Well Swipe Typing Seems to Be Working Again
TechRadar Verdict
The Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra is a potentially great phone that'due south ruined by what Xiaomi is pitching as its standout feature: the giant camera crash-land makes the phone unwieldy, and not just does the rear display non bring whatever important features, we also institute it got in the way frequently. It's hard to make a instance for a phone with this annoying 'actress', especially given the high asking price. Information technology's a shame, because buried beneath that mountainous crash-land is a great phone with fantastic cameras, a powerful processor and a good-looking screen.
Pros
- +
Mostly-great cameras
- +
Super-fast charging
- +
Proficient-looking brandish
Cons
- -
Overheating bug
- -
Camera bump is likewise big
- -
Loftier price
Two-minute review
If someone told usa the Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra was a parody of the Samsung Milky way S21 Ultra and iPhone 12 Pro Max-style superphones, we'd probably believe them. Its characteristic set and design evoke those luxury phones, but it turns it up to 11 with i extra feature that seems almost sarcastic.
This 'extra' is the rear camera crash-land, a material memo from Xiaomi that seems to say "Y'all want more? Y'all've got more." It'south absolutely huge, and it doesn't but business firm three powerful cameras with giant lenses – it includes a 1.one-inch secondary display also.
Why does this phone have a 2d screen? Who knows. Mobiles have so far got by without rear displays (no offense, Nubia Z20). Information technology's just one of several unnecessary additions that the Mi xi Ultra has – just then again, it could exist argued that many of the actress features this type of superphone has are as free.
This characteristic is our biggest issue with the Xiaomi Mi eleven Ultra, as its heft actively detracts from the user experience in a number of ways. You tin't put the phone flat on some wireless charging mats, information technology barely fits in pockets, and cases don't really protect the phone with a crash-land that size. In addition, the 2d-screen functions range from useless (an always-on brandish that barely works) to really annoying (music controls sometimes pop up on it, in a spot that's really like shooting fish in a barrel to accidentally touch).
It'southward very likely that this big rear photographic camera bump is too to arraign for the Mi xi Ultra'south huge price, though the accommodating tiptop specs probably don't assist. Given how the mound detracted from our enjoyment of the phone we can't assistance but motion picture a version of the phone with a smaller camera bump and improved design, and indeed such a phone exists – it'due south called the Mi eleven.
The Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra is very, very similar to the Mi eleven – the Ultra has that bigger photographic camera bump, better cameras, faster charging and a higher cost, but the phones have a lot more in common than they don't. The screens are identical, with 2K resolution and 120Hz refresh rates, and the chipsets, rear material, front photographic camera, fingerprint scanner, reverse wireless accuse speed and sound capabilities are all the same too – and given the price and features, the 'standard' phone is a much improve buy.
Saying that, the Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra is still a bully device – if you lot can somehow look past its heart-catching flaw, which is easier said than done.
You'll find three rear cameras on the Mi 11 Ultra: a 'standard', ultra-wide and periscope zoom, with resolutions of 50MP, 48MP and 48MP respectively. They're all tiptop-of-the-line snappers, with the latter camera hitting 10x hybrid or 120x digital zoom.
Thanks to the hardware on display here, we took some absolutely lovely pictures with the phone – although there are ane or two problems with certain modes (and i of the lenses).
The Snapdragon 888 processor makes the Mi 11 Ultra snappy to use, which is peculiarly useful for gaming, but it's also great for when you're editing photos and videos. An overheating result with the device can sometimes mitigate the powerful processor, though.
We've also got to commend the brandish, with its 2K resolution and 120Hz refresh rate, as information technology makes content wait great, whether y'all're streaming Netflix or scrolling through social media. The charging speeds are another feature we institute super-useful, every bit the 67W wired powering boosts the phone up in (almost) no time at all.
Reading this review, yous'll probably have the aforementioned thought process nosotros did on opening the phone – nosotros marveled at its design, its spec list, its photographic camera samples, and were ready to give it full marks.
