As a whole, the Chinese mobile phone market continues to shrink. Except for Huawei, the other brands are all in negative growth. 2019 is still the transition phase from 4G to 5G because Qualcomm's 5G chip is immature, the publicity is lively, and there are not many competitive terminals.

As the inventory in the 4G era is almost cleared, and smart home products are increasingly popular, Xiaomi can finally begin to display its strengths.

As the digital series with the most significant increase, is Xiaomi Mi 10 Series worth the price? Is the new hardware good? Let's get started and take a look!

Design and Display

The Xiaomi Mi 10 series contains two products, and we are evaluating the Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro with higher specs.





The Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro features a 6.67-inch curved AMOLED display, and the grip with high curvature is also very comfortable. At a glance, the single-camera cutout in the top left corner is about 4mm in diameter, which is relatively small in the recently released models with punch-holes under the display.





As for the question: why is there no so-called true full-screen display? Because the Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro's quad-camera lens takes up a lot of space, let alone the large-capacity battery and loud dual-speaker situated at the top and bottom. Even fingerprint sensors under the display use ultra-thin molds as much as possible. There may be nowhere to place the mechanical structure.





The Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro has a curved glass back panel built on the frosted AG glass process. There are only two traditional pure colors available, white and blue.

The camera module is not the square matrix or the central circle. The four cameras are arranged vertically instead. Besides, there are also changes in the details such as the displacement of flashlight and elimination of the macro lens. Xiaomi’s logo and relevant information are kept at the bottom.





The vertically symmetrical dual speakers are really different when they play out the music. In the past, the speakers that blocked the bottom would have a significant attenuation of the volume. The attenuation is greatly improved in Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro. This phone also supports acoustic intelligent scene recognition.

Of course, with the loudspeaker and a series of larger components heavily stacked, the Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro is slightly thicker and weighs more than 200g.





The Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro has an ultra-small camera cutout under the display, a refined four-curved edge, and a nice matte texture.



Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro has a 6.67-inch 1080 x 2340 AMOLED curved display with HDR10+ and DCI-P3. It also supports a refresh rate of 90Hz and a sampling rate of 180Hz. It has also got German Rhine TÜV low blue light certification.





Thanks to the ultra-small aperture, the display ratio of Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro reaches 90.9%.

Interestingly, after OnePlus, Xiaomi also begins to pay attention to the performance of automatic brightness, with more adjustment levels for options. And dual ambient light sensors are located in front and rear to improve the accuracy against high light contrast.





In 2020, a top-of-the-line display without 2K resolution and 120Hz refresh rate support may be criticized. However, high specs lead to high power consumption. This can help explain why Xiaomi does not go for such a display after careful consideration.

Camera

Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro differs radically from its predecessor in cameras. The main camera is a 1 / 1.33 inch, 100 million pixels Samsung ISOCELL Bright HMX ultra-large sensor, equipped with f / 1.69 aperture and optical image stabilizer.





The rest include a 12MP portrait lens, a 20MP ultra-wide camera, and an ultra-telephoto lens with an optical image stabilizer. The smartphone also supports up to 10x hybrid optical zoom and 50x digital zoom. The front camera has a 20MP sensor.





8K video recording, AI camera, and vlog mode are newly added in software, which brings more fresh playability.

Next, let’s come to real shots, using automatic AI, HDR, and other default settings.

Under good lights outdoor, Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro is relatively the most accurate in exposure among the four smart phones, and its color temperature is also most consistency with the visual senses. The sky and buildings in the distance, shot with Huawei Mate 30 Pro and Honor V30, are slightly overexposed. (Vision 1)





The second set of samples turn out to be the same. The sky and snow in Mi 10 Pro’s camera look more like the real.





What’s more, the default resolution for Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro is 4344*5792, which is about 20MP. At the same magnification, you can find more details, such as sharper edges of branches and signal towers. (Vision 2)





When switched to the highest pixel, OPPO Reno3 Pro presents the minimal blur.





Then we zoom in on the bricks and stones of the house, and 100MP resolution is insurmountable. (Vision 2 ultra-clear mode)





In this set of samples, we use ultra-wide lenses. OPPO Reno3 Pro and Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro have a wider field of view, and they can accommodate more scenery than Huawei Mate 30 Pro and Honor V30. The advantages of high pixels still exist. (Super wide-angle building)





In the backlight environment, dark parts look similar in brightness. The sky in Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro’s camera looks fantastic. The color temperature in OPPO Reno3 Pro’s is cold, and the picture quality in Honor V30’s is seriously degraded. (Backlight)





At night, this Samsung 1/1.33 inch light sensor is very powerful. Its brightness and resolution in normal mode are better than that of Huawei Mate 30 Pro and Honor V30. Complex lights can also be controlled without much noise.





Remember, these two brothers were almost invincible even in normal mode before. (Night view 1, Night view 2)





When the Super Night Scene mode is turned on, Huawei Mate 30 Pro and Honor V30 are improved in brightness. With details compensated, they are still the most powerful in this mode. On the contrary, Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro is more restrained. Though it has better light control, the performance in detail is not prominent. (Night view 3 Super Night Scene)





The second set of night scenes is exactly the same. Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro is unrivaled in normal night mode. However, in Super night mode, Huawei Mate 30 Pro turns out to be superior. The outlines of the buildings and branches are clearly visible. (Night view 2 Super Night Scene)





Finally, let’s come to selfie samples, which more or less have some beauty effects. The Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro has more information lost. Usually, the camera cutout under the display is miniature so as to save spaces. Thus it is not easy for Mi 10 Pro to deliver such a good picture quality in this case. Besides, nothing matters as long as the selfie looks good. Very few will zoom in and stare at the details.





