The Xiaomi Mi 11 Review: A Gorgeous Screen and Design
by Andrei Frumusanu on March 10, 2021 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Mobile
- Smartphones
- Xiaomi
- Snapdragon 888
- Mi 11
System Performance
System performance of the Mi 11 should be great given the new Snapdragon 888 SoC as well as the 120Hz screen. Of course, between different device vendors we can see slightly different variations as each company tunes their software stack different, so it’ll be interesting to see how Xiaomi fares compared to what we’ve seen in the S21 series devices.
In the web, test the Mi 11 fares excellent and keeps up with the best performing devices in the market, signalling that the SoC is tuned quite aggressively in lighter workloads.
In the writing sub-test however, we’re seeing that there are more differences in the stack and the device doesn’t differentiate itself too much from most other Snapdragon 865 devices last year, trailing the new S21 phones.
The photo editing score is in line with the S21 Ultra and its Snapdragon 888, both posting almost identical scores, which are a bit lower than that of S865 devices.
The data manipulation score is single-thread bound and the Mi 11 also comes in as one of the top-performing devices, even though there’s small variations.
In the overall performance score in PCMark, the Mi 11 ends up with a great result.
In the sustained Javascript browser benchmarks, the Mi 11 lands equal to the Snapdragon 888 S21 Ultra, although for some reason not in the JetStream 2 test.
Finally in WebXprt 3 which is more sensitive to performance latency (how fast a CPU ramps up), the Mi 11 takes the lead amongst all other Android device, albeit only by a small margin.
Overall performance of the Mi 11 is excellent and is clearly a 2021 flagship device. The Snapdragon 888 SoC along with the 120Hz screen signify that you’ll have amongst the best performing devices in the market, there’s really not much more to add to that.
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Silver5urfer - Wednesday, March 10, 2021 - link
No NA market, no 3.5mm jack, no SD slot no buy. On top does Xiaomi phones are easy to unlock Bootloaders ?heffeque - Wednesday, March 10, 2021 - link
Well for the rest of the world the fact that it's not available in the US is not a problem.Seeing what happened with Huawei, it seems that Xiaomi's decision to not sell in the US was spot-on.
The rest of the world can enjoy their great "quality:price" ratio phones.
Happy "Mi 9T" user here!
Fulljack - Thursday, March 11, 2021 - link
I use Mi 9T Pro, it's bootloader unlocking process are very easy but you need to wait for 36 to 72 hours. there's a lot of tutorial online.Y250 - Wednesday, March 10, 2021 - link
Unfortunately this thermal throttling behavior is something that I have also experienced in my xiaomi redmi note 7. Although it was launched as a budget device, it thermal throttled pretty frequently in games, especially in summers. It seems like this is how xiaomi configures their devices. Lesson learnt for future purchases.Duncan Macdonald - Wednesday, March 10, 2021 - link
A high power SOC in a phone demands better cooling - about the only way to achieve this is for the back to be metal (aluminium or magnesium) with a good thermal connection between the SOC and the back. Plastic or glass backs can not spread the heat effectively enough to allow a SOC such as the 888 to sustain full performance.The 888 would probably do much better in a tablet that can afford to have better cooling.
Given the peak temperatures mentioned, the lithium ion battery could easily be overheated leading to short battery life.
iphonebestgamephone - Thursday, March 11, 2021 - link
Its already doing better in the rog 5, though the temp is similar to mi11, the fps is higher.Psyside - Wednesday, March 10, 2021 - link
@Andrei, Its so frustrating to see that you still haven't received any updates on the S21U, i was so pumped to see how they stack up :/Andrei Frumusanu - Wednesday, March 10, 2021 - link
These are the same shots as on the S21 review, I haven't redone them.jaju123 - Thursday, March 11, 2021 - link
Andrei, is there any chance you'll be running the redmi note 10 pro through the battery tests? I'm wondering how such a low end/midrange device would compare to current flagships. It's currently rather flagship dominated.ElBe - Wednesday, March 10, 2021 - link
Can the bootloader be unlocked ?