But over a month of actually using the thing as our standard telephone, cracks started forming (not literal ones, but just as troubling), which is why we've got a much more mixed opinion of the phone. Nosotros still like information technology - in fact at the fourth dimension of writing it just squeezes onto our list of the best Xiaomi phones, but it's nowhere almost the top of that list.
Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra price and availability
The Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra has a super-high price – information technology costs £one,199 / AU$1,799 (that'due south roughly $1,600, though Xiaomi doesn't sell its phones in the United states of america). If you're quick with your cost conversions, you'll come across the handset costs a good deal more than in the UK than in Australia, and then it'due south a ameliorate bargain in the latter country.
At that price, the phone is competing with rivals like the Samsung Milky way S21 Ultra at $one,199 / £1,149 / AU$1,849, and the iPhone 12 Pro Max, which costs $ane,099 / £1,099 / AU$ane,849. Unlike Samsung and Apple, though, Xiaomi hasn't had a globally-released telephone come out at this ultra-loftier price signal, then this is uncharted territory for the visitor.
Design
- Huge torso which is hard to fit in pockets
- Big photographic camera bump with rear display
- Corning Gorilla Drinking glass Victus
This is a monster of a phone. The Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra would be big for a handset even if it didn't have that massive rear bump; with it, the affair is a blunt weapon.
The phone has dimensions of 164.3 x 74.six ten 8.4mm – the camera bump isn't included in that location, but we'd guess that information technology pushes the thickness over 10mm. It weighs 234g, so yous'll only find heavier handsets in the realm of giant gaming phones.
On the right edge of the phone are the power push, which we found fairly easy to reach, and volume rocker. On the lesser edge at that place's a USB-C port, but no 3.5mm headphone jack – sorry, wired audio fans. The telephone has a dual-SIM slot, but no microSD bill of fare slot, and then there's no expandable storage.
On newspaper, it sounds like the phone is well protected. Its glass back is made of Corning Gorilla Glass Victus, which is a toughened type of glass - though 'tough… for drinking glass', doesn't speak volumes on the textile'south hardiness. The telephone is also IP68 protected confronting water and dust.
Now onto the elephant in the room – or the elephant on the phone. The rear photographic camera bump is heart-catchingly huge, because it houses iii giant lenses and a secondary display, and its presence on the device is very much felt.
It'due south hard to fit the Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra in a smaller pocket – nosotros sometimes plant ourselves carrying it in our backpack because it just didn't fit in some of our jeans, which is hardly the most attainable place for your phone. The in-the-box case barely covers the phone, and the crash-land is left totally exposed when the case is used, which fabricated us fear that a drop could impairment the cameras and the mini display.
There are some fun aspects to the bump. Nosotros could utilize it to hook the telephone onto our laptop, which was a handy way of letting u.s.a. multi-task (although 1 that's totally unnecessary given that we could have but split-screened on the laptop), and when holding the phone in landscape nosotros could use the bump as a grip, a la a Kindle Haven, instead of holding the sides. Withal, whatsoever such novelties the bump brings are more than first by the annoyances.
Display
- 6.81-inch 120Hz display with 1440 x 3200 resolution
- Screen looks great
- Rear ane.1-inch display with a few functions
The Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra has the exact same brandish as the 'vanilla' Mi 11 – it's a 6.81-inch smartphone-screen powerhouse, curved at the edges, with a cut-out for the front camera in the tiptop-left corner.
At that size, the phone has one of the biggest displays we've seen on a phone; it'due south not but 'Ultra' in proper name.
With a 1440 10 3200 resolution, the screen is higher-res than the standard 1080p about phones use; and with a 120Hz refresh rate, HDR x+ support, 1700 nits max brightness and AMOLED technology, it's one of the all-time-looking displays nosotros've seen on a phone.
