Xiaomi’s sub-brand Redmi held a press conference recently to launch the Redmi 10X series smartphones. This is the brand’s latest ‘X’ series that lies between the Redmi K series (representing performance + technology) and the Note series (thousand yuan trend smartphones). As a ‘light flagship’ series, the X series smartphones were launched with MediaTek’s latest Dimensity 820. The latter brings stronger 5G connection capability.
We have got our hands on the ‘Dark Moon Gold’ color variant. It’s a bit similar to the champagne gold of the iPhone 5s. The Redmi box has a little trick on it. But it does not look as cartoonish as that of the Xiaomi Mi 10 Lite. This phone is a flagship for positioning young people.
Screen and Appearance
Redmi’s X-series first smartphone looks relaxed and approachable. On this phone, you can see the shadow of the previous Xiaomi / Redmi products. Say, it comes with a warm touch-that is brought by the AG frosted glass. This makes the 75.55 mm wide body feel more comfortable. The weight of 208 grams is considered to be the upper middle weight in the current flagship smartphones. But it is difficult to reduce in the 5G phone because of the battery. The middle frame is made of plastic rather than having an all-metal body. Its strength and texture will be weaker than that of the all-metal flagship. But they come in exchange for weight loss and lower manufacturing costs.
Its screen also follows this idea. A 6.57-inch Samsung AMOLED water drop screen with a resolution of 2400 x 1080 has a peak brightness of up to 800 nits and supports HDR10+. It has passed the TUV Low Blue Light Filter certification in Germany. Because it is OLED, it can support screen fingerprint unlocking without having to put the fingerprint on the side. But it is also a cost problem, and the chin part is slightly obvious.
It should be said that this product is not perfect. But at this price, Redmi is as perfect as possible. Compared with the products launched in the same period, it is still a very cost-effective product. Some people may feel that the plastic frame or chin is not ideal. Of course, Xiaomi also has flagship products that do better in these details, but obviously not at this price.
This phone supports IP53 waterproof and dustproof. It is not as fierce as IP68, but its splash-proof coating (which allows the components to be soaked in water) is twice as thick as the conventional smartphone. This increases the durability.
In addition to price factors, the Redmi 10X Pro retains a lot of user needs with a limited budget but expects full functionality. Infrared, NFC, 3.5mm headphone jack, linear motors, and other features fall into this category. They allow the phone to get good feedback when it is used as a remote control, a door card, a wired headset to listen to music, and play games. These requirements seem to be very common, but they are more or less deleted in many competitive products of the same level. Especially NFC, with its smartphone can be used as a door card, bus transit, and more gameplay, is the demand of many young users (rather than so-called business users).
First smartphone with MediaTek Dimensity 820 chip
When MediaTek announced the new Dimensity series, everyone understood this chip maker is serious and wants to get back what belongs to it.
Since last year, MTK’s Dimensity series is no longer synonymous with low-end, but can really compete with the Snapdragon 865, especially in terms of 5G. Moreover, it supports dual card 5G standby (instead of a 4G and one 5G) and it is the only one in the industry.
The Dimensity 820 chip adopts a 7nm process, an octa-core structure (4 A76 2.6GHz + 4 A55 2.0GHz), which is the common 4 big / 4 small architecture.
Its rivals of the same level, say the Qualcomm Snapdragon 765G uses a 1 large / 1 medium / 6 small cores architecture, and the Kirin 820 uses a 1 large / 3 medium / 4 small cores architecture.
Due to the architecture of the four large cores, in the GeekBench 5.1 performance test, the Dimesnity 820 scored 640 for single-core and more than 2500 for multi-core peformance. Compared with the Snapdragon 765G (single-core 610, multi-core 1873) and the Kirin 820 (single-core 640, multi-core 2424), it has certain advantages.
In terms of graphics, it integrates the Mali-G57 MC GPU, which has the same Valhall architecture as its flagship chip Dimensity 1000+. Also, MediaTek HyperEngine 2.0 + Mi Game Turbo 2.0 dual game engine with MediaTek + Xiaomi configuration is used to improve game performance.
In the low-load Manhattan 3.0 / 1080P off-screen test of GFXBench 5.0, the Redmi 10X Pro reached 72 Fps. In the high-load Aztec Ruins OpenGL 1080P off-screen, it reaches 32Fps. Mainstream games can run at full frame, without freezing.
