Review of Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra - a flagship with two screens, a cool battery and a potentially cool camera

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

A smartphone with such characteristics and for that kind of money should be as close to ideal as possible. But not at this time.

The top device in the Xiaomi Mi 11 series, and in principle in the entire Xiaomi lineup, is now the Mi 11 Ultra. The company was initially famous for solid models from the middle price category and is now trying to gain a foothold in the upper echelon, releasing smartphones, the description of which is strewn with impressive marketing specs and loud slogans. And the Mi 11 Ultra, if you look at the press release of The Pinnacle of Smartphone Photography: Mi 11 Ultra Launches Globally / Xiaomi Team, has every reason to be rightfully called a super flagship.

Table of contents

• Specifications
• Design and ergonomics
• Displays
• Iron
• Operating system
• Sound and vibration
• Cameras
• Autonomy
• Outcomes

Specifications

Operating system	Android 11, shell MIUI 12.5
Screens	Primary: AMOLED E4, 6, 81 inches, 3,200 × 1,440 pixels, 515 ppi, 60 and 120 Hz, Corning Gorilla Glass Victus. Optional: AMOLED, 1.1 inches, 126x294 pixels.
CPU	Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 5G (5nm)
Memory	Operational - 8/12 GB, built-in - 256/512 GB.
Cameras	Main: main - 50 Mp, f / 1, 95 with a 1/1, 12 ″ sensor, 0.8 μm pixels and PDAF focusing; wide-angle - 48 MP, f / 2, 2 with a sensor 1/2, 0 ″; telephoto - 48 megapixels, 5x optical zoom with a sensor 1/2, 0 ″. Front: 20 MP, f / 2, 2.
SIM cards	2 × nanoSIM
Connector	USB Type ‑ C
Communication standards	2G, 3G, LTE, 5G
Wireless interfaces	Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.2
Battery	5000 mAh, charging: 67W - wired, 67W - wireless, 10W - reverse wireless.
Dimensions (edit)	164, 3 × 74, 6 × 8, 38 mm
The weight	234 g
Additionally	NFC, optical fingerprint scanner, stereo speakers, IP68 dust and moisture protection.

Design and ergonomics

The design of the Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra is unusual, at least from the back. It is not even made of glass, but ceramic with a glossy finish. On a white background, prints are almost invisible, and the oleophobic coating itself is not bad.

The camera block protrudes on a very wide and high step - it seems, almost half the thickness of the smartphone itself, although in fact its height is only 2.5 mm.

On the left on the step there is the main lens, on the right - the ultra-wide-angle one, under them there is a 5x optical zoom and the inscription about 120x digital. A flash and a second display are located on the side of the cameras on the same step.

The smartphone is surrounded by a metal frame, into which the buttons are carefully inscribed. Everything is on the right side. These are the power and volume keys. They are well pressed, conveniently located. The power button is complemented by rough concentric notches.

Both the back cover and the display glass (Corning Gorilla Glass Victus) are slightly curved at the sides and neatly merge into the metal frame.

The screen of Mi 11 Ultra is covered with a factory film. It has a cutout for the front camera, which is closer to the left edge. The kit also includes a silicone case. It will protect the sides and back of your smartphone from scratches.

There are two speakers - both at the top and at the bottom. At the same time, the holes of the lower one seem to follow the shape of the sound wave - a funny design move. In addition to the speaker, there is also a microphone on the bottom, a USB ‑ C connector and a SIM card slot. An IR sensor and another microphone are installed on top.

The smartphone itself is large and heavy. Due to the rather massive block of cameras, the upper part outweighs the lower one, so sometimes it seems as if you grab it a little lower - and the Mi 11 Ultra will tumble down. And with a standard grip, resting your finger on the very step on the back is just convenient.

Displays

The Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra has two displays. The main one is based on the AMOLED E4 matrix with a diagonal of 6, 81 inches and a resolution of 3 200 × 1 440. This is a very juicy display with good, natural color rendering and an excellent margin of brightness. The display bezels are narrow.

