Xiaomi has been steadily climbing the ladder in the smartphone market, conquering the budget and mainstream segments with remarkable success. But this year, the brand is setting its sights on disrupting the flagship segment with its latest offering, the Mi 11 Ultra. This phone packs a punch with impressive features at a price point that undercuts its competitors, making it a compelling choice for those seeking the best bang for their buck. However, Xiaomi faces a brand perception hurdle: can the Mi 11 Ultra overcome the preconceived notions and convince consumers to choose it over established players like OnePlus, Samsung, and Apple? This review delves into the Mi 11 Ultra’s design, specifications, performance, battery life, and camera capabilities to see if it has what it takes to become a true flagship contender.
Mi 11 Ultra Design: A Symphony of Premium Materials
The Mi 11 Ultra boasts a design that exudes premiumness. Its sleek silhouette features an aluminum frame, a curved display protected by Corning Gorilla Glass Victus, and a ceramic back, all of which contribute to its hefty 234g weight. While the weight might not be ideal for one-handed use, the phone’s slim 8.38mm thickness makes it manageable.
The standout feature of the Mi 11 Ultra’s design is its massive camera module, which resembles a rectangular bulge reminiscent of the Poco M3’s design. This significant bump is necessary to accommodate the phone’s massive main camera sensor, a key element in its impressive photographic capabilities. While the bulge might be a turn-off for some, it ironically provides stability when the phone is placed on a flat surface and even offers a finger support for one-handed use.
A unique touch is the 1.1-inch OLED display embedded on the camera module’s side. This mini touchscreen automatically lights up when the phone is placed face down, allowing for customization with features such as displaying the battery level, notifications, date and time, a personalized message, or even an image. It can also be used for answering or rejecting calls and, more importantly, as a viewfinder for taking selfies with any of the three rear cameras. Though undoubtedly a gimmicky addition, it adds a touch of novelty to the Mi 11 Ultra’s design.
The front display is equally impressive, boasting a 6.81-inch QHD+ AMOLED panel with a 120Hz variable refresh rate and a 480Hz touch sampling rate, delivering smooth visuals and fast responsiveness. It supports popular HDR formats like HDR10+ and Dolby Vision, enhancing the viewing experience. While the in-display fingerprint sensor could be faster, the lightning-fast face recognition more than makes up for it, working flawlessly even when the phone is upside down.
The Mi 11 Ultra also incorporates a range of premium details. The stereo speakers, tuned by Harman Kardon, deliver rich and immersive audio. With an IP68 rating for dust and water resistance, the phone is built for durability. It also boasts Hi-Res Audio support for both wired and wireless headphones, enabling a truly high-fidelity listening experience. The linear haptic motor provides precise and responsive feedback, adding to the overall user experience.
Mi 11 Ultra Specifications and Software: Powerhouse Performance and a Refined Software Experience
The Mi 11 Ultra is powered by Qualcomm’s current flagship Snapdragon 888 5G SoC, ensuring blistering performance. One key advantage in India is its support for 13 5G bands, surpassing competitors like the OnePlus 9 Pro which only supports two bands. This ensures maximum compatibility when 5G becomes widely available, both domestically and internationally. Additionally, the phone boasts NFC, Wi-Fi 6e, and Bluetooth 5.2, further enhancing connectivity.
Beyond core components, the Mi 11 Ultra is packed with premium features. The 5,000mAh battery supports 67W wired and wireless charging, although the latter requires purchasing Xiaomi’s proprietary wireless charger to achieve this fast charging speed. The phone can also reverse wirelessly charge other devices at up to 10W.
The review unit ran MIUI 12.0.2 based on Android 11, delivering a largely ad-free experience. While occasional notifications from Xiaomi’s own apps were present, they were infrequent and easily manageable. Customization options abound in MIUI, ranging from themes and always-on displays to transition effects and customizable touch rejection zones. Users can even modify the notification shade’s toggle switches to mimic iOS.
