The mid to high-end marketplace for smartphones is extraordinarily fierce. And over the past two years, the competitors has skyrocketed. To hold ahead its success from final yr’s Mi 10T sequence, this yr, Xiaomi has launched the 11T Professional. Its new naming scheme apart, there are fairly just a few upgrades it brings to the desk.
Design and construct high quality
Xiaomi’s 11T Professional is much from a compact smartphone. At 8.8mm and 204g, it’s fairly the unit. However no less than it’s strengthened by some premium {hardware}. You discover an aluminum body across the gadget sandwiched between a glass again and a Corning Gorilla Glass Victus protected entrance. On the high, the sting of the smartphone can also be chiseled which the underside just isn’t. Whereas we didn’t have any situation with this distinction, some customers might discover this distinction to be barely annoying.
We want the again was matte as an alternative of shiny although as a result of the latter makes for a barely low cost really feel within the hand. Furthermore, it additionally attracts pointless mud and smudges which in the end dilutes the general look of the smartphone. Maybe in its blue or white end, the smartphone might look completely different however our gray variant definitely didn’t have something stand-out about it.
That being stated, we respect that the 11T Professional comes with fundamental IP53 certification. For this worth, full IP67 or IP68 is a stretch however this center floor is a superb selection by Xiaomi. Furthermore, regardless of the smartphone’s massive dimension, its dealing with is fairly effectively accomplished. The facility and quantity buttons are comfortably reachable with the previous additionally doubling as a fingerprint scanner. That is quick and responsive, though we do have one thing fascinating to speak about close to it in a later part.
Rounding up on the design, you discover an IR blaster and one a part of the Harman Kardon stereo speaker expertise on the highest edge. The underside homes a twin nano-SIM tray with no expandable reminiscence assist, the first microphone, a Kind-C USB port and the second a part of the stereo speaker setup.
Show efficiency
Final yr, the Xiaomi Mi 10T got here with a 144Hz IPS LCD show. So naturally, seeing a 120Hz panel on the 11T Professional may look like a downgrade. Nonetheless, this yr, you discover a 2,400 x 1080 decision AMOLED panel. It’s 6.67-inches in dimension with assist for Dolby Imaginative and prescient and HDR10+. To be trustworthy, that is good for multimedia consumption with wealthy colours and deep blacks. The uniform and small bezels across the panel additionally assist in offering an immersive expertise, backed up by some good high quality audio system.
However the panel’s brightness leaves lots to be desired. Particularly when utilizing it outside, it feels poor. Its 800 nit typical brightness and 1,000 nit peak brightness appears to have issue translating to handy actual world use. With different smartphones which have related panels, we might use them outside at 60 per-cent brightness. However on this case, we needed to crank the show up all the best way to 100 per-cent to have the ability to use it comfortably underneath the solar.
{Hardware} and efficiency
Even when priced at a fraction of what typical flagship smartphones are priced at, the Xiaomi 11T Professional comes with one of many highest-end processors accessible on a smartphone. You discover the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 5G chip with our variant coming with 256GB of UFS 3.1 storage and 8GB of RAM.
Unsurprisingly, basic efficiency on the smartphone has been clean. However there’s a slight caveat. The smartphone is simply clean when the show capabilities at 120Hz. As quickly as you drop this to 60Hz, efficiency is noticeably uneven, nearly making the 11T Professional really feel mid-range. This discrepancy just isn’t one thing you normally see from smartphones outfitted with a flagship processor.
Typically occasions, we additionally discovered 8GB of RAM to be a bit restrictive. If you happen to tried switching between 6-7 functions without delay, the smartphone must reload no less than one. After all, that is simply fastened with extra RAM nevertheless, we really feel Xiaomi must also look to optimize its software program. There are nonetheless scaling bugs on its working system and lots of of its parts aren’t aligned with what a inventory Android expertise would really feel like. Having used and tailored to so many working techniques, this isn’t an enormous deal. However if you’re somebody coming from inventory Android and even Samsung’s One UI pores and skin, adapting will take a while.
One other stunning facet about utilizing the 11T Professional is being triggered in your pocket. We suspect that given its fingerprint scanner’s sensitivity, when by chance unlocked in your pocket, it could result in some stunning issues. In our case, the smartphone posted a tweet, an Instagram story and despatched somebody a message on WhatsApp with out discover. This initially felt fairly regarding, with us pondering we have been hacked. However quickly, we found that this was not the case. And upon additional digging, we discovered a strategy to keep away from this. Buried within the settings, we modified the performance of the fingerprint scanner to solely work when pressed and from then on, we’ve got been capable of keep away from this drawback.
