In recent years, almost all smartphone manufacturers want to impact the high-end market and raise their corporate image. Therefore, from last year to now, the dual flagship product strategy has become commonplace in the Chinese smartphone market. As long as there are design, performance, and hardware bright spots, it is not a problem to sell the phone more expensive.
For Xiaomi, impacting the high-end market has always been one of the goals. From the Note series to the later MIX series, every new product line is an attempt. Earlier last year, Xiaomi Technology announced that it would operate the Redmi brand independently, focusing on cost-effectiveness, while Xiaomi smartphones focused on moving towards the high-end niche. However, the subsequent Xiaomi Mi 9 and Xiaomi Mi 9 Pro came at a relatively affordable price. The absence of a true high-end flagship Xiaomi phone may be a pity for the Chinese market last year.
So Xiaomi’s press conference on February 13 was very stressful. Not only because it was an online conference but also because too many people were waiting for the Xiaomi Mi 10 series to become the real Xiaomi ‘emperor machine in their minds’
One week before the conference, the configuration parameters of the Mi 10 series were slowly announced. But what the official did not tell everyone is that there is also a Pro version of the Xiaomi Mi 10 series.
Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro Design
In terms of appearance, the Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro is not much different from the original Xiaomi Mi 10. The front and back of the fuselage still use a hyperboloid glass design. But the back of the fuselage uses a more beautiful AG matte process, and only provides two colors of starry blue and pearl white. The top left of the back carries the camera module. And the center of the bottom carries the Xiaomi brand logo. In order to emphasize that this is a 5G smartphone, Xiaomi printed the word ‘5G’ in this place as well. The whole machine weighs 208g and has a thickness of 8.96mm.
Last year’s Xiaomi Mi 9 Pro introduced the concept of ‘primary color screen’, which is optimized for photographers and designers to improve the color standard of smartphones. Finally, the △E data is 1.38. On the basis of this, the Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro improved the color accuracy to △E less than 1.11 and JNCD less than 0.55, surpassing the iPhone 11 Pro’s 0.9. And Xiaomi said that JNCD <0.55 is the minimum standard for each Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro, not the so-called best value or average.
Unfortunately, after a balance between power consumption and battery life, the Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro chose a 6.67-inch 1080P Samsung AMOLED panel, which is one of the few regrets on the Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro. This screen uses E3 light-emitting material, the peak brightness can reach 1200nit, and the excitation brightness is 800nit.
In order to make the screen’s brightness experience better, Xiaomi provides 4096-level brightness adjustment. Also, it adds a light sensor to the back of the fuselage. So the effect of screen brightness adjustment is softer. After communicating with Xiaomi officials, it is confirmed that the Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro will continue to use AMOLED panels made by Samsung in the future.
At present, more and more smartphones are equipped with high refresh rate screens, and Xiaomi is not aggressive in this regard. Until the release of the Xiaomi Mi 10 series, Xiaomi phones did not use AMOLED screens with high refresh rates. The screen of this handset is 90Hz, and the touch sampling rate is 180Hz.
Although common applications have been able to support frame rates above 80FPS, during the application switching process, you will feel a significant decrease in the animation frame rate. You need to wait for a period of time to return to normal. We hope that MIUI can continue to optimize the high refresh rate screen experience. In addition, the Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro has also adapted 90 frames for various games, including “Peace Elite”, “Breakdown 3”, “NBA2K20”, “Ace Fighter”, etc. There will be more games later
Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro Performance
For Xiaomi’s flagship phones, performance is the last thing to worry about. This time, the Xiaomi Mi 10 series is the first product among domestic smartphones to release the Snapdragon 865 mobile platform. The CPU core uses the latest Cortex-A77 architecture. Compared with the Snapdragon 855 CPU, the performance is improved by 25% and the power consumption is reduced by 25%. The GPU is upgraded to Adreno 650. Compared with Adreno 640, the performance is increased by 25% and the power consumption is reduced by 35 %.
At the same time, the Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro is also equipped with a new generation of LPDDR5 memory, supplied from Micron and Samsung. In theory, the frequency of LPDDR5 memory can be as high as 3200MHz. But due to the limitations of the Snapdragon 865 mobile platform, it can only support up to 2750MHz. But even so, Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro’s LPDDR5 memory is still 30% higher than the previous generation LPDDR4X clock frequency, the transmission bandwidth is increased by 29%, and the power consumption is reduced by 10%.
In this way, Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro has become the strongest domestic smartphone at present. The running scores of Antutu, GeekBench, and AndroBench are significantly higher than before. Antutu’s performance easily surpassed 560K, and GeekBench 5’s performance is improved at least 20% compared to the previous generation. Due to the Write Turbo mechanism, the sustained writing ability of Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro is also particularly strong, reaching 733 MB/s.
