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Introduction
The Mi 11 is neither Pro nor Ultra. And it's not a flagship killer either, there are other devices in the company's ever-growing stable that cover that niche much better. The Mi 11 is the 'vanilla' model in the family, but looking at it like that doesn't really do it justice. At least that's what we think after having used it for an extended period of time for this long-term review.
Spoiler alert: it's more (read:better) than you may expect, and it positively surprised us a lot while we were using it. But we can't deny the fact that, price-wise, it sits in a weird middle ground, sandwiched in between flagship killers and top-of-the-line premium devices.
On paper, it doesn't seem to have a lot over a quintessential flagship killer, especially one from Xiaomi's roster, but if you make the comparison the other way round, then it also doesn't seem to miss a lot of stuff that its higher-priced brethren bring to the table, despite a significant price difference in both directions.
It is then a very intriguing one, the Mi 11, and we were curious to see what it would be like to live with this seemingly confusing package of a device day in and day out. So we did just that, and in short, we think you ignore this one at your own peril, as they say. In theory, it doesn't seem like it would really appeal to anyone, but we'd wager that in reality, it can actually easily appeal to most, with some very particular exceptions that we'll cover at length in our conclusion.
Until then, though, there's a lot to explore and a lot to share about our experience of using the Mi 11 as our one and only smartphone for this long-term review, so buckle up and let's get going.
Design, handling, build quality
We'll be honest, when we saw the first leaked images of this phone last year, we really weren't impressed with the design of the camera island on the back. It just looked ugly. But that's the thing about leaks and CAD-based renders and those sorts of things - sometimes they don't tell the whole story. In reality, holding it, looking at it - we've done a full 180 and now think it's one of the better-looking phone backs out there. Not just that, but it's unique and instantly recognizable - and not for bad reasons. This isn't something Xiaomi is used to pulling off, but it has here, in droves, and we're happy about that.
We began by talking about the camera island because seriously - have you seen Android phones these days? They all kind of look the same, save for this one design element through which manufacturers desperately try to differentiate their offerings. And Xiaomi has definitely made the camera bump different enough this year. It sticks with you after you see it in person for the first time, and it helps with brand awareness too, we suppose - if they stick with it for future phones, that is.
Anyway, it's a three-layered affair this island, and yes, there's some rocking motion on tables, but because of how huge the protuberance is, the phone actually doesn't rock while you type - it's only if you try and touch the upper left part of the screen that you have a problem - and that's a marginal issue.
Otherwise, the Mi 11 looks pretty much like any other premium smartphone in this day and age, and has the materials for the bragging rights too, with the now ubiquitous glass sandwich design. We like that the front is covered in Gorilla Glass Victus, Corning's best one yet, while the back gets Gorilla Glass 5, which is not too shabby either. Since a lot of people use cases anyway, the back glass usually doesn't have to be as shatter-resistant as the front one, and Xiaomi definitely knows this.
Speaking of cases, it's not always that Xiaomi would come out with a line of separately sold accessories for its high-end phones, but this is the case (pun intended) for the Mi 11 and we have one of the optional covers for our review unit. It's a fabric-lined thingie and while it may not protect as well as one of those 'heavy duty' looking contraptions, it's incredibly nice feeling to the touch. It doesn't get fingerprint smears at all, and it's also not slippery at all. That pretty much makes it worth the additional purchase in our book, but if you stick with the much simpler silicone case that arrives with the phone in most regions, that's fine, too.
If you go without a case, then you'll encounter the usual downsides of having a phone built of premium materials. Notably, the Mi 11 is quite the slippery beast - probably because its rear glass is matte-ish. It does a pretty good job of not showing a lot of fingerprints (though some still make it through), and it's definitely not as slippery as some of the worst offenders we've handled, for what it's worth. We were adventurous enough to use it caseless for much of the long-term review period, and we're happy to report no accidents. That said, your mileage may vary based on your level of clumsiness.
The Mi 11 is, in this reviewer's opinion, 'weighty' enough that it feels premium, but not so much that it becomes a drag to hold for any significant amount of time. In fact, we'd say that for handsets of this size, around 200g is the sweet spot. If you go much lower, the device might feel like it is lacking substance, while if going over 200g, the handling is starting to get compromised, no matter how big your hands are.