Going again to the smartphone’s pores and skin, it’s operating MIUI 12.5 on high of Android 11 which we really feel has fastened quite a lot of issues that have been prevalent in its final model. Nonetheless, some nonetheless stay. For instance, incoming notifications can generally be delayed and animations drop frames, which isn’t one thing that we needs to be seeing with such a high-end processor. Furthermore, we’ve got additionally not seen any software program updates on the smartphone. Regardless of being a brand new smartphone, it’s nonetheless caught on the September 2021 safety patch with October 2021 nearly about to finish. Most of the time, this tends to be ignored in mid-range smartphones however we predict it needs to be addressed extra by corporations.
Digital camera efficiency
On high of the smartphone’s internals, the digital camera on the gadget too raises just a few eyebrows. The 11T Professional is supplied with a triple-camera setup made up of a 108MP major sensor, an 8MP ultra-wide snapper and a 5MP telephoto macro digital camera. Like many smartphones on this lineup, the first snapper is nice. It reveals a great degree of element regardless of the lighting state of affairs. However on the subject of consistency and reliability, the digital camera setup just isn’t effectively versed. For instance, the colour sways and element adjustments between the first and ultra-wide digital camera are big. And likewise, utilizing the telephoto macro digital camera for lengthy distance zoom is simply respectable for as much as 2x. Something past this ends in some massive loss intimately.
However specializing in the first sensor, there are some issues which can be spectacular. For instance, its dynamic vary is nice and furthermore, the best way evening mode has been applied is implausible. Until you evaluate straight with a flagship smartphone, the outcomes are fairly spectacular. There may be nevertheless some lag when launching the digital camera software and in addition when taking an image. And including to this, sharing photos on social media appears to have an issue. On Snapchat or Instagram, the standard of images that the telephone shares after compression is appalling and sadly, this interprets to video as effectively.
There are quite a lot of options for video baked into the Xiaomi 11T Professional. And whereas these are nice to imitate a cinematic look, they aren’t helpful for on a regular basis video. On the core, the 11T Professional can file as much as 8K 30fps video. However it comes with just a few limitations. It may possibly solely file as much as 4K 30fps with HDR enabled. At 4K 60fps and 8K 30fps, you’ll need to show off HDR which isn’t a justified sacrifice particularly given the smartphone is marketed to be a video companion. Likewise, the dearth of optical picture stabilization on the digital camera setup digital camera is a shock given digital picture stabilization (EIS) doesn’t lower it.
However whereas these are issues that you would be able to stay with, there may be one massive situation which we predict stems with optimization. Any video you attempt to ship to others on WhatsApp is severely uneven and degraded. This may very well be a make of break function for a lot of and sadly, the one workaround to that is to movie at 60fps. Given the constraints of HDR in addition to high quality in low mild at this body price, you’re making a giant sacrifice simply to have the ability to ship clean movies, one thing that needs to be a staple function of any smartphone.
Rounding up, we’ve got obtained a single 16MP for selfies. No matter lighting, the entrance digital camera ought to have the ability to do a great job. We like the way it is ready to keep a great quantity of element and comparatively pure tones. Nonetheless, you might even see a downgrade when utilizing portrait mode. It’s not that the downgrade comes with edge detection or element, however reasonably with dynamic vary. Typically occasions, we attempt to take portraits with in a moody surroundings with maybe the solar shining within the background and when you strive to do this on this case, the background can be utterly blown out.
Battery life
Maybe one function that you simply can’t dispute on the Xiaomi 11T Professional is its battery. It sports activities an enormous 5,000mAh battery that’s extremely dependable. Even with a flagship processor and at 120Hz, the smartphone offers a stable backup with 8-10 hours of screen-on time. On a typical day starting at 7:30AM with fixed utilization, you’ll solely must plug within the smartphone round 10PM which is insane. With mild to average utilization, you must simply have the ability to get even as much as two days of battery life.
The unimaginable facet of the smartphone is that even when it’s important to recharge it, it’s insanely fast. It helps 120W wired charging that may take it from 2-100 per-cent in underneath half-hour. Though Xiaomi claims that the smartphone can cost in 17 minutes, we discovered it took a bit longer. However we aren’t complaining with these speeds. On common, a ten minute cost yielded near 55 per-cent of juice.
Conclusion
The Xiaomi 11T Professional is a stand-out worth for cash smartphone. Its efficiency is nice and so are its internals. However the underlying situation with it’s optimization. Whether or not you take a look at its consumer interface, its glitches with pocked dialing or its digital camera efficiency, the dearth of optimization leaves lots to be desired. If Xiaomi can handle these points and keep on high of them, the 11T Professional presents an especially enticing bundle. But when Xiaomi doesn’t do that, smartphones just like the Motorola Edge 20 Professional can capitalize.