The screen settings look standard for MIUI smartphones. You can select a palette, change the screen refresh rate (120Hz or 60Hz available to save power), turn on flicker-free mode and various options for a comfortable viewing. The resolution can also be reduced from standard WQHD + to FHD + - so the screen will drain the battery less.

The Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra also has an artificial intelligence-based content display enhancement system. It increases the resolution of the video being viewed, tightens the picture quality depending on what is shown on it, automatically expands the dynamic range and improves the smoothness of various videos by adding intermediate frames.

Since the display is made using AMOLED technology, it makes sense to use the settings of the active screen - the Always On Display function, so that notifications, clocks and other elements are displayed on the locked screen.

But in the case of the Mi 11 Ultra, this function has an alternative - a second screen, which is located in the camera block on the back.

This is a small AMOLED color display borrowed from the Xiaomi Mi Smart Band 5, with a diagonal of only 1.1 inches. As standard, the screen displays the time, date and battery level of the smartphone. When the audio player is on, the music playback control buttons are displayed on the second display.

You can also display an image from the camera on it in order to take a selfie. True, only in the "Photo" mode, and the picture is obtained, let's be honest, completely uninformative.

The image on the small screen is shown only after touching and turns off after a specified time (maximum - half a minute). The settings, in addition to the shutdown time, allow you to set the type of information displayed on the display: notifications, pictures, inscriptions.

In general, a small display can replace the Always On Display function. Especially considering that on various surfaces Mi 11 Ultra lies much more stable with its back up. But during the test, we remembered the existence of an additional screen only a couple of times.

This is not the first such design: back in 2017, Meizu introduced the Pro 7 Plus smartphone with a small display under the camera block. However, the company did not release more of such devices: apparently, they did not gain popularity.

Iron

Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra is powered by Snapdragon 888 with Adreno 660 graphics core and is available in 8GB and 12GB RAM variants. We got a model with 12 GB of RAM and 256 GB of user memory for the test. The slot for microSD cards is not provided in this smartphone.

In terms of performance, everything is familiar: the smartphone is smart, pulls all games at top settings. The heating is not too noticeable. Yes, the Mi 11 Ultra starts to warm up even after 10 minutes of scrolling through Twitter, but with a long serious load it does not reach critical temperatures and the performance does not drop very much. Perhaps thanks to the ceramic back panel. The most noticeable heating occurs immediately under the camera block.

Operating system

The device runs Android 11 with MIUI 12.5 shell. The interface does not differ from the interface of other smartphones of the brand: all the same two options for the design of the curtain, ample customization options and the dominance of advertising. But it seems that this shell is not very well adapted to the hardware of the Mi 11 Ultra.

This feeling sometimes occurs when working with pre-installed applications. The display sensor reads touches with an increased frequency of 480 Hz (in most smartphones it is twice as low), but a couple of times during the test, the smartphone refused, in principle, to respond to pressing. For example, while shooting or scrolling through the gallery. In games and third-party applications, this was not observed, only in pre-installed Xiaomi.

Sound and vibration

At the ends of the smartphone Mi 11 Ultra there are full-fledged stereo speakers. Xiaomi has tweaked the audio system in collaboration with Harman / Kardon, and the sound is great. It is crisp, loud, clear, perfectly conveys voices and does not allow distortion even at high volumes. An excellent replacement for a small portable speaker.

In the settings there are several preset equalizer options for certain content: "Music", "Video", "Voice". There is also a "Smart" mode, which automatically determines which of the types of audio being played belongs to, and adjusts the sound on its own. This setting applies to speakers only.

The Mi 11 Ultra has no audio jack. Headphones can be connected either wirelessly or with a USB-C adapter. From the settings, a seven-band equalizer is available for manual adjustment, personal adjustment of the volume reserve for a specific listener and sound adjustment for Xiaomi headphones (however, it also works with models of other brands, in fact, being a set of saved equalizer parameters).

The smartphone understands everything from Bluetooth codecs - aptX HD, aptX Adaptive, LDAC and AAC. The connection is hassle-free, it does not lose the signal.

Cameras

We will devote a separate material to the Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra camera block, so in the general review we will briefly touch on the main characteristics.