Mi 11 Ultra Performance and Battery Life: Delivering a Seamless User Experience
The Mi 11 Ultra’s weight, though substantial, feels balanced after some initial adjustment. The lack of sharp edges makes it more comfortable to hold than the iPhone 12 Pro Max. Everyday tasks like calling and texting are handled effortlessly, while the responsive haptic motor adds satisfying feedback to typing and gestures. The secondary display proves useful for those who habitually place their phone face down, although a software bug caused the mini display to default to displaying the time despite having an image or message set.
The main display is a visual feast, delivering vibrant, yet not oversaturated, colors and excellent brightness, making content easily legible under any lighting conditions. The reading mode reduces contrast and color tone to reduce eye strain, while the option to mimic the look of paper enhances readability.
The Mi 11 Ultra lets users enjoy both the 120Hz refresh rate and QHD+ resolution simultaneously. AI video enhancements like Super Resolution and MEMC can be accessed through a Video Toolbox menu, allowing for upscaling low-resolution videos and motion smoothing. The phone also supports mini app overlays, enabling users to quickly check emails or social media feeds while watching videos.
HDR videos, whether played locally or on YouTube, look spectacular on the Mi 11 Ultra’s display. The phone also boasts the ability to record 4K HDR10+ or 8K HDR10 videos, although the quality suffers from oversaturation. A software bug on the review unit caused issues with playback of locally recorded HDR10+ footage, leading to a darkened appearance. However, Netflix streaming seemed unaffected, suggesting this issue may be resolvable via software updates.
Gaming performance is impressive. Heavy titles like Call of Duty: Mobile and Asphalt 9: Legends run smoothly, despite some heat on the back. The stereo speakers amplify the experience, delivering loud and impressive audio quality. Benchmark scores are excellent, with the Mi 11 Ultra achieving a remarkable 7,90,971 points in AnTuTu.
Battery life is more than satisfactory, lasting well over a full day with 4-5 hours of screen-on time under typical usage involving gaming, videos, social media, and messaging. However, the HD video loop test yielded a disappointing result of just over 13 hours, suggesting inconsistent performance.
Charging the Mi 11 Ultra is lightning-fast, reaching 99 percent in an hour thanks to the included 55W adapter. Although the 67W wireless charger wasn’t available for testing, the phone still charged rapidly with the company’s older 30W wireless charger.
Mi 11 Ultra Cameras: A Photography Powerhouse with Quirky Features
The Mi 11 Ultra sports a triple-camera system, each with a specific role:
- Main Camera: The primary camera features a massive 50-megapixel sensor, the largest used in any smartphone to date, measuring 1/1.12 inches in size. This, coupled with a large pixel size and wide f/1.95 aperture, allows for exceptional performance in low-light conditions. It is optically stabilized (OIS), supports HDR10+ video recording, and features Dual Pixel Pro autofocus, renowned for its effectiveness.
- Ultra-Wide Camera: Boasting the widest field of view among smartphones at 128 degrees, the 48-megapixel ultra-wide camera is equipped with PDAF and doubles as the macro camera.
- Telephoto Camera: The 48-megapixel telephoto camera offers OIS, 5X optical zoom, PDAF, and up to 120X digital zoom, the highest magnification level achieved by any smartphone camera.
- Selfie Camera: A 20-megapixel selfie camera handles the front-facing duties.
The Mi 11 Ultra also boasts impressive video capabilities. It can shoot up to 8K video at 24fps with all three rear cameras, allowing for switching cameras while recording via the zoom slider. Slow-motion videos can be captured at 1,920fps at 1080p. Another novelty feature is Multicam Mode, which enables simultaneous recording from any two cameras as a combined video or as separate ones. Even more, users can combine the feed from a secondary Xiaomi phone supporting "Dual phone recording" for multi-cam, multi-angle shooting.
Daylight landscape shots are exceptionally detailed with natural colors, excellent dynamic range, and minimal noise or distortion. The ultra-wide camera captures vast scenes but exhibits some distortion and softer details at the edges.
Close-ups can be challenging due to the narrow plane of focus resulting from the large sensor and wide aperture. This creates a beautiful natural depth of field, eliminating the need for Portrait mode, but can blur areas outside the focal plane if the focus point is slightly off.