This powerful hardware guarantees the gaming experience on 90Hz screens. We tested a handful of “Peace Elite” and turned on the 90 frame option to test the game frame rate. After half an hour of play, the average number of frames was 89.3. And in most cases the number of frames remained between 89 and 90 frames.
Due to the use of a large-area VC heat-dissipating module, the heat generation on the surface of the fuselage is relatively uniform during the game. From the recorded data, the average temperature of the CPU is 55.2 C degrees. Moreover, the official teardown chart shows that Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro abandoned the three-segment internal structure. The motherboard uses a double-layer design, and the CPU is placed in the middle of the left side of the back of the fuselage
And the symmetrical dual speakers make the sound experience during the game even more embarrassing. They are on the left side of the upper and lower borders. In landscape mode, it is easier to cover it with your palm. Although both Xiaomi Mi 10 and Mi 10 Pro are equipped with symmetrical dual speakers, the Pro has higher specifications. It comes with a sound chamber capacity of 1.2cc, which is higher than Xiaomi Mi 10’s 1.0cc.
Another link that affects the user experience is the vibration motor. In recent years, consumers have been pursuing the feel of vibration and will tend to break into smartphones with horizontal linear motors. This is because the transverse linear motor has a longer vibration stroke and greater vibration intensity. The horizontal linear motor on the Xiaomi Mi 9 Pro is close to a square shape. Due to the short vibration stroke, the actual vibration effect is not good.
The horizontal linear motor of the Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro is rectangular, and the vibration effect has been significantly improved. In the process of using the phone, it can be clearly found that the vibration effect is more diverse. At least two vibration effects can be sensed during the fingerprint unlocking process. Therefore, the Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro may be the best Xiaomi phone with the best vibration effect.
Battery
In terms of charging, Xiaomi has always had a more aggressive plan. This time, the wired fast charge of Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro dried directly to 50W, claiming to be able to fully charge the Xiaomi 10 Pro’s 4500mAh battery in 45 minutes. We measured it for a while. It took 83 minutes to charge 83% of the battery, and it took 45 minutes to reach 100%.
The standard charger for the Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro supports 65W power input. It is officially announced that this charger supports the PD protocol. Thus, it can fast charge other devices that support the PD protocol, including notebooks. However, like the previous Xiaomi Mi 9 Pro, the charger and cables use a custom USB-A interface. Changing other USB cables does not support PD fast charging. Then, we also used Xiaomi’s 27W and 40W chargers for charging, and confirm that these charging heads can fast charge Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro. For wireless charging, you can use Xiaomi’s vertical air-cooled wireless charger.
We also briefly tested the power consumption of Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro when using a mobile network, and the results are as follows. It can be found that the power consumption of Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro is not much in low-load applications, and it is maintained at about 10% for one hour. However, under high load conditions such as playing games, the power consumption has increased significantly.
Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro Camera
In addition to the standard 100-megapixel Samsung HMX sensor, it is also equipped with a 12-megapixel portrait lens, a 20-megapixel ultra-wide-angle lens, and an 8-megapixel telephoto lens. The telephoto lens can achieve 10x hybrid zoom and up to 50xdigital zoom. The main camera and telephoto lens support OIS.
Thanks to the performance support of the Snapdragon 865 mobile platform, the Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro no longer needs to wait a few seconds when taking 100MP photos. By default, the Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro outputs a 25-megapixel photo with a unit pixel size of 1.6μm. There is a clear gap between the two imaging results. Although 100MP is clear, the white balance tends to be blue-green.
Left: 100MP| Right: Default 27MP
Since the performance of 100MP is not ideal, what is the performance of Xiaomi’s 8K video shooting? First of all, this handset can support 720P@30fps, 1080P@30fps, 1080P@60fps, 4K@30fps, 4K@fps60 and 8K@fps30 video in 7 formats.
However, it should be noted that the 8K video shot by Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro is actually 6K video optimized by AI.
Also Read: 100MP Camera Battle: Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra VS Xiaomi Mi 10
Verdict
In general, if you look at the hardware specifications, the Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro can indeed be called Xiaomi’s first high-end flagship smartphone. It provides industry-leading standards in all aspects. Except that the screen does not have a 2K resolution, it is difficult to find picky places.
In fact, the style of the Xiaomi Digital Series has not changed. It is still the original ‘bucket machine’ style. But the Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro is more comprehensive than the previous flagship products. When other manufacturers’ high-end flagship products are still focused on R&D in a certain field, the Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro brings us a domineering ‘all adults need’.