- It wasn't that long ago that a Xiaomi phone was off my list
for potential daily drivers, just for being a Xiaomi phone.
The cameras weren't very good. The skins were ugly and unintuitive,
and you could pretty much kiss your Android updates goodbye.
But a lot of that has changed. And the Mi 11 Ultra looks like a serious contender
for daily driver. I gotta say, right off the hop
I love this little dig at Huawei. You see that? Mi 11 Ultra with easy access
to the Google apps you use most. (laughing)
You can tell who their primary competitor is, right?
Look at that, look how hard that was.
A type-C to three and a half mil adapter. Rest of the industry, take notes.
Maybe don't take notes on the pretty unexceptional included case.
This is something that's always a challenge with anything but basically an Apple or Samsung phone.
Unless the first party accessories are excellent. You're pretty much stuck with kind of junky options,
but the phone itself, this is where things get really interesting.
This thing is freaking top spec.
We're talking Snapdragon 888 up to 12 gigs of RAM,
up to 256 gigs of storage and good Lord.
That is not a camera bump. That is a camera mountain.
It's at the point where it's not, this isn't even a camera bump anymore.
It's like having another smaller phone attached to the back of your phone.
I mean, look at this phone, it's got a camera, it's got a full, you know, glass front.
It's got a screen, that's right.
There's a little, 250 nit. I think it's like a 1.1 inch screen on the back.
And it serves a couple of functions. You can use it as a preview for your selfies.
So, we're gonna check that out in a moment, as well as as an always on display
to just give you notifications I guess, if you're the kind of monster
that lays your phone face down on the desk because you're not familiar with the basic concept
that little micro grains of crap that sit on the top of things
are what scratch your freaking screen. Oh, conveniently Xiaomi has included
a built-in screen protector that contours reasonably well
to the curved glass. And I didn't want it dark too many marks for the camera bump
because the included camera is really impressive. Okay, we've got three lenses on the back.
We've got a Telephoto that does 5X Optical Zoom. That's a 48 megapixel camera.
We've got an ultra wide, that's also 48 megapixels,
and a 50 megapixel mainstream shooter.
I mean, it's thick enough that I could see this getting caught on your pocket,
Like let's do. I mean, it's been a while since I've done a pocket test,
but Andy, you ready for a pocket test? Okay, let's do a pocket test here.
It's not that smooth, you know, getting it out easy though.
Okay, let's say I was more of a camera down kind of gentlemen.
Okay, that definitely goes in easier. Okay, what if I was a left hmm.
See as long as I'm coming around,
Oh, that's still a little, oh boy. I'm thinking, especially the ladies with tighter pockets
we might have to get a lady. Special agent Janice is here to investigate,
the usability of this phone. So, here, do you notice anything?
- It's heavy, and it has this extra thickness.
- It does, it has, I think extra thickness is a good way to describe it.
- I can try my back pocket. That's pretty typical, just like sticking out.
- Yeah, but did it go in easily? - No, well, coming out actually was worse,
'cause of the way the seam is. - Oh cause of the way the seam works.
- When I took it out it definitely caught on the, going in is fine, coming out is slightly weird.
I don't feel like it's gonna rip my pockets off. - Got it, okay, all right, thank you.
- No problem. - Thank you very much. Thanks technology.
Oh my goodness, holy crap, the balance of this phone,
it is very,
top heavy. Like does that look like about 50% Andy or halfway?
Let's take a short break from the chunkiness though. And talk about charging for a moment.
It's got a 5,000 milliampere battery, includes a 67 Watts charger.
Apparently it even supports 67 Watts wirelessly.
I'm more of a slow charging kind of guy, but your mileage may vary on that.
Okay, there's no putting this off then, normally I'd want to spend time now,
talking about the 120 Hertz display. Oh, oh, oh.
So smooth, oh, okay. That is really smooth.
Okay, it runs at 3,200 by 1400 resolution.
So, super high res. But we've got to go straight to the camera,
because if you're gonna have, this gigantic, fricking hill on it,
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(phone camera shuttering) That was a long shutter delay,
tastefully small hole punch though. Not a good thing, it's not actually thing.
There it is. It's may, there, pickaboo. Okay, let's switch over to the 5X.
Okay. That is a sharp Telephoto
and actually pretty pleasing natural voca to it as well.
How about the ultra wide? Now you can really see the studio there.
