Xiaomi Mi 10i Review: Another great mid-ranger from Xiaomi with an impressive camera!!

Xiaomi has brought a great mid-ranger with the Mi 10i!!

Xiaomi has leveled up the smartphone games by bringing in some great affordable smartphones in the mid-range segment and recently the launch of the Mi 10i clearly defines it. The mid-range segment has quite a few launches just recently with the Vivo V20 Pro, Pixel 4a, and the OnePlus Nord. 

These smartphones pack in some of the best internals and if you see the Mi 10i, which is a lighter version of the Xiaomi Mi 10T Pro(Review) packs in some of the best internals that includes a 108MP main camera, a 120Hz display, and also packs in the newer Snapdragon 750G chipset.

It also brings support for 5G which we saw in many mid-range smartphones in 2020. This is the same rebranded Redmi Note 9 Pro 5G in China. The Mi 10i seems to tick all the right boxes when you look at its specifications. 

So can these specs make the Mi 10i the best mid-range smartphone in the segment? Let's find out in the full review.

Xiaomi Mi 10i Design:

In terms of design, the Mi 10i sports a completely different look when compared to the Mi 10 5G (Review) or even the Mi 10T. At the back, it has a circular camera module that houses the quad cameras and almost close to the POCO X3 (Review). There is a frosted glass finish that looks premium with a gradient pattern.

This gradient pattern does attract a lot of fingerprints and if you have the Pacific Sunrise color unit, then you can notice the transitioning of blue color at the top to orange color at the bottom and the back does shine when light strikes it at different angles. Xiaomi has provided a plastic case for protection.

Both the front as well as the back is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 5. The Mi 10i is also available in other two colors that include Midnight Black and Atlantic Blue color other than the Pacific Sunrise.  To the sides, we have a plastic frame running and on the right side, there is are the volume buttons with a power button that comes with an integrated fingerprint scanner.

The fingerprint scanner is fast and accurate whenever you tap the power button and there is also a face unlock which is quite fast and accurate. 

To the left, there is a dual SIM card slot which is a hybrid slot that accepts two SIM cards or one SIM card with a microSD card for storage expansion. The top carries the IR Blaster as we have seen in many Xiaomi smartphones previously to control televisions, refrigerators and also there is a secondary noise-canceling microphone.

The bottom has the primary microphone, a USB Type-C port, a 3.5mm headphone jack which seems to be a good addition in 2021 smartphones, and a speaker grill. The back of the Mi 10i has an IP53 rating making it splash resistant.

The Mi 10i weighs around 215 grams which is slightly on the heavier side but the slightly curved body at the back makes it easy to hold it in hand and on the front, you are greeted by a punch-hole display with the speaker grill on top and there is also a LED notification light.

Xiaomi Mi 10i Display:

On the front, as discussed above, the Mi 10i sports a 6.67 inches Full HD+(1080x2400 pixels) IPS LCD display which we earlier saw on the Mi 10T Pro. This display has a screen-to-body ratio of 20:9 and goes as high as 450nits. 

Since this is an IPS LCD panel, the color reproduction is good but it not so good as the Galaxy M51 or the OnePlus Nord (Review) which sport an AMOLED display. Still, the brightness is pretty good and the display is easily visible under direct sunlight (there is also a dedicated Sunlight Mode) and even in dark.

However, since you lack an AMOLED display, Xiaomi has made up for the higher 120Hz refresh rate and this is the AdaptiveSync technology which means the display can switch from 60Hz to 120Hz depending on the load of the applications which we saw on the Mi 10T Pro. For example, when there is a video being played, the display switches to 30Hz, and while playing it switches to 120Hz.

This display is HDR10+ certified, so streaming HD videos on Youtube will not be an issue and it also has Widevine L1 to stream HD contents from Netflix and Prime. The display is also TUV Rheinland certified which does restrict blue light entering the eyes. 

Overall, in terms of display, this may not be the brightest panel as it is an IPS LCD display and the colors are not so punchier, but the support for AdaptiveSync's higher refresh rate and HDR10 content makes it up a good display.

Xiaomi Mi 10i Performance:

The Mi 10i sports the newer Qualcomm Snapdragon 750G which we first saw on the Moto G 5G. It is an octa-core setup that houses: 2x2.2 GHz Kryo 570 Gold cores (based on ARM Cortex-A77) and another 6x1.8 GHz Kryo 570 Silver cores (based on ARM Cortex-A55) and the graphics is handled by the Adreno 619 GPU.

