At the beginning of November, Xiaomi introduced a new smartphone, Xiaomi CC9 Pro, with a 108 MP camera, the global version of which
Review of Xiaomi Mi Note 10
Xiaomi Mi Note 10 — this is one of those«exotic» phones whose characteristics and price sound too attractive. So much so that it's hard to believe. Here's a short list:
- 6.5 inch AMOLED display
- 5260 mAh battery with fast charge
- 128 GB of memory
- 5 cameras at the back, including one with stunning 108 megapixels
- all this for 39 990 rubles
After a few weeks with the phone, I would say that this is a good offer for the price, although it has several drawbacks that you should be aware of. I'll tell you everything in order.
Design and display quality
Let's start with the good things.Xiaomi Mi Note 10 looks quite premium. The phone fits well in the hand, and its glass surfaces blend seamlessly with the metal frame. The only concern — This is a huge number of protruding cameras, but the included silicone case slightly corrects this situation.
Mi Note 10 doesn't have features like wirelesscharging or an IP rating is waterproof, but there is a headphone jack and an IR sensor to control devices such as televisions and air conditioners.
On the front side is magnificentA 6.47-inch tiny cutout OLED screen for a 32-megapixel selfie camera. The colors are great and the resolution of 1080 by 2340 pixels is more than enough. A reasonably fast and reliable optical fingerprint scanner is built into the display.
The only inconvenience with the screen — hiscurved edges. I know a lot of people like the way they look, but I find them extremely impractical. The letters Q, A, P and L on the keyboard are located exactly on a curve, and because of this, touches do not always register. I installed a narrower third party keyboard to solve this problem.
Notification Situation
Android 9 Pie Based Softwareis fast and responsive. At first I thought that the phone has a Snapdragon 855 due to the fact that it easily copes with any task or game, but then it turned out that the mid-range Snapdragon 730G chip works in combination with 6 GB of RAM and 128 GB of memory.
Xiaomi user interface comes withuseful features such as screen recording, a virus scanner for the applications you install and a game mode that can hide all notifications and record your gameplay. But some features are more confusing than useful in practice. Glitches are still present: for example, the screen sometimes does not turn off when I talk on the phone, but I believe that Xiaomi is working on this, since in the last 10 days I received several updates on the phone.
The most frustrating part of the user experienceexperience — it's a way to manage notifications and it might confuse some who have never used a Xiaomi phone before. Essentially, the software displays certain notifications on the lock screen but limits others. The ones that aren't shown only show up in the notification tray drop-down, so you'll likely miss them if you're not actively checking. Additionally, unlocking the phone clears ALL pending notifications from the lock screen and the status bar at the top shows absolutely no icons. Luckily, options in the Notification Settings menu address this shortcoming.
108 megapixels of frustration
The key marketing moment of Xiaomi Mi Note 10is a 108 megapixel main camera. Despite the record number of megapixels that the manufacturer is so proud of, in reality everything is not so great. In certain situations, it captures a lot of detail, but pictures taken at close range can look awful.
But the phone also comes with twotelephoto lenses, one with 2x and the other with 5x zoom. The first one is great for portraits, and the second one — to zoom in on the image. I can rate these two as excellent. The super wide-angle camera is also useful and even has autofocus for close-ups. And speaking of close-ups, there's a fifth 2-megapixel camera with a macro lens that can focus on objects as close as 2 centimeters from the camera. In practice, you don't need so many cameras; in fact, the photos here won't surprise you with their quality.
Photo examples
Battery life
There are no complaints. The Xiaomi Mi Note 10 batteries last for an average of two days, and I'm not trying to somehow limit the battery consumption. This should come as no surprise, considering that the battery capacity is 5230 mAh. To compare the phone with competitors, I decided to download a YouTube video playlist on each device and set it to repeat. The phone worked for exactly 11 hours at a fixed brightness of 200 nits. The iPhone 11 Pro Max and Galaxy Note 10 lasted 9 and 8 hours respectively in the same test.
You can charge the Xiaomi Mi Note 10 quite quickly, given the large battery capacity. A full charge using a standard 30W charger takes about an hour and a half.
Is it worth buying?
All things considered, Xiaomi Mi Note 10not a bad phone. The frustrating thing is that the 108MP camera isn't as good as I expected. But at the same time, you get a fast phone with long battery life and a big, beautiful screen for a very reasonable price. If you're using a phone from another manufacturer, Xiaomi's software won't work quite as well as you'd expect, but it's one of those things you learn to live with when you buy a bargain phone.