It's so BIG! - Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra
ShortCircuit
·ShortCircuit
·2021-05-05
·
2,111 words · ~10 min read
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- It wasn't that long ago that a Xiaomi phone was off my list
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for potential daily drivers, just for being a Xiaomi phone.
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The cameras weren't very good. The skins were ugly and unintuitive,
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and you could pretty much kiss your Android updates goodbye.
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But a lot of that has changed. And the Mi 11 Ultra looks like a serious contender
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for daily driver. I gotta say, right off the hop
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I love this little dig at Huawei. You see that? Mi 11 Ultra with easy access
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to the Google apps you use most. (laughing)
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You can tell who their primary competitor is, right?
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Look at that, look how hard that was.
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A type-C to three and a half mil adapter. Rest of the industry, take notes.
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Maybe don't take notes on the pretty unexceptional included case.
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This is something that's always a challenge with anything but basically an Apple or Samsung phone.
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Unless the first party accessories are excellent. You're pretty much stuck with kind of junky options,
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but the phone itself, this is where things get really interesting.
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This thing is freaking top spec.
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We're talking Snapdragon 888 up to 12 gigs of RAM,
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up to 256 gigs of storage and good Lord.
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That is not a camera bump. That is a camera mountain.
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It's at the point where it's not, this isn't even a camera bump anymore.
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It's like having another smaller phone attached to the back of your phone.
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I mean, look at this phone, it's got a camera, it's got a full, you know, glass front.
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It's got a screen, that's right.
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There's a little, 250 nit. I think it's like a 1.1 inch screen on the back.
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And it serves a couple of functions. You can use it as a preview for your selfies.
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So, we're gonna check that out in a moment, as well as as an always on display
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to just give you notifications I guess, if you're the kind of monster
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that lays your phone face down on the desk because you're not familiar with the basic concept
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that little micro grains of crap that sit on the top of things
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are what scratch your freaking screen. Oh, conveniently Xiaomi has included
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a built-in screen protector that contours reasonably well
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to the curved glass. And I didn't want it dark too many marks for the camera bump
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because the included camera is really impressive. Okay, we've got three lenses on the back.
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We've got a Telephoto that does 5X Optical Zoom. That's a 48 megapixel camera.
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We've got an ultra wide, that's also 48 megapixels,
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and a 50 megapixel mainstream shooter.
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I mean, it's thick enough that I could see this getting caught on your pocket,
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Like let's do. I mean, it's been a while since I've done a pocket test,
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but Andy, you ready for a pocket test? Okay, let's do a pocket test here.
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It's not that smooth, you know, getting it out easy though.
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Okay, let's say I was more of a camera down kind of gentlemen.
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Okay, that definitely goes in easier. Okay, what if I was a left hmm.
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See as long as I'm coming around,
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Oh, that's still a little, oh boy. I'm thinking, especially the ladies with tighter pockets
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we might have to get a lady. Special agent Janice is here to investigate,
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the usability of this phone. So, here, do you notice anything?
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- It's heavy, and it has this extra thickness.
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- It does, it has, I think extra thickness is a good way to describe it.
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- I can try my back pocket. That's pretty typical, just like sticking out.
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- Yeah, but did it go in easily? - No, well, coming out actually was worse,
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'cause of the way the seam is. - Oh cause of the way the seam works.
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- When I took it out it definitely caught on the, going in is fine, coming out is slightly weird.
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I don't feel like it's gonna rip my pockets off. - Got it, okay, all right, thank you.
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- No problem. - Thank you very much. Thanks technology.
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Oh my goodness, holy crap, the balance of this phone,
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it is very,
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top heavy. Like does that look like about 50% Andy or halfway?
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Let's take a short break from the chunkiness though. And talk about charging for a moment.
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It's got a 5,000 milliampere battery, includes a 67 Watts charger.
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Apparently it even supports 67 Watts wirelessly.
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I'm more of a slow charging kind of guy, but your mileage may vary on that.
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Okay, there's no putting this off then, normally I'd want to spend time now,
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talking about the 120 Hertz display. Oh, oh, oh.
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So smooth, oh, okay. That is really smooth.
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Okay, it runs at 3,200 by 1400 resolution.
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So, super high res. But we've got to go straight to the camera,
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because if you're gonna have, this gigantic, fricking hill on it,
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5:57
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6:01
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(phone camera shuttering) That was a long shutter delay,
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tastefully small hole punch though. Not a good thing, it's not actually thing.
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There it is. It's may, there, pickaboo. Okay, let's switch over to the 5X.
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Okay. That is a sharp Telephoto
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and actually pretty pleasing natural voca to it as well.
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How about the ultra wide? Now you can really see the studio there.