Macro mode, however, is a bit disappointing. The Mi 11 Ultra struggles to get close enough to an object for satisfying composition. The Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra and even the OnePlus 9 Pro performed better in this category.
Zoom capabilities are impressive. The telephoto camera typically kicks in at 5X magnification in bright light, providing sharp images until around 10X, beyond which quality declines. The phone can also use digital zoom at 5X in daylight, despite occasionally switching to the telephoto camera. Images remain usable up to 40X, but sharpness and detail suffer at higher magnifications. While the 120X zoom is a bragging right, it is not particularly useful for most shooting scenarios.
In low light, the large primary sensor shines, delivering detailed images with accurate colors. The camera automatically engages a slow shutter for great low-light performance, eliminating the need to manually switch to Night mode. However, the app sometimes artificially brightens images, which may not always look true to the scene. Noise is kept in check in darker areas, showcasing the impressive low-light performance. The ultra-wide camera also captures usable shots at night when utilizing Night mode.
The telephoto camera struggles in low-light conditions, with slow autofocus and difficulty in metering exposure and locking focus on bright objects. This made capturing usable pictures of the moon challenging. However, a dedicated Supermoon mode addresses this, albeit with limited magnification up to 60X.
While the Mi 11 Ultra can record 8K videos, the limited 24fps frame rate makes it less appealing. Daylight 4K videos, however, look spectacular, with excellent stabilization. HDR video recording is confusing due to toggles in both the viewfinder and camera settings. The viewfinder toggle limits resolution to 1080p, while the other option allows for HDR10+ video at 4K or HDR10 at 8K. However, neither setting yields impressive results, making it advisable to keep them disabled.
Unlike the OnePlus 9 Pro, the Mi 11 Ultra avoids overheating when shooting 8K videos. While it does get warm, the camera app remains usable and doesn’t shut down. 8K videos are limited to six minutes per clip, but there is no restriction on 4K 60fps recording.
The 20-megapixel selfie camera captures decent quality images during the day. Skin tones appear natural, and HDR balances exposure effectively even with bright backgrounds. Low-light selfies, however, lack detail and are prone to noise. Night mode fails to improve exposure or detail significantly. Thankfully, users can leverage the rear cameras for better quality selfies thanks to the secondary display on the back. Selfie video recording is limited to 1080p 60fps.
Verdict: A Strong Contender with Room for Growth
The Mi 11 Ultra is a powerhouse of a smartphone, offering everything a premium device could desire. While there’s room for improvement with the fingerprint sensor speed and a more flexible camera app, along with a few software bug fixes, the phone delivers exceptional performance in many areas. The build quality is impressive, the high-refresh-rate display is vibrant and responsive, battery life is reliable, and the cameras are top-notch. The largely spam-free MIUI experience is a refreshing change.
Xiaomi has priced the Mi 11 Ultra aggressively at Rs. 69,999, competing directly with high-end models from OnePlus, Samsung, and Apple. It surpasses the OnePlus 9 Pro in areas like 5G band support, telephoto performance, and battery size. While competing with Samsung and Apple’s Ultra and Pro models, which cost considerably more, the Mi 11 Ultra offers exceptional value for money.
Xiaomi’s biggest challenge will not be out-specing the competition, which it easily achieves, but convincing consumers to take a leap of faith and choose it over established brands. A commitment to delivering several Android versions for the Mi 11 Ultra would be a crucial step in building trust. Xiaomi already utilizes Google’s dialer and messages apps on the Ultra, so removing redundant apps like the Music player and GetApps in favor of Google alternatives, or at least offering users the option to uninstall them, would be a positive move. The upcoming MIUI 12.5 update, promising a leaner, privacy-focused experience, could potentially address these concerns.
Choosing the Mi 11 Ultra over established players is a bold move, but it is one worth considering. With its powerful performance, stunning design, and impressive camera capabilities, the Mi 11 Ultra is a strong contender in the premium smartphone market, offering a compelling package for tech-savvy consumers seeking the best value for their investment.