Speaking of that, since the ~75mm width is pretty much standard with high-end phones now (with a few notable exceptions of which this isn't one), we'll say this size works perfectly well for us and we appreciate the maximization of the screen space. But if you have small hands you will probably need to use both of them all the time in order to use the Mi 11, or any other handset in this size class.
Another thing we find ourselves repeating often in long-term reviews is the fact that the build quality is perfect, with no creaks or issues whatsoever. In fact this is now also true for much cheaper devices than the Mi 11, and so it's not surprising that the Mi 11 doesn't stand out negatively.
The power and volume buttons on the right are a bit too close to each other for our liking, but otherwise very nice to use. We like the way both the front and the back glass sheets curve into the metal frame, and overall we'd say the Mi 11 has a very modern and recognizable look without any unnecessary flashiness. It's not boring to look at, especially in this blue colorway, but it won't sear your retinas with weird color shifts either.
Speakers, biometrics, vibration motor
The Mi 11 has two speakers, which is par for the course for a high-end model these days, but there are a couple of quirks here. First, and most nitpicky, the Harman/Kardon logo on the top side of the frame is wholly unnecessary but also rather amusing considering that company is owned by what is probably Xiaomi's biggest competitor - Samsung. Still, there's some "audio tuning" by Harman/Kardon here apparently, and we do have to say the speakers sound very good.
Next up, on the bottom there's one speaker as you'd expect, and then at the top there's another one that pulls double duty as the earpiece when needed. That's all fine and dandy, but this one also has some openings in the top frame. Those help when consuming media, as the top speaker feels 'fuller' for lack of a better word, but it does mean that while you're on phone calls there will be quite a lot of leakage whenever you go over around half of the volume slider. It's an interesting design choice, for sure. Perhaps you won't mind at all if you rarely use the phone for calls, or make those using Bluetooth headphones.
Sound-wise, the speakers aren't the loudest nor the highest quality we've ever heard, but they're very close in both regards, and do the job admirably for media consumption. We've watched our fair share of YouTube videos and listened to a lot of podcasts using the Mi 11 speakers, and weren't left wanting for more volume unless we were in a very loud environment.
As for sound quality, we're never not aware it's a phone and there are physical constraints on how good a phone can sound. Others are slightly better, but the difference isn't something we'd base a purchasing decision on.
The fingerprint sensor is embedded in the screen, as you'd expect at this price point, but it was honestly quite disappointing. Its position is great, especially compared to some competitors which have chosen to place theirs much lower, but accuracy suffers compared to under-display sensors Xiaomi has used in the past. We still get rejected readings around 2-3 times out of 10, which is a problem we haven't had in a very long time with any under-display sensor.
We're not sure what's going on here, but we're definitely not happy to see the tech going back in time. It had reached a point where accuracy was basically on par with capacitive sensors, and now it's not anymore. Hopefully, this is a fluke on our unit and not a trend. Speed was adequate, on the other hand, no issues to report there.
Biometrics settings
As usual, there's also face unlock if you don't mind the significantly worse security that provides by using only the selfie camera and no additional sensors. Thankfully, it doesn't unlock if your eyes are closed, even if there's no specific setting for this - we checked.
The vibration motor is among the best on the market, if not actually the best. Still, it provides very pleasing feedback, and paired with how MIUI uses it for gentle nudges throughout the UI the experience is extremely good.
Haptic feedback level control
You can control the haptic feedback level with a slider, or turn it off altogether - although we struggle to see why you'd do that and thus negate one of the main UX advantages MIUI currently has over any other Android skin out there.
A curvy display
The Mi 11's 6.81" 1440p AMOLED screen is just a joy to look at, no matter what lighting conditions you're looking at it in. It's big, the screen-to-body ratio is outstanding, all the bezels are positively tiny even by today's almost impossible standards, and it gently curves on the sides for that modern and futuristic look. But wait, there's more! The glass gently curves towards the top and bottom as well.
We've seen this before in some Huawei devices, and while it's a very subtle curve at the top and bottom, it adds to the usability of gestures - both the navigation gestures from below, but also pulling down the notification shade (and/or Control Center) from above. It's one of those tiny things that you'll forget about in a few days of using the phone, but which you'll be reminded of the second you switch to another handset that has flatter glass at the top and bottom of the screen. In fairness, it doesn't even aid usability per se, it just gives you a nicer tactile feeling when using the phone.