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Interestingly Andy's life comes back into his skin a little bit more
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with the ultra wide. Thing you gotta remember guys, is that your different lenses
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are completely different imaging pipelines, so you can get very, very different color reproduction
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from one to the next. So here's our Telephoto.
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Here's our regular, and here's our ultra wide.
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So you can really see that the reds are more rich in red on this ultra wide.
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This is our Desk Pad lttstore.com. They are a little bit more muted,
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on both of these other ones. Man, that's a cool design lttstore.com.
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Creepy one. (Andy laughing)
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One cool feature, is it supports recording video in up to 8K which frankly,
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a 24 FPS which frankly nobody should do.
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- [Andy] Dude, oh, what is that?
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- It's 8K on a mobile phone.
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Like there's no point. They just don't have the sensor size
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to record 8K, To record 8K.
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Wow those speakers sound pretty good. You know, that's a funny thing,
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they've got dual stereo speakers tuned by Harman Kardon.
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But Harman Kardon got bought by Samsung like ages ago.
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Like how weird is that, going to a company that's owned
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by one of your primary competitors? For help tuning your speakers on your phone, right?
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You know what? There is jutter cause it's 24 FPS
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but the preview is way worse than the actual recording.
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Right, of course. One of the features that I've been really supportive of,
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even though there's never been a device that's implemented it, that I've been willing to actually use, is having a display
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on the back of the phone, so that you don't really need a selfie camera, right?
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Because if you could just use your primary shooter every single time,
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why would you need like a mediocre selfie camera?
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This one right here is 20 megapixels which is like, fine, I guess,
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I could take me some selfies, you know,
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just like that. But what if I didn't have to do that?
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What if instead I could use the rear camera
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with their like selfie assist thing? Okay, how do I do this though?
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Oh, hello, how are we doing here?
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Why the hell would I wanna take a picture like this?
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But I guess, oh boy,
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am I in a video recording mode?
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What am I looking at? I guess you could just see the composition of it and all.
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Hmm, okay that looks it's always on display.
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This has to be like a super simple thing that I'm just totally missing.
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Rear display, for crying out loud. It was right there the whole time.
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Okay, let's take the greatest selfie of all time.
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Now you can't really see very well what you're taking a picture of,
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but there's no doubt that the image quality of this selfie
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vastly exceeds what you can get with the actual selfie camera.
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I mean, look at this. I clearly need to pluck my eyebrows.
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I got a serious wicked mono brow going on. Let's see if the selfie camera can catch it.
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(selfie camera shuttering) Yeah, it's got it, but it's definitely blurrier.
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You see that? Very noticeable. So if you're not that into grooming,
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then I guess you'd probably prefer doing things real. Oh, I never went through the IO and all that.
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So USB-C port for charging, got one of your speakers right here,
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got your dual SIM slot, over in the side you got a whole whack load and nothing
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over on this side, you've got look at that, another speaker an IR blaster,
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freaking love it, especially now that Logitech Harmony remotes aren't going to be a thing.
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I guess we're down to using phones as universal remotes.
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Volume rocker and of course lock button. That's another interesting feature.
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So it's got Bluetooth 5.2, which comes with additional bandwidth
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as well as some really cool functionality, including the ability
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to have a single source go-to multiple devices.
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Now I wanna talk a bit more about this display, 900 nits maximum brightness under normal conditions
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1700 nits peak brightness in HDR
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and support for both HDR 10 plus and Dolby Vision,
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which is pretty unreal. And we're going to have to give it a minute
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to not be at a craptastic bit right here.
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Why you do this? I'm trying to look at a pretty display
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and you're ruining it Netflix. Okay, that way it's picking up a little bit.
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That looks way better. Not bad, okay, I wanna crank these speakers though.
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So far, very promising. (video clip playing on phone)
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That's too much. (video clip playing on phone)
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Pretty good. (chuckles) Pretty good good job Samsung.
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(Andy laughing) Couple other housekeeping items then not only is it a high refresh rate display
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it supports adaptive sync. So, 30, 60, 90, and 120 Hertz.
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So it can drop down if needed. It's got IP 68 water resistance
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and the Gorilla glass on the front, which is their Victus glass.
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And then on the back, of course, ceramic. So, should be fairly drop and scratch resistant.
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But of course I'll leave it to the bold experts to tell us exactly how it holds up.
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As far as that goes. I think that's pretty much it for my take, it's heavy,
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it's not particularly well-balanced, but it is certainly,
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for a weapon snappy, the screen and speakers are great.
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And the camera's looking pretty good so far with a little bit of work required in my opinion,
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on the color science. But other than that,
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I'm pretty darn impressed by this thing. So subscribe to ShortCircuit and see more videos
12:31
kind of like this or different ones I don't know.