Xiaomi Mi Note 10 review - A photographer’s Swiss Army knife - Android
Xiaomi is a company that aims to offer extremely high-value products at wildly competitive prices. From its phones to its suitcases, Xiaomi pushes the boundaries of price-to-performance ratios by making a maximum of 5% profit margin on hardware.
With the Xiaomi Mi Note 10, the company is once again pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in a smartphone. With a form factor similar to that of other devices, it offers several surprising specs that you won’t find in other smartphones today.
Are these changes enough to earn Xiaomi market share in the west? Find out in Android Authority’s Xiaomi Mi Note 10 review.
Xiaomi is angling the Mi Note 10 as a photography-focused device. This is the first smartphone to ship with a 108MP sensor, which can bin down to 27MP images for more light gathering. It also sports four other cameras on the rear, covering a variety of focal lengths.
The other key feature of the Mi Note 10 is its huge battery. Xiaomi was able to maintain a footprint similar to other devices while including a massive 5,260mAh battery in this device. This translates to incredibly good battery life, especially when paired with the lower-powered Snapdragon 730G.
While Xiaomi’s software is divisive for many, its powerful hardware makes the Mi Note 10 compelling, especially at its competitive price point.
The Xiaomi Mi Note 10 comes with a 30W charger, so it will charge quickly, even with the huge battery.
My black review unit came with a black TPU case. The green version also comes with a black case, but if you buy the white model you get a transparent case.
There are no headphones included.
The Xiaomi Mi Note 10 is a well-built phone, with curved glass edges and a solid aluminum frame. While well built, the design isn’t incredibly interesting. To me, it looks like a generic Honor device. That said, aside the Mi Mix series Xiaomi phones have always been about technical marvels and software, not design.
The Mi Note 10 has a fairly large 6.47-inch Full HD+ display, which curves around the edges of the screen. There is a small chin on the bottom of the display and a waterdrop notch at the top. Above the notch, you’ll find a speaker and earpiece hidden in the bezel.
The right side of the phone houses all of the buttons. There is a volume rocker on the top of the right side with a power button directly below it. Further down, you’ll find a SIM card tray. This device doesn’t support microSD expansion.
The bottom of the phone has a USB-C port, speakers, a microphone, and a 3.5mm headphone jack. The top of the phone has another microphone and an IR blaster. The IR blaster is a welcome addition since they’ve been all but eradicated in smartphones of late.
The back of the phone has a clean design, which is both very reflective and a fingerprint magnet. On the leftmost side, you’ll find five cameras in a line straight down the edge. To the right of the cameras, there are four different flashes. Two of the flashes are diffused while the other two aren’t. This helps to give contour to objects, particularly faces.
While well built, the design isn’t incredibly interesting.
The display glass and back of the phone are made of Gorilla Glass 5.
The Mi Note 10 is using a Full HD+ panel, and like the OnePlus 7T, it looks great. This is an AMOLED panel, too, so it has deep blacks with a contrast ratio of 400,000:1. In our testing, this device didn’t shine quite as brightly as competitors, with a peak brightness of about 422nits. While not quite as bright as other phones, the Mi Note 10 was still perfectly readable outside. The AMOLED display helps with contrast in direct daylight.
The in-screen fingerprint reader worked quickly and accurately during my time with the phone. Xiaomi has also extended the size of the reader while reducing its thickness by 88%. The optical sensor is now 7 x 9mm. The previous sensor was 7 x 7mm.
Even though the Mi Note 10 isn’t using a flagship Qualcomm processor, it still performed adequately during my time with it. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 730G is a bump up from Qualcomm’s standard Snapdragon 730 processor, adding 15% better graphics performance, among other things.
In daily use, I didn’t notice any hiccups or stuttering. The processor is assisted by 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, so things ran smoothly the entire time I tested it.
The Xiaomi Mi Note 10 performed as expected in benchmarks, edging out devices that use the standard variant Snapdragon 730 such as the Xiaomi Mi 9T.
In 3DMark, the Mi Note 10 achieved a score of 2,384 and 2,240 in OpenGL and Vulkan, respectively. This can be compared to the Snapdragon 730-powered Xiaomi Mi 9T, which achieved scores of 2,197 and 2,064 in the same tests. In AnTuTu, the Mi Note 10 had a score of 259,773 vs the score of 211,963 on the Mi 9T. In Geekbench, it achieved a single-core score of 2,535 and a multi-core score of 6,821 versus 2,550 and 6,948 on the Mi 9T, which, surprisingly, won in this test.
The Xiaomi Mi Note 10 relies on a massive 5,240mAh battery, so it would make sense that battery life is pretty great. The Snapdragon 730G is also much more power-efficient than the beefi
06/11/2019 12:00 PM
06/11/2019 12:00 PM
06/11/2019 10:18 PM
06/11/2019 09:00 PM
06/11/2019 10:04 PM
06/11/2019 05:08 PM
06/11/2019 10:22 AM
06/11/2019 07:14 PM
06/11/2019 03:00 PM
2014 © Canadian apps and news