If you're like us and have gone with gesture navigation years ago and never looked back, this is a great small touch that you'll definitely appreciate. And it goes to prove a more general point, that is how much Xiaomi has paid attention to even the smallest of details for its flagship phone of 2021. It's great to see such dedication.
Short diatribe aside, let's get back to the display itself. The side curves aren't as extreme as they were on the Mi 10 and Mi 10 Pro last year, but they're also not as subdued as in Samsung's latest and greatest. We call this a happy middle ground, where you get both the futuristic looks and the nice feeling of swiping from the sides on the curved surface.
In case you're concerned about accidental touches as a result of the curvature, don't be. MIUI 12.5 has a setting that allows you to set how sensitive the phone will be to touches on the curved area. There are a few presets and even a fully customizable option, we really don't think there's anyone who wouldn't find one of these settings adequate.
Ignore accidental touch on edges settings
We left the default on, and never had any issues with accidental touches - then again, it bears repeating that in the past year or so, we've never actually had accidental touch problems with curved screens on any Xiaomi, Oppo, or Huawei phone we've put through the long-term review process. Some manufacturers have simply managed to fix this possible annoyance, while others (cough... Samsung... cough)... not so much.
Display quality, brightness
Now let's address the screen's quality. Subjectively, to our eyes, this seems like one of the best panels ever put into a smartphone. It looks amazing, it feels amazing (the oleophobic coating is very good), it gets bright enough to be seen without an issue even on sunny summer days, and it gets dim enough to comfortably read at night - although we would have liked it to go even lower in pitch dark surroundings.
To reach the display's minimum brightness you need to both manually adjust the slider all the way to the left and initially set the confusingly named Night Mode in Display Settings to the leftmost option.
We wouldn't call the minimum brightness level too high, but it's on the brink of that. We've recently had LCD screens that were able to go lower, so we're not sure what's going on - if this is just a software thing that Xiaomi could improve with an update or if it's some sort of physical limitation of the panel.
The auto-brightness curve is great, we barely had to manually adjust things during our extended time with the Mi 11. A good auto-brightness algorithm now seems to be yet another differentiating factor between premium flagship smartphones and anything below that tier. It's one of those small things you'll never see mentioned in a spec list, but which could have a profound impact on your user experience. After all, if you have to manually correct brightness a bunch of times a day, that can get annoying.
Display settings, refresh rate
As usual, there are numerous color options for the screen, depending on how calibrated you want it to be (and calibrated to what color space), and also as usual we went with the default Auto mode because it adjusts the display's colors based on the current ambient color temperature. We did change the temperature to Warm, though, as the Default setting always results in whites that are way too blue for our tastes. All this said you can fiddle with a lot of options in this menu, and we describe which does what in our normal review of the phone.
The screen's refresh rate of 120 Hz, paired with the impressive 480 Hz touch sampling rate, provides an incredibly smooth, butter-like experience of moving content on the display but also of interacting with it. There are only two options to pick from regarding refresh rate, Standard and High. The latter is what we used throughout our time with the Mi 11 for this long-term review, and we also went with the native WQHD+ resolution and turned off the "Save battery with WQHD+" option in the Display resolution menu.
Display settings
That's because this essentially lowers the resolution dynamically to save power, and with such a top-of-the-line panel we want to get the best it can possibly offer - in terms of resolution, refresh rate, everything. If you want better battery life, you can go the opposite route of course, but we really don't think there's a point in spending this amount of money on a device only to cripple two of its best features.
The refresh rate isn't static, always at 120 Hz, instead, it drops to 90 Hz when switching between apps or using Picture-in-Picture mode, and 60 Hz when there's nothing happening on the screen, as well as when you're in apps such as YouTube or Netflix or Prime Video. Unfortunately, the drop doesn't only occur when you're watching video content in these apps, which would be no issue, it's down to 60 Hz whatever you're doing in the app. So, for example, scrolling through the YouTube home panel thus becomes needlessly choppy compared to the buttery smoothness of scrolling in any other non-video app.
We get that the panel itself isn't as 'flexible' in terms of refresh rate as some others are (we're thinking of Samsung's LTPO panels used in its Galaxy S21 Ultra and also the likes of the OnePlus 9 Pro and Oppo Find X3 Pro), and we're not asking for that level of adaptive refresh rate magic, but even with a rudimentary 60/90/120Hz system like the one employed here, we would hope that Xiaomi would only drop to the lower framerate when actually playing videos, not throughout video apps. It seems like a simple software fix, hopefully, it will arrive at some point in the future. This is our only niggle with the refresh rate because there is a very perceptible difference in smoothness in using such apps compared to any others.
