The Xiaomi 11T Pro is a worthy successor to the Mi 10T Pro, offering significant upgrades like a Dolby Vision-enabled AMOLED display and 120W fast charging, making it a compelling choice in the sub-Rs. 40,000 segment. While inheriting the powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 SoC, the 11T Pro stands out from its lower-priced sibling, the Mi 11X Pro, with enhanced features and performance. But does it excel in all areas? Let’s delve into a comprehensive analysis to find out.
Xiaomi 11T Pro Price and Availability in India
The Xiaomi 11T Pro is available in three variants with three different finishes:
- 8GB RAM + 128GB storage: Rs. 39,999
- 8GB RAM + 256GB storage: Rs. 41,999
- 12GB RAM + 256GB storage: Rs. 43,999
The finishes are Moonlight White, Meteorite Black, and Celestial Blue. The 12GB variant is only available in black and blue colors.
Xiaomi 11T Pro Design and Build
While the Celestial Blue finish offers a vibrant, multi-colored rear panel, the Xiaomi 11T Pro’s design doesn’t particularly stand out. It lacks the slimness and lightness of the Vivo V23 Pro and features a flat display. The 11T Pro’s frame doesn’t match the metal frame of the iQoo 7 Legend and feels less premium. At 204g, it’s a bit heavy and lacks an official IP rating, unlike its sibling, the Mi 11X Pro.
However, the 11T Pro’s design does offer comfort and a good grip due to the matte-finished glass back and polycarbonate mid-frame. The Corning Gorilla Victus scratch-resistant glass on both the front and rear effectively resists fingerprints. The 6.67-inch AMOLED panel features a hole-punch cutout for the selfie camera and boasts relatively thin bezels.
The Xiaomi 11T Pro has a side-mounted fingerprint reader that proved reliable during regular use. Despite the phone’s thickness, the camera module doesn’t protrude significantly, even with a 108-megapixel sensor. The box includes a 120W charger, a USB cable, a Type-C to 3.5mm adapter, and a transparent TPU case.
Xiaomi 11T Pro Specifications and Features
The Xiaomi 11T Pro is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 SoC, a popular choice in smartphones at this price point. It comes with LPDDR5 RAM and UFS 3.1 storage, but lacks expandable storage. The phone supports various 5G bands with dual-5G standby. It also supports Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.2, NFC, and standard satellite navigation systems. An infrared emitter allows controlling appliances. The phone packs a 5,000mAh battery, which is quickly charged using the bundled 120W charger.
Xiaomi 11T Pro Software
The phone runs MIUI 12 software, based on Android 11. The interface is typical of Xiaomi phones, with plenty of pre-installed third-party apps, though these can be uninstalled. There are also several Mi-branded apps, some of which are unremovable, while others like Mi Credit can be. Fortunately, ads are not present in the interface.
Considering the phone’s premium pricing, it would be beneficial to have less bloatware and Android 12 out of the box. However, Xiaomi has announced a MIUI 13 software upgrade roadmap, and the 11T Pro is set to receive the update in the first quarter of 2022.
Xiaomi 11T Pro Display
The Xiaomi 11T Pro boasts a full-HD+ Super AMOLED display with a 120Hz peak refresh rate and a 480Hz touch sampling rate, a slight upgrade over the Mi 11X Pro (360Hz). By default, the display is set to the ‘Vivid Colour’ profile, resulting in slightly oversaturated colours. Switching to the ‘Display P3′ profile leads to more natural and accurate colour tones. The display is Dolby Vision certified, and supported content on Netflix looks impressive with deep blacks and excellent contrast. The combination of Dolby Vision, stereo speakers, and Dolby Atmos support makes for a truly immersive video viewing experience.
Xiaomi 11T Pro Performance
The Xiaomi 11T Pro delivers exceptional performance, as expected from a phone in this price range. It scored 811 and 3,391 points in Geekbench’s single-core and multi-core tests, respectively, and maxed out the 3DMark Sling Shot Extreme GPU test.
The Xiaomi 11T Pro effortlessly runs most games tested with default settings. Aspahlt 9: Legends, Honkai Impact, and Call of Duty: Mobile worked flawlessly without causing the phone to heat up. Even with ‘Very High’ graphics and ‘Max’ frame rate in Call of Duty: Mobile, the phone experienced minimal heating and performance remained unaffected.
However, an odd observation is that the screen’s refresh rate is always capped at 60Hz while playing games, meaning that the hardware’s potential for higher refresh rates is not fully utilized.
The Game Turbo app allows users to optimize the Xiaomi 11T Pro’s hardware for games. The app offers per-game optimizations and lets users tweak the GPU to prioritize picture quality, performance, or higher frame rates, as well as adjusting touch controls like swipe response and aiming accuracy. Setting the swipe response and aiming accuracy to the highest values in Call of Duty: Mobile resulted in noticeable improvement in responsiveness compared to the default settings. In conclusion, the 11T Pro is a capable gaming smartphone.
