Behold the Xiaomi Mi 11i! “Wait, what? Another one?” you might cry out in amazement. The Mi 11 family is a big one, for sure, and sometimes it’s hard to find your way around all the cousins and aunts, metaphorically speaking.
The Xiaomi Mi 11i is a trimmed-down version of the Mi 11, but it’s not just that. It’s solid proof that the “affordable flagship” trend in mobile is alive and kicking. Even though it’s mainly Taiwanese and Chinese brands trying to pull it off nowadays.
Back to the phone - the Xiaomi Mi 11i is very powerful and fast and has one of the brightest OLED displays on the market. The battery life is really solid, too, and even though the build of the phone is a bit plasticky, it looks and feels premium enough.
Corners have been cut, sadly, in order to bring the price down to 650 Euro (50-100 Euro below the vanilla Mi 11). For starters, there’s no wireless charging on board. The MicroSD card slot is nowhere to be found, and so is the 3.5mm audio jack.
The fingerprint reader is of the capacitive side-mounted variety, which might not be everyone’s cup of tea. The camera performance is a mixed bag as the main and the ultrawide cameras have been downgraded from the system found on the Mi 11. But let’s dive deeper.
Design
Beauty is both subjective and objective, and the design of the Xiaomi Mi 11i is a good case in point. The phone features a plastic frame, a curved glass back (Gorilla Glass 5), and a flat 6.67-inch display with a central-positioned punch-hole selfie camera.
The camera bump protrudes from the body substantially and it’s a two-step design. The “main” camera bump sticks out just a hair above the body, and then there’s an elongated protrusion that houses the cameras themselves adding another millimeter to the whole thing.
Personally, I like the design - it looks “cinematic”, and it reminds me of a camera reel. Some people might find it obnoxious, though. The back is glossy with a mirror-like finish. This gives the Xiaomi 11i а premium look… until you touch the phone. That’s right - it’s a smudge magnet.
Overall, I find the design pleasing to the eye and on par with other flagship phones out there. The build quality is really good, and the buttons are clicky in a good way.
Display
The Xiaomi Mi 11i comes equipped with a 6.67-inch Super AMOLED panel (probably made by Samsung), sporting FHD+ resolution. And although it’s a clear downgrade from the 1440 x 3200 resolution of the vanilla Mi 11, most of you won’t be able to tell the difference.
The display is also really bright - topping our test chart with 926 nits under direct sunlight. It’s a 120Hz refresh rate panel but you can only toggle between 60 and 120Hz in the menu. If you want the most accurate color scheme, go for the Original color mode, it also produces the warmest image.
To recap - the display of the Xiaomi Mi 11i is great, and easily one of the phone’s big selling points.
The CIE 1931 xy color gamut chart represents the set(area)of colors that a display can reproduce,with the sRGB colorspace(the highlighted triangle)serving as reference.The chart also provides a visual representation of a display's color accuracy. The small squares across the boundaries of the triangle are the reference points for the various colors, while the small dots are the actual measurements. Ideally, each dot should be positioned on top of its respective square. The 'x:CIE31' and 'y:CIE31' values in the table below the chart indicate the position of each measurement on the chart. 'Y' shows the luminance (in nits) of each measured color, while 'Target Y' is the desired luminance level for that color. Finally, 'ΔE 2000' is the Delta E value of the measured color. Delta E values of below 2 are ideal.
The Color accuracy chart gives an idea of how close a display's measured colors are to their referential values. The first line holds the measured (actual) colors, while the second line holds the reference (target) colors. The closer the actual colors are to the target ones, the better.
The Grayscale accuracy chart shows whether a display has a correct white balance(balance between red,green and blue)across different levels of grey(from dark to bright).The closer the Actual colors are to the Target ones,the better.
Speaking of selling points, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 chipset is surely one of those. It’s the Android performance champion and every self-respecting flagship phone has it under its cover.
There are no surprises in the performance department - the Xiaomi 11i runs smooth and snappy, despite the visually heavy MIUI12 interface. The synthetic benchmark results are really close to other SD888 phones, sometimes to the last digit.