Blue light filter, Always On Display
As with other recent Xiaomi devices, the Mi 11 comes with the most customizable blue light filter we've ever seen, called Reading mode. It has two modes, Paper and Classic - the latter being the one you're used to from other phones, complete with a color temperature slider. "Paper" takes things to a new level, though, with a (you guessed it!) paper-like texture, the intensity of which is customizable, and you can also pick between sticking with full colors, or light colors, or even going black and white. If you like blue light filters, you'll definitely love this one - and naturally you can schedule it too.
Reading mode and Always-on display settings
Similarly amazing in terms of sheer customization options is the Always-on-Display. You could definitely spend a solid half an hour picking designs and tweaking them every single time you want to make a change, but of course, you don't have to. It's easy enough to go with the first few designs that pop up, but if you want to dig further, most of them have additional options regarding shapes and colors.
There are also a few different light effects you can choose to show up on the AOD when you get a notification. And if you use one of the now-expanded Super wallpapers, the AOD will work in concert with those.
Updates, current software build
The Mi 11 launched running MIUI 12 based on Android 11, and since then it's been updated to MIUI 12.5. Our review unit, intended for the EU market, received the update in mid-May, as build 12.5.1.0.RKBEUXM. This is still the current software at the moment, and it includes the April 1, 2021 security patch level.
Before going into the experience of using MIUI 12.5, we'll quickly reiterate some of our past pain points about the experience of receiving security updates on Xiaomi devices, no matter how high-end they may be. In short, it's not great. The security update level is never ever current, it's always out of date, and updates, in general, are few and far between. It's usually a two or three-month wait for the next one, and even when that comes, it still won't be up to date with the latest security patches.
Current software
So if up to date security patch levels are important to you, unfortunately, you may have to look elsewhere. Android version updates do take a long time to arrive on Xiaomi handsets, but that's less of an issue because most of the stuff you're actually interacting with in day to day use is coming from MIUI, since it's one of the heaviest skins around. And the company is pretty good at issuing updates to the latest version of MIUI to even some very old phones.
Android version updates, when they do arrive, generally don't change much, if anything, of the UI. But another thing to note is that one or two Android version updates is pretty much the best you can expect from Xiaomi, even if you're purchasing its most expensive devices. The lower you go in price, the more likely it is you'll only ever get one - if that.
We would really like for the company to step up its updates game, perhaps take a look at Samsung and the amazing strides it's made in this regard in the past year or two, while launching a similar number of phones as Xiaomi.
MIUI 12.5 general impressions
All of this aside, MIUI 12.5 is by far the best looking and smoothest feeling iteration of the skin yet. It's a joy to use, even if some idiosyncrasies still remain here and there (for example, the System apps updater is still a part of Settings, and it still only updates a limited subset of system apps, with the rest getting their new versions through the Play Store).
System apps updater still exists
MIUI 12.5 is also the most polished MIUI release ever, from the first build - at least this is true on the Mi 11, unfortunately your mileage may vary on other phones (especially the cheaper ones seem to not really get a lot of quality testing before software releases). But, on the Mi 11, we haven't encountered any bugs, big or small, after installing MIUI 12.5. And the overall experience of using the phone has been greatly improved by the lower resource use of MIUI 12.5 in general. The animations seem better timed too (but this is just our subjective assessment), and everything is simply smoother than before, more buttery - better and faster, to be concise.
One of our major niggles with Xiaomi's skin has finally been fixed, namely the incredibly confusing way the DND mode was laid out in Settings. Sanity has finally been restored here, and now the settings relating to the DND mode finally make sense and are easy to understand. This was never an issue on any other Android skin, but for some reason, previous MIUI versions made things unnecessarily complicated.
DND is finally sane
DND also does work on the Mi 11 exactly as intended, or as set up to one's liking - we couldn't always say the same for phones running previous iterations of the software.
Launcher, Recent apps
The launcher is a basic affair that nevertheless has support for an app drawer. We're happy this isn't a huge thing to note anymore, and has just become normal. You can have the Google Discover feed show up to the left of your leftmost home screen if you want, or turn that off if you don't like it. The Mi Vault is gone forever from that position, though, there's no way to get it back. We wouldn't call this a big loss or anything close to that, but you may disagree.