Interestingly Andy's life comes back into his skin a little bit more
with the ultra wide. Thing you gotta remember guys, is that your different lenses
are completely different imaging pipelines, so you can get very, very different color reproduction
from one to the next. So here's our Telephoto.
Here's our regular, and here's our ultra wide.
So you can really see that the reds are more rich in red on this ultra wide.
This is our Desk Pad lttstore.com. They are a little bit more muted,
on both of these other ones. Man, that's a cool design lttstore.com.
Creepy one. (Andy laughing)
One cool feature, is it supports recording video in up to 8K which frankly,
a 24 FPS which frankly nobody should do.
- [Andy] Dude, oh, what is that?
- It's 8K on a mobile phone.
Like there's no point. They just don't have the sensor size
to record 8K, To record 8K.
Wow those speakers sound pretty good. You know, that's a funny thing,
they've got dual stereo speakers tuned by Harman Kardon.
But Harman Kardon got bought by Samsung like ages ago.
Like how weird is that, going to a company that's owned
by one of your primary competitors? For help tuning your speakers on your phone, right?
You know what? There is jutter cause it's 24 FPS
but the preview is way worse than the actual recording.
Right, of course. One of the features that I've been really supportive of,
even though there's never been a device that's implemented it, that I've been willing to actually use, is having a display
on the back of the phone, so that you don't really need a selfie camera, right?
Because if you could just use your primary shooter every single time,
why would you need like a mediocre selfie camera?
This one right here is 20 megapixels which is like, fine, I guess,
I could take me some selfies, you know,
just like that. But what if I didn't have to do that?
What if instead I could use the rear camera
with their like selfie assist thing? Okay, how do I do this though?
Oh, hello, how are we doing here?
Why the hell would I wanna take a picture like this?
But I guess, oh boy,
am I in a video recording mode?
What am I looking at? I guess you could just see the composition of it and all.
Hmm, okay that looks it's always on display.
This has to be like a super simple thing that I'm just totally missing.
Rear display, for crying out loud. It was right there the whole time.
Okay, let's take the greatest selfie of all time.
Now you can't really see very well what you're taking a picture of,
but there's no doubt that the image quality of this selfie
vastly exceeds what you can get with the actual selfie camera.
I mean, look at this. I clearly need to pluck my eyebrows.
I got a serious wicked mono brow going on. Let's see if the selfie camera can catch it.
(selfie camera shuttering) Yeah, it's got it, but it's definitely blurrier.
You see that? Very noticeable. So if you're not that into grooming,
then I guess you'd probably prefer doing things real. Oh, I never went through the IO and all that.
So USB-C port for charging, got one of your speakers right here,
got your dual SIM slot, over in the side you got a whole whack load and nothing
over on this side, you've got look at that, another speaker an IR blaster,
freaking love it, especially now that Logitech Harmony remotes aren't going to be a thing.
I guess we're down to using phones as universal remotes.
Volume rocker and of course lock button. That's another interesting feature.
So it's got Bluetooth 5.2, which comes with additional bandwidth
as well as some really cool functionality, including the ability
to have a single source go-to multiple devices.
Now I wanna talk a bit more about this display, 900 nits maximum brightness under normal conditions
1700 nits peak brightness in HDR
and support for both HDR 10 plus and Dolby Vision,
which is pretty unreal. And we're going to have to give it a minute
to not be at a craptastic bit right here.
Why you do this? I'm trying to look at a pretty display
and you're ruining it Netflix. Okay, that way it's picking up a little bit.
That looks way better. Not bad, okay, I wanna crank these speakers though.
So far, very promising. (video clip playing on phone)
That's too much. (video clip playing on phone)
Pretty good. (chuckles) Pretty good good job Samsung.
(Andy laughing) Couple other housekeeping items then not only is it a high refresh rate display
it supports adaptive sync. So, 30, 60, 90, and 120 Hertz.
So it can drop down if needed. It's got IP 68 water resistance
and the Gorilla glass on the front, which is their Victus glass.
And then on the back, of course, ceramic. So, should be fairly drop and scratch resistant.
But of course I'll leave it to the bold experts to tell us exactly how it holds up.
As far as that goes. I think that's pretty much it for my take, it's heavy,
it's not particularly well-balanced, but it is certainly,
for a weapon snappy, the screen and speakers are great.
And the camera's looking pretty good so far with a little bit of work required in my opinion,
on the color science. But other than that,
I'm pretty darn impressed by this thing. So subscribe to ShortCircuit and see more videos
kind of like this or different ones I don't know.