AnTuTu is a multi-layered,comprehensive mobile benchmark app that assesses various aspects of a device,including CPU,GPU,RAM,I/O,and UX performance.A higher score means an overall faster device.
I’m not sure if it’s the plastic frame or the large size of the chassis, but the phone doesn’t heat up too much under load. The 8GB of RAM should be more than enough to run multiple apps without any bottlenecks, and the 256GB of internal storage should also suffice, even though there’s no SD card slot.
Software and features
The Xiaomi Mi 11i runs MIUI12 on top of Android 11. This custom skin/user interface is a bit flashy and visually heavy but it also allows for deeper customization than you would expect. Some say Xiaomi is “influenced” by iOS but I don’t think that’s the case, not anymore at least.
You can tweak almost everything - you can choose between a classic home screen or one with an app drawer. There’s a system-wide Dark Mode, you can switch between Gesture navigation and the old-school buttons (and you can also change their layout and program them to do cool things).
Actually, the MIUI has come a long way and I’m really pleased with the latest iteration. It’s pretty but not bloated and it can do a lot of things, or just work as is, if you don’t feel like poking the settings much.
The side-mounted fingerprint scanner deserves a few lines here. It’s really fast and quite accurate, especially if you take the time to enter your thumb twice (a little trick I often do when using fingerprint scanners). I miss the feature where you can swipe down the notifications shade right from the scanner, though.
Camera
The Xiaomi Mi 11i features a triple-camera system on the back. One might think that it’s the same configuration as the system found in the Mi 11. It’s not. The main camera sports a huge 108MP sensor but it’s slightly different than the one in the vanilla model.
The ultrawide camera has also been downgraded from 13MP to 8MP, and the macro camera is essentially the same in both models. What are the results of this not-so-cosmetic trim? Well, pictures taken with the main sensor are still pretty good. You can check out the Mi 11 image gallery for reference.
The ultrawide camera on the other hand is not so ultrawide (119 degrees), and produces images with slightly different tonal qualities. While main camera photos are realistic and warm, the images taken with the ultrawide tend to be cooler and oversaturated.
The macro shots are quite good if that’s your thing. In reality, you won’t use this camera too often and a telephoto or a nicer ultrawide would’ve been so much nicer to have. There’s a dedicated Night Mode but it doesn’t make a huge difference - it brings out some detail and improves the dynamic range, but it’s far from the night magic other flagships can pull off.
The Xiaomi can shoot videos with up to 8K resolution, although 4K60fps should be more than enough for all practical purposes. The autofocus is quite fast during recording, but the image stabilization is a bit uninspiring, especially compared to other similarly priced phones.
Battery life
The Xiaomi Mi 11i comes equipped with a 4,520mAh battery, a slight downgrade compared to the 4,600mAh cell found in the vanilla Mi 11. The FHD+ screen makes all the difference, though, and the Mi 11i outperforms its bigger sibling in our battery tests.
The difference is most prominent in the YouTube test, where the FHD+ screen of the Mi 11i allowed the phone to carry on for more than 9 hours. The browsing and gaming tests also yielded impressive results.
The phone supports fast charging and comes with a 33W charger inside the box. Xiaomi advertises 0 to 100% in 52 minutes with the supplied charger but the reality is slightly different. Here’s the charging profile for the Xiaomi Mi 11i:
0-50% in 39 minutes 0-75% in 56 minutes 0-100% in 77 minutes
Mariyan, a tech enthusiast with a background in Nuclear Physics and Journalism, brings a unique perspective to PhoneArena. His childhood curiosity for gadgets evolved into a professional passion for technology, leading him to the role of Editor-in-Chief at PCWorld Bulgaria before joining PhoneArena. Mariyan's interests range from mainstream Android and iPhone debates to fringe technologies like graphene batteries and nanotechnology. Off-duty, he enjoys playing his electric guitar, practicing Japanese, and revisiting his love for video games and Haruki Murakami's works.
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