Launcher with Google Discover, Recents, Home screen and Recents settings
For the Recent apps screen, you can pick between a vertically scrolling view with two apps side by side, or a horizontally scrolling version which is incredibly similar-looking to what every other manufacturer is doing these days. Needless to say, we're very happy for the addition of this choice, as before MIUI was strangely holding on to its own unique and anachronistic way of doing things.
Now, people who agree with that description of the vertically scrolling Recents in MIUI can do what we did and switch to the horizontally scrolling list and restore some sanity in their day to day interactions with their phones, while those of you who love the vertically scrolling thing can stick with that. Everyone's happy.
Standalone Control Center
Another new-ish option in MIUI is the independent Control Center, which looks and feels very iOS-inspired. This can be turned on or off with a toggle, and in previous Xiaomi devices with this option we chose to stick with using Android the way God intended (or Google, in this case), with the hybrid notification pane that also houses a few Quick Settings icons which you can then expand into a larger list by swiping down again.
For this long-term review, however, we decided to try out Xiaomi's Control center and see what we'd think. After a few days of adjustment, we have to say that this arrangement worked for us very well. Not necessarily better than the default of having notifications and Quick Settings toggles in the same place, just... different but equally good, we'd say. It's definitely a matter of personal preference, this, and if you strongly dislike the iOS inspiration for the standalone Control center, then you may choose to ignore it.
New Control Center, no more toggles in Notification pane
Functionally, there are differences between the two ways of handling things, but we'd call it a tie as to which is better or worse. The standalone Control center has quicker access to the list of Bluetooth devices (just tap on the arrow at the bottom right of the Bluetooth field), while the hybrid system can show you both notifications and a few quick settings toggles on the same screen, which could save time sometimes. On the other hand, in the standalone Control Center you can add tiles for smart home devices, such as those controlled through either the Google Home or Mi Home apps. This gives you easy access to turn IoT devices on and off quickly.
Gestures, Dark mode
Xiaomi's gesture navigation system remains among the best ones out there, we've had absolutely no issues with it whatsoever. It works very smoothly (and more so in MIUI 12.5), it's easy to get the hang of, and there isn't any weirdness anywhere with having to retrace your gesture or anything like that. You swipe up for the home screen, swipe up and pause for the Recents menu, swipe from the sides in the lower two-thirds to go back, and swipe from the sides in the upper third to access an app's hamburger slide-out menu, if it has one. That's it.
System navigation settings
We're still mourning the loss of the feature that used to allow quick switching to the previously used app by swiping from the side and holding a bit, but you can easily achieve the exact same thing by swiping left and right on the bottom of the screen (though you do have to 'lift' the swipe ever-so-slightly for this to work, and that does take some getting used to, much more than the older gesture did).
There's a Dark mode in MIUI 12.5, naturally, and it looks to us to be identical to the one in MIUI 12, including the fact that it gets forced on for all apps too. This is annoying because you can't turn off the forcing feature in batches, you have to do it for every single app individually. That's bad UI design, and needs to change - we were hoping MIUI 12.5 would fix this, but it hasn't.
Dark mode settings
Anyway, if you want all of your apps to be darkened by the OS, with no regard for whether they have a dark theme of their own, then you'll enjoy this feature, undoubtedly. Unfortunately, it's not perfect which means that from time to time you will end up seeing black-on-black text in some apps, things like that. This is when you will then need to go to Settings, hunt down the More Dark mode options menu, and toggle off the forcing of Dark mode for that individual app.
Quite an unnecessary hassle in our book, but we do prefer this to having no way of forcing the dark theme onto apps whatsoever - because, incredibly, there still are some that don't have a proper dark mode built-in even today. It probably goes without saying - but we'll say it nevertheless - the Dark mode is schedulable according to your liking.
Settings
The Settings menu doesn't seem to have changed all that much when going from MIUI 12 to 12.5, it's still essentially the same, with a very similar way of sorting its various sub-menus. It's definitely... a lot, we won't lie, and some things may not be where you expect them to, coming from other Android skins. Fun fact: the factory reset option is under About phone, which is also the first item in the menu, and not the last. Why? Who knows.