There'south also an in-screen fingerprint scanner here. Xiaomi phones take in the past had issues with this piece of tech, as they tin often be temperamental to use, and while the Mi eleven Ultra doesn't take the aforementioned problems as the Mi 11, we still oft had to lift and supplant our thumb to get the scanner to recognize our print.
Then what about the rear 1.1-inch screen? Well, this is the same display as the Xiaomi Mi Band half dozen has, just different on that multi-talented sports band, this rear console is only used for three distinct tasks.
Its main utilise is every bit an always-on display, so when you place your device screen-down you can still encounter the fourth dimension and your battery level. Nevertheless, while that's the theory, it's not actually 'always' on – it switches off after a short while, and so it'southward not too useful.
The rear display also works as a viewfinder for photography, so when you lot're taking a motion-picture show of someone with the rear cameras they tin can see how they wait. As you tin imagine, however, a i.ane-inch screen is hard to run across from a distance, then the display doesn't work for this purpose very well either – plus, the viewfinder simply works in default Photo fashion, non Portrait, which you'd probably be using to take a snap of someone.
Finally – and again, in theory – if you're playing music, a skip back, play/pause and skip forward button appear on this rear panel – in theory, you should be able to utilise these as easy ways to control your music, but in practice we establish information technology the single most abrasive aspect of the phone.
These buttons merely appeared sporadically – sometimes we'd flip the phone and they wouldn't announced, and sometimes they'd be active even when nosotros were holding the telephone in regular fashion, with the rear screen facing abroad from us.
Why was this annoying? Because it was very easy to accidentally press the rear display and skip a rails; we'd frequently exist holding the phone as normal, only for our finger to accidentally impact the rear display and pause or skip the vocal. Fifty-fifty more annoyingly, this could hands happen when the phone was in a pocket too, and nosotros'd often exist walking along, minding our business concern and listening to some music, only to have our song randomly restart, or the podcast we were listening to repeatedly spring frontward by ten seconds.
Of all our gripes with the rear crash-land, the music player issue is what has us blasphemous it the most. Sure, it seems similar a minor complaint, but given how oftentimes many of us listen to music on our phones, and how often we experienced the issue, information technology's a problem many users of this telephone will be bumping up confronting time and time again.
Cameras
- 50MP chief, 48MP ultra-wide, 48MP periscope, 20MP selfie cameras
- Most cameras work well, and at that place are lots of modes
- Ultra-broad and macro images look questionable
The Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra has 3 rear cameras, the same number equally the iPhone 12 Pro Max and one fewer than the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra or OnePlus 9 Pro, simply quantity doesn't necessarily equate to quality when information technology comes to smartphone photography – far from it in many cases.
These are 50MP f/2.0 main, 48MP f/2.two ultra-wide and 48MP f/iv.1 periscope cameras, with the latter hitting 5x optical and 120x digital zoom. There's too a 20MP f/2.2 front-facing snapper.
Pictures taken on the main camera look fantastic – they're bright and bold, with natural-looking depth effects and lots of detail. Xiaomi'southward choice to prioritize a big sensor size over high resolution, as in the Mi 11 with its 108MP snapper, clearly pays off here.
In well-lit settings especially, but too to an admirable degree in low-light conditions, images were precipitous, and exposure was handled well as well. It'due south hard to fault photos taken with the master photographic camera, equally you can see in the 'Camera samples' section below.
Next, to the periscope camera, which handles zoom shots. We were impressed past snaps taken with this, especially at 5x optical zoom. These pictures were just as bold and detailed as un-zoomed ones, and actually looked pretty similar – and often nosotros establish 5x zoom better than 1x zoom for photos, as it improved the framing of a snap without leading to a loss in quality.
Quality drops off when you zoom in far though, especially towards the 120x end the telephone goes up to (huge maximum zoom ranges similar this are a dainty gimmick, simply the pictures are seldom very usable). Hybrid pictures at 10x zoom, which combine digital and optical zoom, are actually pretty impressive though, and we took some sharp pictures with this more modest range.