The smartphone has three modules: the main 50 megapixel with a huge 1/1, 12 ″ sensor, a 48 megapixel wide-angle and a 48 megapixel telephoto zoom.

In perfect or near-perfect lighting conditions, the shots are gorgeous. But as soon as you enter, for example, in the shade in a room, the post-processing system tends to twist the color rendition towards acidity in order to compensate for the grayish white balance.

Shooting with the main lens in cloudy weather through glass. The step with the camera block prevents the smartphone from being pressed down, which causes a glare. Photo: Alina Rand / Lifehacker

Shooting with the main lens in daylight. Photo: Alina Rand / Lifehacker

Shooting with the main lens in daylight. Photo: Alina Rand / Lifehacker

Shooting with the main lens in daylight indoors. Photo: Alina Rand / Lifehacker

Shooting with the main lens in daylight. Photo: Alina Rand / Lifehacker

Shooting with a wide-angle lens in daylight. Photo: Alina Rand / Lifehacker

5x telephoto zoom in daylight. Photo: Alina Rand / Lifehacker

Shooting with the main lens in daylight. Photo: Alina Rand / Lifehacker

Daylight telephoto shooting. Photo: Alina Rand / Lifehacker

Shoot with main lens at 120x zoom in daylight. Photo: Alina Rand / Lifehacker

Night shots are also not particularly pleasing - artificial over-illumination and lack of sharpness are visible. But the moon looks good.

Shooting with the main lens at night. Photo: Alina Rand / Lifehacker

Shooting with the main lens at night. Photo: Alina Rand / Lifehacker

Shooting with the main lens at night. Photo: Alina Rand / Lifehacker

Shooting with the main lens at night in the "Super Moon" mode. Photo: Alina Rand / Lifehacker

At the same time, from the point of view of creativity, the camera is very good: wide zoom capabilities, a full-fledged wide-angle lens, juicy macro. That's just all this and even more has to offer the OnePlus 9 Pro. The same night mode is more impressive, but it costs almost half as much.

Autonomy

With the maximum resolution and screen refresh rate of 120 Hz, the smartphone can easily withstand a day on a single battery charge. It has a 5000 mAh module. If the settings are reduced to FHD + and 60 Hz, then the Mi 11 Ultra will last a day and a half without problems.

The battery itself, by the way, is not easy. Xiaomi representatives said they used the Forget iPhone 13 - the Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra could change phones forever / Tom's Guide in its design of technology designed for electric vehicles. Thanks to this, it was possible to reduce the size of the battery and at the same time achieve decent capacity and charging speed.

The kit includes a 67 W adapter, and the smartphone really charged almost from scratch (from 2% in our case) to 100% in 36 minutes. It was this time that the manufacturer called The Pinnacle of Smartphone Photography: Mi 11 Ultra Launches Globally / Xiaomi Team in promotional materials.

Outcomes

Superflags differ from simply powerful smartphones by the presence of a certain "chip". The Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra has several potential "chips" - the second screen, and the camera module, which is cool in terms of characteristics, and the unusual battery.

However, only the battery does not raise questions. This is where the fast charging system is really fast.

But the usefulness of the second screen is in doubt. Perhaps, if we had tested the smartphone longer, we would have gotten used to it, but during these few weeks we have remembered the existence of an additional display on the back literally a couple of times.

The camera module is completely disappointing, but only if you consider the cost of the Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra. However, we will have a separate material about this, in which we will analyze in detail all the pros and cons.

As a result, we got a good smartphone - interesting, quite convenient, with rare, but still annoying interface hangs. But the money that is asked for it - from 115,000 rubles, it seems to us, is absolutely not worth it.

Of course, you can buy the Chinese version of the Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra, not the global version, and even with less memory. This option will cost about 85,000 rubles, and this price no longer seems too exorbitant.

But in any case, from a smartphone of such a price category, you expect that it will perform all its functions perfectly, and from time to time even surprise and amaze you in the heart, especially the camera, which Xiaomi themselves are so proud of. But there is nothing amazing about the Mi 11 Ultra.