Then again, just because every other Android device maker under the sun places that option at the end of Settings (or near it), doesn't mean that's the 'proper' placement per se. The point here is that the Settings menu of MIUI 12.5 still thankfully has a search bar at the top, which is very important in getting you to sub-settings that may seem randomly placed throughout.
Overall we wouldn't call MIUI's Settings menu the hardest to navigate out of all Android skins (that dubious honor probably goes to Samsung's), but it's definitely not the easiest to master either, nor the lightest feeling or looking. Then again, the search bar is there, and it's unlikely you'll have to fiddle with Settings a lot after you first customize your phone to your liking.
Settings
We will say that we really appreciate the endlessly scrolling list in the Wallpapers section, which integrates that part of the Themes app in a very seamless fashion. You can pick categories of wallpapers to be shown, browse through a million of them (not literally, but that's what it feels like), and applying one you've found to your liking is much faster than in other skins.
While we're talking about wallpapers, no other company has anything that comes even close to Xiaomi's Super wallpapers, and we have to commend it for thinking up this system, where the AOD image, the lock screen image, and the home screen image are all integrated, with very nice animations when transitioning from one state to another. In MIUI 12.5, you can pick between more Super wallpapers than ever before - five categories, some of which have additional choices regarding the exact location shown. They're also finally spotless in the transitions - there are no stutters, no lags, no perceived slowness, none of that anymore.
Super wallpapers
The Super wallpapers are just one of those small details that Xiaomi thought of in order to make your experience of using the phone every day a little bit nicer. Add to these the redone animations, the gentle vibration 'nudges' here and there in the UI, and while MIUI 12.5 might not be our favorite Android skin when it comes to looks or how heavy it is, it has quickly become our favorite based on how nice it is to interact with.
The caveat here is that we mean this for high-end devices, on cheaper ones the experience isn't exactly as good - cheaper vibrating motors can't deliver the same localized feeling, for example. But on the Mi 11, everything's smooth and seamless and a joy to come into contact with, all day every day.
Performance, smoothness
Let's just outright state it - the Mi 11 is the smoothest phone we've ever had for a long-term review. Period. (Or "Full stop." if you're from the UK). The UI moves like butter - delicious, lag-free, stutter-free, high refresh rate butter.
Undoubtedly, the Snapdragon 888 chipset is partly to thank for this feat, and as you'd imagine it also delivers a lot of performance all the time, no matter what you need it for. In our normal use, we've never encountered overheating or excessive throttling (by which we mean excessive enough to actually notice). If you keep running benchmarks back-to-back? Sure, then either or both of those things may become problematic, but we're not doing that for long-term reviews because that's not how most people would use a phone.
The screen is, we assume, the other contributor to the smooth feeling in operation, both because of its 120 Hz refresh rate, but also because of its sheer quality. The whopping 480 Hz touch sampling rate can't hurt either - in fact, we're pretty sure it helps a lot. So anyway, there you have it - the Mi 11 is the new king of our smoothness scale. And of course, it's the best performing Android smartphone we've ever had for a long-term review too, but that's probably less shocking because it has the best SoC ever, after all.
Battery life
Battery life is one area where the Mi 11 ever so slightly disappointed us. Don't get us wrong, battery life was very good, but that's just the thing - it could've been great, had the company used a bigger battery.
With the 4,600 mAh cell on offer, we were always able to get over 5 hours of screen on time with our use (see details below), and a few times we went over 6 hours too. That's good, but not great, especially if you consider that our use case involves mostly Wi-Fi connectivity, with only an hour or two of 5G. If you have a different use case with more mobile data in your life, then the screen on time numbers should be worse for you.
Screen on time
Our scenario involves 12-16 hours off the charger usually, with Bluetooth always on and connected to speakers or headphones for an hour or two, about half an hour of navigation via Waze, and an hour or two of phone calls. One caveat here is that we had the phone on 120 Hz and WQHD+ resolution all the time (and the setting for optimizing battery with WQHD+ was off, because that in effect switches to a lower resolution automatically, and we wanted to take advantage of the screen in all its glory).
All this said, we never felt we had to quickly top-up mid-day for fear of not making it through an entire day because we always did - but just barely. There was never any ample juice remaining in there for the next day, this was a phone we definitely had to charge every night.