The Adreno 619 GPU almost a similar performance as that on the Adreno 620 GPU with the Snapdragon 765G chipset found on the OnePlus Nord. The only difference is that the Snapdragon 750G is built on the 8nm process compared to the 7nm process on the Snapdragon 765G. The newer chipset uses the powerful Kryo 570 cores compared to Kryo 475 cores making it slightly powerful.

All activities like scrolling through webpages, switching between applications, and also playing games like Call Of Duty, Asphalt 9, etc. ran smoothly and the 120Hz refresh rate did work really well in most of the scenarios. This chipset comes with an X52 Modem which brings in support for 5G connectivity.

With extended gaming for more than three to four hours, the back of the Mi 10i does get a bit warmer and some occasional frame drops are noticed also when the graphics are set to the highest settings and with medium, the games ran flawlessly except for some UI stutter.

There are two variants that include- 6/8GB LPDDR4X RAM and 128GB storage which has UFS 2.2 transfer speeds and also has slightly faster sequential reads and writes compared to UFS 2.1. There is another variant with 6GB RAM and 64GB storage which will be coming soon. 

Applications open faster but the RAM management is not so good because every heavy application that requires more amounts of processing power sometimes tends to reload in the memory. In terms of benchmarks, the single and multi-core score was 679 and 1952 in Geekbench 5.1, in Antutu v8, it scored around 325110.

The performance is quite good for the mid-range segment.

Xiaomi Mi 10i Software:

The Mi 10i runs on MIUI 12 out of the box with Android 10. Since this is MIUI 12, there is pretty much a lot of bloatware present and some third-party applications like GetApps which every time pushes a lot of notifications, and this time there are no more ads present in the interface.

MIUI 12 brings some noticeable improvements like a completely new look to the icons and a dedicated app drawer which has all the applications organized like we saw on the POCO launcher. There are some Google stock apps like a dialler, messaging, and calendar by default.

As usual, you are getting all Android 10 features like a system-wide dark mode that applies to third-party applications, navigation gestures, and Digital Wellbeing. This feels a bit disappointing since it is a Mi device, Xiaomi could have shipped with Android 11 out of the box but nonetheless, it will be updated soon.

The app icons can be customized but still, the software experience is not as good as Stock Android or OxygenOS and there are some unnecessary animations that do slow the system down and also there are some stutters clearly noticed when switching from one application to another, so for software, if you are able to face these situations, then the Mi 10i is good.

Xiaomi Mi 10i Cameras:

In terms of cameras, the Mi 10i sports one of the most impressive sets of cameras, and this completely turns the Mi 10i into a great camera smartphone in the mid-range segment. It packs a 108MP f/1.75 Samsung ISOCELL HM2 sensor for the main camera which is a bit different compared to the HM1 sensor which we first saw on the Mi 10 and the Mi 10T Pro in 2020.

With the 108MP main camera, you get three other cameras that include - an 8MP f/2.2 ultrawide camera, a 2MP f/2.4 macro camera, and a 2MP depth sensor. There is a dual-LED flash beside the camera module.

The newer Samsung HM2 sensor is 15 percent smaller compared to the Samsung HM1 sensor and this results in capturing better light and comes with a 1/1.52-inch pixel size making it compact and this results in better details when compared to other smartphones having the Sony IMX586 or IMX682 sensor used in most of the mid-range smartphones.

The images taken from the main camera result in 12MP images by default as here the main camera uses Nona binning resulting in 9:1 pixel binned images. The images during the daylight have sharper detail and the dynamic range is excellent. The white balance works perfectly and there is no scene of over-saturation in any of the images.  

The colors look punchier and a bit over-exposed sometimes. Switching to 108MP mode, it does take time for the camera to take an image due to the processing and this does result in images with good details but there is some amount of over-exposure noticed but still considering the mid-range segment it is pretty good.

The images shot at night have good details and the colors look well saturated. The dynamic range is good but there is a lot of noise present and quite a bit of softness around the corners. When you zoom into the images, noise is clearly seen. Turning on the Night Mode does improve the dynamic range and reduces noise quite a bit resulting in some good images with sharper details.

The 8MP ultrawide camera does a fine job with wider aperture images as it is having a 120-degree field of view. The color reproduction is not as good as on the main camera, but the dynamic range is good and the images look sharper. When zoomed into the image, there is softness around the corners. This is for the daylight images.

