the lower quality, Xiaomi still provided up to 30x zoom on-board.

More on its 108MP shooter, using it produces detailed photos with quality that’s almost identical to the standard mode. It’s still a great feature to have and would probably be useful if you’re going to print your photos in a huge tarp or whatnot. But quite honestly, no matter how much you increase the camera resolution, it doesn’t guarantee that it would look as crisp and clear once it’s uploaded to your social media.