Xiaomi 11T Pro Battery Life and Charging
The Xiaomi 11T Pro, with its 5,000mAh battery, delivers impressive battery life. With casual usage, including some gaming and photography, the phone lasted for around two days on a single charge, even with the display set to the 120Hz refresh rate. The standard HD video loop battery test yielded strong results, with the phone running for 16 hours and 21 minutes, similar to the performance of the Vivo X70 Pro+.
The 120W fast charging capability provides a truly remarkable charging experience. The phone went from zero to fully charged in just 41 minutes, a fantastic time for a 5000mAh battery. Surprisingly, the 120W charger is not much larger than the 33W charger that Xiaomi typically ships with its mid-range smartphones.
Xiaomi 11T Pro Cameras
The Xiaomi 11T Pro features a triple rear camera setup:
- 108-megapixel primary camera: captures 12-megapixel binned images by default.
- 8-megapixel ultra-wide-angle camera.
- 5-megapixel macro camera.
Selfie duties are handled by a 16-megapixel front camera.
The camera app is familiar from other Xiaomi phones, with a well-organized interface and easy accessibility to modes and settings. The phone supports 8K video recording and can even record in HDR at up to 4K, though the frame rate is limited to 30fps at all resolutions with HDR enabled.
Daylight photos captured by the primary camera exhibit excellent detail and dynamic range. Whether capturing objects or people, sharpness is sufficient without being excessive. The 108-megapixel camera’s shallow depth of field minimizes the need for the ‘Portrait’ mode for objects and people. The ‘Portrait’ mode proved useful for intentional background blur. However, due to the limitations of the sensor size and lens, capturing close-up images of objects requires switching to the macro camera.
The 5-megapixel macro camera offers a longer focal length than the primary camera, effectively providing a 2X zoom (50mm). It focuses on subjects between 3cm and 7cm away and captures detailed macro photos in daylight. Sharpness is slightly higher than desired, but autofocus is quick enough for shooting usable macro video clips. Steady hands or a tripod are necessary for macro video shooting as footage can be shaky otherwise.
Selfies, taken both indoors and outdoors, appear sharp and offer good dynamic range. Portrait selfies display good edge detection, but dynamic range is limited when shooting against the light, leading to overexposure of bright backgrounds like the sky.
Low-light selfies suffer from over-sharpening, lack of depth, and poor texture detail, even when using Night mode.
In low light, the primary rear camera in Auto mode automatically switches to a longer exposure of up to two seconds. The shutter speed adapts to available light, and users can override the pop-up message for manual control, though automatic settings generally produce better results. This feature is likely optional due to the camera’s lack of optical image stabilization (OIS), which was present in the Mi 10T Pro.
Night mode, while enhancing detail, requires a longer wait for capture and saving. The results are worth the time, as the camera extracts significant detail from dimly lit scenes. While low-light performance is impressive overall, the lack of OIS often results in less sharp images than possible.
The ultra-wide-angle camera produces average daylight photos, with noticeable barrel distortion and purple fringing along object edges. Low-light photos appear soft and lack detail.
Videos captured by the Xiaomi 11T Pro in daylight are clear and exhibit good detail and dynamic range. Stabilization is excellent at all recording resolutions. Enabling HDR improves contrast and correctly exposes brighter areas of the videos. 8K video footage is crisp but lacks stabilization, making it shaky and often unusable, especially when walking. The phone also offers an HDR mode for selfie videos at 1080p 30fps. Though such footage exhibits better dynamic range, detail is reduced, and textures appear flat. 1080p videos at 60fps (with HDR off) display better detail and appear less choppy.
In low light, 4K 30fps provides the best results. HDR videos look a bit dull and dark, but exposure is better controlled, particularly in brighter areas. 60fps footage in low light is too dark and dull. A slight shimmer is noticeable at all resolutions while walking in low light.
Enabling the camera app’s AI mode, which often results in exaggerated and unrealistic colors, is generally best avoided.
Xiaomi 11T Pro Verdict
The Xiaomi 11T Pro is a solid premium smartphone that will appeal to users seeking camera performance, display quality, battery life, and raw power at a price point under Rs. 40,000.
After using the phone for over a week, it’s clear that the Xiaomi 11T Pro is close to being a well-rounded device. Apart from weak low-light selfie performance and a plethora of preinstalled apps, it excels in other areas. The 120W charging is the fastest currently on a smartphone, and the AMOLED display is top-notch in terms of quality. Dolby Vision support is an added bonus.
However, superior low-light camera performance, with OIS in the primary camera and autofocus in the ultra-wide-angle camera, is observed in the iQoo 7 Legend, which also boasts a more polished metal and glass build. However, it falls short in battery life.
The Samsung Galaxy S20 FE 5G, now priced at Rs. 39,999 due to the launch of the Galaxy S21 FE, offers comparable premium features. It also includes features like wireless charging and an IP68 rating, which are rare in this segment.
The Xiaomi Mi 11X Pro features similar hardware, lacking only the larger battery and ultra-fast charging. It’s currently on sale at Rs. 36,999, offering better value for budget-conscious users who still prioritize top performance.