Moving to low-light or night, the images from the ultrawide camera are good but the dynamic range is above average and there is a lot of noise in the background. The images turn out to be average here and there is no dedicated Night Mode here.

The 2MP macro camera is just for the addition of extra cameras as the images have washed out colors and the dynamic range is not so good. The focussing is not so good so instead, you can use the main camera for zooming and then getting a crop for better details.

Moving to portraits, the images have a good dynamic range and proper edge detection thanks to the good focus on the main 108MP camera. After taking the portraits, you can adjust the background blur also. While zooming into the portraits, there is some softness around the corners though.

The rear cameras can support only 4K video at 60fps which is a great addition and the video footage has a good dynamic range and details. There is some amount of saturation in the background but there is a lot of distortion as it lacks OIS. For a more stabilized video with better details, you can switch to 1080p videos at 30 or 60fps.

This is where EIS kicks in resulting in better stabilization. The ultrawide camera is only limited to 1080p video recording and there is also an Ultra-Stable Mode, but still, there is plenty of noise and a lot of softness in the images.

On the front, you have a 16MP camera compared to a 20MP one on the Mi 10 5G. The selfies come out good but the beauty mode is enabled by default which tends to smoothen the skin. The dynamic range is good and moving to portraits, the edge detection is good and the background blur is not so good.

In terms of video recording, the front camera is only restricted to 1080p at 30fps and the videos have pretty much good details and there is a lot of noise present. The dynamic range is good and the color temperature is well balanced.

The cameras make it a great smartphone for consumers who are looking for a camera-centric smartphone.

Xiaomi Mi 10i Battery Life:

The Mi 10i packs a sizeable 4820mAh battery underneath which is good considering the massive display it has. With the display set to 120Hz, you are getting a standard screen on time of around 6-7 hours and if you switch it to 60Hz, there is an additional one hour more.

With this battery and MIUI12 optimizations, the Mi 10i can easily last for one single day with heavy usage and the display is set to 120Hz. With normal usage like scrolling webpages, playing casual games, the Mi 10i can easily last for more than one day without charging. 

Moving to charge, Xiaomi has bundled a 33W fast charger inside the box with the Mi 10i. This charger takes from 0 to 65 percent in 30 minutes and charges the smartphone completely to 100 percent under an hour i.e. 55 minutes to be precise. The Mi 10i also supports fast charging through some of the fast chargers and also USB PD charging standards.

However, since this is an IPS LCD panel, the display may not be as efficient as some of the AMOLED panels like we saw on the Galaxy M51 or the OnePlus Nord. If you want good battery life, then this smartphone will get the job done but if you want an excellent battery life with around 2-3 days of usage, then the Galaxy M51 would be the right pick as it packs that massive 7000mAh battery.

Xiaomi Mi 10i Audio Quality:

The Mi 10i sports a dual stereo speaker setup which is very rare across smartphones in the mid-range segment. The earpiece above the display with the speaker grille at the bottom together works to produce the stereo sound effect.  

Watching videos or playing games felt much livelier due to the loud and clear sound and if you cover the speaker grill, then also the sound output through the speaker on top is pretty loud. There is no such distortion at the highest sound level.

Xiaomi has also retained the 3.5mm headphone jack which is a big boon for smartphones and the sound output through it on the Mi 10i is really good. There is no Dolby Atmos but still, you can get a great immersive experience while consumption of media on the smartphone.

The haptic feedback is quite good but not as good as the Mi 10T Pro. Still, for someone who listens to music or watching videos, this is a great smartphone to be considered.

Verdict:

Overall, the Mi 10i is an excellent mid-range smartphone that has all the flagship specifications that a premium mid-ranger has that includes a powerful Snapdragon 750G chipset, a 120Hz display, a 108MP camera, and a good battery life. It also sports a unique design with different colors and has a good build and design.

The software i.e. MIUI is the biggest disappointment as it has a lot of bloatware and some third-party applications pre-installed which does make the software experience jarring compared to Stock Android or OxygenOS and the ultrawide camera is not so good. However, an AMOLED display would have made a sweet deal but still, the 120Hz display is good for playing games or watching videos.

If you want an AMOLED display and a better software experience, then the OnePlus Nord or the Galaxy M51 could serve better. The Mi 10i shows how Xiaomi has leveled up the game in the mid-range segment by offering great specifications that will appeal to most of the crowd.