At Xiaomi’s Mega Launch today, the Chinese company revealed the Mi11 Ultra along with a budget-friendly Mi11 Lite.
Photography and videography were key focuses of Xiaomi in the development of Mi11 Ultra. It has Xiaomi’s most powerful triple camera set up along with the 2021 flagship chipset, Snapdragon 888. Mi11 is the first phone to feature Samsung’s brand new GN2 sensor.
On the front, there’s a quad-curved 120hz WQHD AMOLED DotDisplay screen. It has a peak brightness of 1,700 nits and can reproduce 1.06 billion colours. The screen has a super high touch sampling rate of 480hz so gaming on Mi11 Ultra will feel so responsive. The brand new Corning Gorilla Glass Victus is used front and back on Mi11 Ultra.
With a screen with such high refresh rates and resolution, battery life and charging capabilities become very important. Mi11 has a large 5000mAh battery that supports 67W turbo wireless charging that can fully charge the battery within 36 minutes. It’s virtually the same speed as wired charging.
Xiaomi looks set to set a new benchmark with mobile photography. As well as having a main 50MP camera, the Mi11 Ultra also has a 48MP camera with a 5x optical zoom periscope lens, which is also capable of a 120x digital zoom and 10x hybrid zoom.
The camera module on the rear is certainly a departure from previous Xiaomi devices. It takes up almost the entire top third of the Mi11 Ultra and even has a small screen on the module that allows you to take selfie pics using that rear camera. Whether these turns out to just be a gimmick or has some real world use, we’ll have to wait and see.
Deep Dive
Xiaomi Mi11 Ultra has IP68 dust and water resistance and can work in depths of up to 40 metres of water. Mi11 Ultra will be available in a 12GB 256GB variant and will launch in Europe for €1199.
I, for one, have always been fascinated by ‘Lite’ editions of flagship devices. The Mi11 Lite 5G is no different. Featuring an ultra-slim design that weighs just 159 grams and measures in at just 6.81mm thin. Mi11 Lite 5G will also be the first phone to feature the new Snapdragon 780G processor which will deliver a significant boost in performance over the 765G. The 780G actually rivals the performance of the Snapdragon 870.
The rear of the device features a triple-camera setup led by a main 64mp sensor. There’s also a 20MP camera on the front.
The panel is FullHD+ AMOLED with a refresh rate of 90hz and is HDR10+ certified and has a touch sampling rate of 240Hz. Mi11 Lite 5G will launch in Europe and UK in an 8GB LPDDR4X 128/256GB variant in late April with prices revealed close to launch.