In addition, we can take a look at the AnTuTu score of the Dimensity 820. More than 400,000 points is basically the level of the previous generation flagship, similar to the new products such as the Kirin 985.
The company also talked about some of the heat dissipation parts of this product, which is known as ‘suspended heat pipe + 5 layers of graphite sheet and thermally conductive adhesive’. After a round of tests, we use a thermal imager to look at its heat situation:
The hottest area is mainly the left part of the back lens, 40 degrees. The plastic middle frame has an advantage here.
In fact, the advantage of the Dimensity 820 is more reflected in the 5G. As we all know, only MTK has achieved true 5G dual card dual standby in the industry. That is, it puts two 5G hand cards, (in theory) you can see two in the signal bar.
We added the word ‘theoretical’ because Redmi is expected to upgrade it in June. After all, the current 5G smartphones and packages are not too popular. And there are not many users with two 5G cards and corresponding packages. It is an expectation for the future. Both cards are in 5G standby at the same time. Once the signal of card 1 is not good, you can switch back to card 2 instead of 5G falling back to 4G.
Redmi and MediaTek have also played more tricks on this basis:
Elevator mode: through the electronic accelerometer, the smartphone is sensed in the elevator, and the 5G network is quickly restored when exiting the elevator.
High-speed rail mode: it monitors network characteristics and optimizes parameters for popular high-speed rail lines. Redmi said that this is a lot of actual data obtained by its own engineers. They have measured more than 60,000 kilometers by car.
In addition, this smartphone also has a function called Smart Switch. It can identify the user’s usage scenario through the smartphone to achieve the purpose of power-saving. For example, text transmission such as typing does not require 5G high speed, it will be adjusted to 4G network.
Elevator mode
The reason for this is to save power. As we all know, under 5G networks, power consumption is higher than that of 4G, usually about 20% higher. Therefore, the current 5G smartphone either should have a large battery or be recharged frequently. The method used by the Redmi 10X Pro is open source + throttling: open source is to increase the battery. The battery capacity of this phone is 4520mAh, and it supports 30W fast charge. In the actual test, from 0 to 57% it can reach in 30 minutes. But there is no wireless charging. Throttling refers to the various power saving methods mentioned above, as well as the original power saving methods of MIUI.
In general, it still needs to be charged once a day under the 5G network. But for the 4G network, it can be used once in 1.5 days.
Camera
The Redmi 10X Pro camera module consists of a 48-megapixel main lens + 8-megapixel ultra-wide-angle lens + 8-megapixel telephoto lens + 5-megapixel macro lens. The four lenses can cover multiple camera scenes through a combination of functions.
This 48-megapixel main camera is not unfamiliar to many people, and supports four-pixel integration. It’s ideal in low-lighting conditions. Of course, it can also produce 48-megapixel photos, and because of the relationship with the Dimensity 820, there is no waiting time. Another 8-megapixel telephoto lens is not a periscope, but it can also support 3x optical zoom and 30x hybrid zoom. And it supports OIS. However, in actual use, you still need a smartphone stand to achieve the best results.
In fact, this lens combination of Redmi 10X Pro is not uncommon, and its photo results are also expected. The newer thing is that Xiaomi has made some new camera games on the basis of this set of lenses to attract users. Unlike conventional functions such as AI camera and beauty, their significance is more to improve the playability.
The first is AI watermark. This function mainly seen at third-party apps was added to the native camera, and it can automatically identify objects through AI.
Although the way of shooting star tracks was done by Nubia N years ago, it needs to be fixed on a tripod. The red nightlight of the Redmi 10X Pro is a new long exposure mode. The main point is that you can hold it without a tripod.
Verdict
After Lu Weibing became the head of Redmi, he successively launched a number of products, especially the K20 series last year, which completely changed the low-end tone of the previous Redmi smartphones. And still it is taking the cost-effective route.
The launch of the Redmi 10X series can be seen as a continuation of the K series strategy. The 10X series hopes to attract users with a low-cost and playable way. Although the material is not as good as the K series (in fact, mainly the middle frame), the performance is not ideal.
This phone itself does not comes with black technology. In contrast, every feature put in it and every function it supports is added with a certain goal in mind. So on the one hand, the company has tried to bring as many useful features as possible. But on the other hand, it has been trying to keep the price down.