In terms of video recording, you can also find some differences under default settings. OPPO Reno3 Pro and Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro have less shaking when walking and running, and the transition is smoother.

When the Super Anti-Shake Mode is turned on, OPPO Reno3 Pro becomes smoother, while Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro still has a slight up-and-down shaking. With the Sports Follow Mode turned on, Xiaomi and OPPO have both enabled the ultra-wide-angle. The picture of OPPO Reno3 Pro is still more stable.

For video brightness at night, OPPO Reno3 Pro is not as good as the other three smartphones, and V30 is not as bright as Mate30Pro. Xiaomi and Huawei look similar. Under extreme conditions, Huawei Mate 30 Pro and Honor V30 exceed Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro in brightness, but with larger quality lost.





When recording at night, Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro has difficulties in focusing several times or even cannot focus at all. We do not rule out the reason for the beta firmware.





The Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro processes 100MP information under a powerful ISP, greatly compressing the time of shooting almost without delay. The Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro outputs high-quality images at several fixed focal lengths. The night view in normal mode is remarkable.

Hardware Test

The hardware of the Xiaomi Mi 10 series has already been revealed without any suspense. The earliest released Snapdragon 865 is now optimized in AI, CPU, GPU, and power consumption. AnTuTu scores 565940, which is about 14% higher than the Snapdragon 855 on the iQOO Pro 5G, and about 20% higher than the Kirin 990 on Huawei Mate 30 Pro in performance mode.





The X55 baseband supports SA/NSA dual-mode 5G, and WiFi 6 comes as a crucial wireless communication standard in the 5G era, provided that the router also supports it. Therefore Xiaomi also launches the first WiFi 6 router for young people.

LPDDR5 is the first hot spot for Xiaomi during the warm-up phase. In addition to being faster, LPDDR5 features lower power consumption. Instead of putting LPDDR4X in the low-profile version to pull the price, Xiaomi abandoned LPDDR4X completely, indicating that LPDDR5 has really made great progress.

UFS 3.0 that supports Write Turbo has a similar effect. You can simply take it in as a specially optimized UFS 3.0, which can improve the speed of sequential read and write in short times or of small volumes.

According to our tests, the Mi 10 Pro has the fastest sequential write speed up to 716.3, far beyond Huawei Mate 30 Pro and iQOO Pro 5G, and its random read and write are even faster.









Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro can decompress a 22GB compressed file in just 54 seconds, which is even significantly ahead of this computer. This Western Digital SN750 is a genuine NVMe SSD.





However, this test is for reference only and cannot explain that Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro has better performance than desktop computers. It takes Huawei Mate 30 Pro about 4 minutes and 32 seconds to decompress the file of the same size.

Now you can see, Snapdragon 865 + X55 + LPDDR5 + UFS3.0 (3.1) represents a standard specs pack in 2020. Other features, such as multi-function NFC, horizontal linear motor, infrared remote control, dual 1216 super linear speaker unit, are all available in Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro.

In terms of heat dissipation, the VC soaking plate in the disassembly diagram covers a large area, extending to the battery compartment, the graphene heat dissipation layer, and the cooling system monitored by the multi-point thermistor.





In the measured 60-frame high-definition game, Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro is leading in both the average frame rate and the fluctuation of the frame rate, and the maximum temperature of the front and rear do not exceed 40℃.

















There is a surge in the battery capacity of the Xiaomi Mi 10 series. Xiaomi Mi 10 is 4780mAh, and Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro is 4500mAh.

The Xiaomi Mi 10 and Mi 10 Pro both have 30W wireless charging. The Mi 10 Pro features 50W wired charging, over the Mi 10 with 30W. Besides, the Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro comes with a 65W charger that supports the PD protocol and can charge the notebook as well.









After our regular 4-hour battery test, the Mi 10 Pro has 38% battery left.





In terms of charging speed, it can be charged from 0 to 31% in the first 10 minutes, with a peak power of about 44W. Then, the power drops slowly, charging to 76% in half an hour. Finally, it takes about 48 minutes to charge fully.





Conclusion

Many expect the Xiaomi Mi 10 series to be a copy of Xiaomi Mi 6, with no shortages and being cost-effective. However, the Xiaomi Mi 10 series is a transformative work that once again hits the high-end ever since Redmi’s independence. Xiaomi is in urgent need of mastering the rhythm in the hard-won 5G replacement wave and stepping into the high-end camp.

Is it worth the starting price of RMB 4,999? The most direct way to find the answer is to compare it with the other products at the same price from the competitors.





The conventional models are usually built from the following aspects, like craft, texture, performance, camera, display, and charging, etc. More money is spent on the selection of components for Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro. The mainstream and some specs are eye-catching. The RAM and flash memory is the most advanced in the same period; the imaging system is at the top; MIUI is smooth and stable.

All these will significantly help optimize 5G and primary experience. Meanwhile, Xiaomi also pays attention to details such as audio and auto-brightness, which is quite different from what it used to be. It is no exaggeration to call Xiaomi 10 Pro the best digital series product since Xiaomi was founded.







Xiaomi Mi 10 6.67 Inch 5G Smartphone Snapdragon 865 X55 Octa Core 108MP Penta Camera 4780mAh Battery Global Version $1283.75 $1283.75