Speaking of charging, going from zero to 100 in about 45 minutes with the included charger is very nice, since it means even very short top-ups will make an impact. Fast wireless charging is welcome too, although we couldn't test its promised under-one-hour charging speed because we don't have the appropriate charger. We did use wireless charging on a lesser charger, though, with absolutely no issues.
Camera
For some reason more and more manufacturers are starting to keep telephoto lenses exclusive to their ultra-premium flagship smartphones these days, and unfortunately, Xiaomi is also playing along. Not that it didn't do the exact same thing last year between the Mi 10 and Mi 10 Pro, but in 2021 in international markets, we're only getting the Mi 11 and the Mi 11 Ultra, and the price gap between these two is positively gigantic. And if you want a Mi flagship with a tele camera, you need to jump over that gap, unfortunately.
That, in effect, is our main gripe with the Mi 11's camera system. While definitely not the best around at the moment, it's plenty capable for the phone's price point, but the glaring omission of any sort of tele option is hard to get over. Sure, you can digitally zoom to 2x from the main sensor, but why not just use a 3x standalone cam and make everyone happy? OK, maybe it's just us and most people don't care about proper framing flexibility.
Xiaomi was the first company to put a 108 MP sensor in a phone, and it's still doing exactly that here, more than a year later. The Mi 11's main cam is the same as in last year's Mi 10 and Mi 10 Pro, sporting the Samsung ISOCELL Bright HMX sensor. It's a Quad-Bayer affair, and the phone combines four adjacent pixels to output 27 MP images in auto mode, which is what we've used for the samples you can see below. While you can shoot in 108 MP mode, the resulting images are noisy and lack detail, so we wouldn't recommend it. In the end, that's not how these Quad-Bayer sensors are meant to be used anyway.
During the daytime, the Mi 11's main camera produces pictures that have ample detail levels, accurate colors, and high contrast, while noise is very low and the dynamic range is good, not great (then again some people like a more subdued dynamic range presentation, and this is definitely that). Foliage is far from perfect looking, but decent nevertheless. Colors do pop more than our eyes perceived them to in real life, but this is the way things are with any phone right now, only some do it more (read:worse) than others. From this point of view, we found the Mi 11's shots to be satisfying.
Daytime samples from the main camera
The 13 MP ultrawide camera shoots very good photos too, with a lot of detail, good dynamic range, high contrast, and nice colors that are more inaccurate than the main cam's, but not by so much that this would be an issue. Noise is handled well, and the automatic distortion correction does its job adequately, if not record-breakingly.
Daytime samples from the ultrawide
We chose to ignore the macro camera as we usually do in long-term reviews, hoping that at some point manufacturers would stop using such gimmick sensors. Adding autofocus to the ultrawide and tuning that for macro shots would be much better in our book, but then how would the Mi 11 be able to claim it has three cameras? Yeah, exactly. Furthermore, the button that takes you into the Macro mode is a hassle to get to in the Camera app, so we didn't bother. We'd wager most people who'd even be able to find that button to activate the special macro mode would probably only use it for a few shots and then forget it ever existed in the first place.
Despite the lack of a dedicated zoom lens, there's a 2x toggle in the camera's viewfinder, and testing these shots out we found them to be nothing more than cropped from the main sensor and then upscaled. No 'magic' zoom shenanigans here, it's digital all the way, and that's disappointing because the resulting images always seem lacking in detail.
Daytime 2x zoom samples
At night the main camera employs some auto Night Mode magic if you let it, and since this is turned on by default, we left it on. You can turn it off though if you're annoyed by the fact that every shot takes a couple of seconds. The resulting images are generally very good, with balanced exposures, nice highlight treatment, natural-looking shadows, good color science, and reasonable amounts of noise.
Nighttime Auto samples from the main camera
Switch to the actual Night Mode and shot times increase even more, resulting in brighter photos because of the longer exposure times. Overall, though, the difference between auto Night Mode and manual Night Mode isn't huge. The latter is still better to use if you have the time, but we'd wager for most people most of the time the auto Night Mode will deliver satisfying images.
Night Mode samples from the main camera
The ultrawide gets some of that auto Night Mode action too, although with shorter exposure times we assume are related to its lack of OIS. This means you'll get darker and grainier photos than from the main sensor, even when shooting the exact same scene at the exact same time. Detail levels aren't great, and colors are all over the place.