In our '2-minute review' we said nosotros had mixed experiences with the cameras, and while regular and zoomed photos looked neat, ultra-wide and macro shots, both of which are captured using the phone's 48MP ultra-wide lens, were mediocre past comparing.
Wide-angle pictures were noticeably distorted at the edges, with horizons and subjects appearing curved or barrel-like towards the edges of the frame. The fact that this telephone has a wider-bending ultra-wide lens than most is likely the reason for this, and if y'all ingather in on a photo you tin remove the worst of it. Notwithstanding, we said 'yikes' more than once when testing this lens.
While the Xiaomi Mi 11 had a fantastic telemacro lens for close-upward snaps, which the Mi 11 Lite 5G likewise uses, the Mi 11 Ultra sticks with a common telephone-camera trick of using the ultra-wide camera for close-upwards shots. This technique rarely works well, every bit the Mi xi Ultra shows.
Macro shots endure from the same baloney event as ultra-wide photos, and as a upshot snaps ofttimes looked bulbous and bloated. Nosotros didn't take a single macro snap nosotros were proud of, and we found ourselves longing for the Mi 11'southward telemacro lens.
Circular the front, the selfie photographic camera is pretty good – pictures were bright and detailed, and Portrait mode balanced the highlights and shadows well, although by default it blurred the groundwork a little besides much. However, we found ourselves using the primary cameras for selfies, and using the rear screen viewfinder to compose them – this way the depth effect looked really natural, colors looked bold, and pictures were high-res enough that we could ingather in if nosotros needed to.
Video recording is available at up to 8K at 24fps or 4K upward to 60fps. Video recording uses the main camera, with all the depth and color benefits nosotros've already described, and video shot on the Mi 11 Ultra was some of the best nosotros've seen captured on a telephone. The device heated upward a piddling when shooting, only this was only an outcome with longer takes.
Equally well as the basic photo settings, the Mi xi Ultra boasts several of the extra modes nosotros've seen introduced in the last few generations of Mi devices. At that place'due south 'Picture effects' which offers different video recording effects, Heaven editing which lets y'all change the weather effects of a photo using AI, and VLOG mode, which automatically edits video clips together. It doesn't seem like the Ultra brings any new tricks, though.
Photographic camera samples
Operation and specs
- Snapdragon 888 with 12GB RAM
- High operation speeds
- Overheating issue can reduce phone's ability
Like near tiptop-end Android phones of 2021, the Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra uses the powerful Snapdragon 888 chipset, which is paired with 12GB of RAM. Thanks to these internals the phone is powerful enough for all kinds of tasks – at least that's what our mean solar day-to-day experience suggested.
When we ran the Geekbench 5 criterion test, the phone returned a multi-cadre score of 3519, which puts it roughly on a par with the Mi eleven at 3569 and the iPhone 11 Pro Max at 3424. However, our testing procedure involves running the test three times and calculating an boilerplate score, so nosotros ran the test over again, and we plant that the score dropped suspiciously.
In total nosotros ran the test 5 times, and found each time the score dropped between 100 and 350 points, and by the fourth dimension we stopped testing the scores were on a par with those of the affordable Moto G100 and aging Sony Xperia 5.
Is this a software problems? We can't tell for sure, but nosotros don't think so. In our calendar month with the phone we constitute that information technology seemed to rut upward very speedily – and multiple TechRadar testers corroborated this. The phone became really hot during the process of running the Geekbench 5 test, which is likely to blame for the diminishing results, and we'd judge from this that it has pretty poor heat management.
If the telephone's performance tin dip so dramatically, so hands, this could spell disaster for power-users – if you lot play lots of games, or demand to render lots of videos, yous might find that the telephone gets weaker the longer you apply it. Nosotros oasis't seen this issue in other Snapdragon 888 phones.