Nighttime Auto samples from the ultrawide
The manual Night Mode brightens things up as you'd expect, and since the auto Night Mode shots are all kind of dark, we prefer this, but you do have to be patient waiting for each shot to first be exposed and then processed. The shot-to-shot time in this mode is almost 10 seconds, which is anything but great. If you can put up with that, you'll get more detail and slightly better, yet still not great colors from the manual Night Mode.
Night Mode samples from the ultrawide
2x zoom shots at night are predictably worse than the 1x pictures from the main sensor, with lower detail and more noise. We really miss a good dedicated zoom camera here, especially at night.
Nighttime 2x zoom samples
If you go with Night Mode for these, they do get brighter, but the quality still is anything but outstanding.
Night Mode 2x zoom samples
Selfies come out rather soft sometimes, but they're still good, with Auto-HDR being used when needed, decent amounts of noise, and overall good colors and contrast. Portrait selfies have okay subject separation, good looking background blur, but lack in detail.
Selfies, day and night, Portrait mode off and on
At night, the quality levels go down sharply if you don't have a lot of ambient lighting around, and even with some light in your vicinity, the shots will be grainy and barely usable for anything, especially if you don't use the screen flash function.
Conclusion
Let's start with the Mi 11's downsides because there aren't that many. The cameras are good, but can't compete with systems that you can find in ultra-premium flagships which cost more than €1,000. The battery life is good, but not excellent. For our use, we never had to top-up during the day, but we did have to charge the phone every night, and if your use case involves primarily mobile data connectivity, your mileage will definitely be worse.
The fingerprint sensor is less reliable than we were expecting based on encounters with previous Xiaomi high-end devices with in-display scanners, but even so, it did accurately detect our fingerprint around 7-8 times out of 10. Software updates are few and far between, but the upgrade to MIUI 12.5 has thankfully not introduced any bugs or issues, so waiting a few months for the next update won't be that frustrating. What is, though, is how Xiaomi phones are never on the current security patch level, no matter how expensive they are.
Speaking of software, MIUI's mere presence on the Mi 11 may or may not count as a downside, depending on your opinion of the skin. We'll mention that we never saw any pesky ads in the notification area on our review unit, but this is intended for the EU market and we can't say you'll have the exact same experience anywhere else in the world. Xiaomi is known to enjoy serving ads in some countries more than others. There are ads inside some built-in apps, and there's an ad screen that shows up when you install an app (even from the Play Store), but you can easily get rid of that forever by using the menu that opens if you tap on the gear icon at the top right corner when it shows up.
MIUI itself isn't our favorite Android skin in terms of looks or just how heavy it is, but it has risen to number one in this reviewer's book based on the way interacting with it feels. The animation timing, the animation design, the use of the excellent vibration motor throughout the UI for gentle 'nudges' here and there (some of which even feel positional - as in you think it came from a specific area of the device), all of these, combined with the fluidity of the 120 Hz screen and 480 Hz touch sampling rate, work together to deliver a user experience that is the smoothest we've ever encountered on a phone we've long-term reviewed.
The Mi 11 also has the best, fastest chipset ever put in an Android device, one of the best screens ever (only let down by the lack of truly adaptive refresh rate handling), the most protective Gorilla Glass ever on the front, a glass sandwich 'premium'-feeling design, a pair of speakers that produce among the best and loudest output ever (at the expense of some leakage when on phone calls using the earpiece), as well as the most customizable blue light filter and Always On Display on the market.
In many ways it's the best Android phone we've ever long-term reviewed, so in the end, what's important if you're thinking of buying one is how you personally feel about the areas in which it doesn't live up to generally more expensive competitors. If you need the absolute best camera system out there, this ain't it. Or the most reliable fingerprint sensor, or the most timely security updates, or a very light skin on top of Android.
But if you want the smoothest device ever to be long-term reviewed, which incidentally is also the fastest if you want the best feeling phone to use, then so far, this is it. All of this is true regardless of its current pricing, and when you factor that in it may become a better or worse value for you depending on what your priorities are.
From where we're standing, though, it's very easy to recommend the Mi 11, even today, many months after its initial release, to everyone but the people who absolutely need things from it that it simply can't deliver - the best cameras, the best battery life, the best fingerprint sensor, the best track record when it comes to timely updates, the least bloated Android skin, and so on. Because aside from these shortcomings, in all the other areas that matter, the Mi 11 is outstanding.
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