For what it'southward worth, nosotros didn't notice whatsoever issues when gaming, even if we played quite a few games of COD: Mobile in a row or a long game of PUBG Mobile. Then the heat management and performance issues likely won't be a deal-billow if, like u.s., you lot don't play for too long at once, and our experience doesn't entirely match up to what the numbers tell us.
The Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra has dual stereo speakers, so audio sounds bully whether you're playing Spotify out loud, watching a movie without headphones, or on a video or voice call.
Software
- Android xi with Xiaomi'southward MIUI
- MIUI has loads of bugs
- Lots of customization options
The Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra runs Android 11 with the MIUI user interface laid over the top.
As we've seen on other Xiaomi phones, MIUI can be swell and annoying in equal measure out. It's fairly skillful-looking, and has quite a few customization options to permit you lot to personalize the look of your phone.
However, MIUI is also fairly buggy – there are visual glitches in the swipe-downwards carte du jour, notifications are sometimes sent multiple times, and yous can get 'phantom' notifications which make your telephone buzz and light up, despite no message having been received.
Other issues include MIUI's bloatware, or pre-installed 3rd-party apps that you'll likely find yourself deleting, and a security scan pop-up that appears when yous install a new app, and which can announced in forepart of whatever else you lot're doing.
We besides encountered a recurring problems where the telephone was ho-hum to reply when nosotros were typing – sometimes dramatically so, taking a few seconds to register a printing on the keyboard. We're not certain what caused this, equally it didn't seem to exist linked to the aforementioned overheating effect, but it became a source of frustration when it occurred, most notably when nosotros were using the Notes app and WhatsApp.
MIUI has become a divisive subject amongst Xiaomi phone users, with some loving it and others finding it a nightmare to use, but fortunately information technology's fairly piece of cake to install a custom OS as long as you're reasonably tech-savvy, or can follow a YouTube tutorial.
Battery life
- 5,000mAh battery lasts near a day of utilize
- 67W wired and wireless charging, 10W reverse powering
- Big photographic camera bump makes wireless powering awkward
Accounts of the Xiaomi Mi eleven Ultra's bombardment life accept varied quite dramatically – some are saying it's excellent, while others are criticizing information technology equally poor, and based on our feel we'd exist closer to the latter judgement.
While the telephone's 5,000mAh battery is adequately large, it clearly has a difficult time keeping up with the big 120Hz display, the powerful processors and the rear screen, and nosotros oft found the phone struggled to final a 24-hour interval between charges.
With calorie-free use, we'd oftentimes finish the solar day with between 10% and 20% charge remaining, and with more typical utilize nosotros'd come across the phone completely drained by the fourth dimension we went to bed. Information technology took fairly heavy utilize to necessitate a mid-24-hour interval charge though.
Power consumption seemed to increase dramatically when the phone became hot, as we've described in the 'Functioning and specs' department, which is something to behave in mind if you're a power-user.
We can't quite put 'battery life' on the 'Cons' list of this review, equally there are lots of phones that won't last for a full day of use, but we wouldn't recommend ownership this phone if you frequently get battery anxiety.
Thankfully charging is incredibly quick, with the 67W wired solution powering the phone upwardly from empty to full in just over one-half an hour. There's likewise wireless charging at the aforementioned speed, is the quickest wireless powering nosotros've seen for a telephone (at least, every bit of its release), although at that place'southward a catch.
When we tried to use the Xiaomi Mi eleven Ultra with a wireless charger, the big camera bump stopped united states from laying the device downwardly apartment, making it hard to detect the optimum powering position – and fifty-fifty when we did observe it, charging was agonizingly tiresome.
Finally, there'southward 10W reverse wireless charging, and so you can use the phone to ability upward Qi-compatible watches, earbuds or other devices.
Should I buy the Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra?
Buy it if...
Don't buy information technology if...
First reviewed May 2021
Source: https://www.techradar.com/reviews/xiaomi-mi-11-ultra-review
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