Three months with the Xiaomi Mi 10 Ultra: Rock-solid choice from a rock-solid heritage

Note: This review was first published on 30 Jan 2021.

Disclaimer:  The Mi 10 Ultra is not officially sold or supported in Singapore by Xiaomi. However, some local retailers do import it.

What a difference a year (or 10) makes...

The HWM + HWZ Tech Awards are on the horizon once again and, as always, choosing the winners is easier said than done... especially when it comes to the smartphones, with good devices at every price point that do everything reasonably well.

This only makes the work of the market leaders harder, and one such brand that’s got its work cut out for it has to be Xiaomi, which celebrated its 10th anniversary late last year. Once known in Singapore for its "flash-sale" model, where value-for-money smash hits like the original Redmi Note would fly off the shelves to the tune of 5,000 in 75 seconds, the Chinese titan has had to work hard to reinvent itself over the years as compatriots BBK Group and Huawei (before the trade wars kicked in) muscled in on its turf using similar formulae. 

How fitting, therefore, that at its anniversary celebration Xiaomi’s showpiece product proved to be solid rather than spectacular. Neither boasting anything particularly groundbreaking nor packing any dazzling colour schemes, it was, without doubt, specced and billed as a flagship - but in an era where great flagship smartphones are a dime a dozen, the Mi 10 Ultra’s most prominent feature was a claim to “120X” zoom emblazoned on one of its huge camera lens bumps (and we all know the gimmicks that these hybrid zoom things are.) It wasn’t going to be sold worldwide either, and that implied there would be no Google services out of the box.

But hey, I was in the market for a flagship phone, and I decided that even at S$1,065 (street pricing - more on this later) the Mi 10 Ultra was still worth a look. Firstly, I like long digital zooms on smartphones, as gimmicks indeed help augment my social life at parties. Secondly, every other flagship feature was packed in - 120Hz high refresh rate OLED display, stereo speakers, a nice big battery, and a Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 processor to move things along. What tipped the balance in its favour was finding out that the phone was actually Google certified, and all that was needed was to install the appropriate Google services and it would behave like any other global Xiaomi phone. 

There are phones with similar specs for less money, and there are phones with better specs for much more money, but there was never gonna be another 10th Anniversary for Xiaomi and there was certainly never gonna be another Mi 10 Ultra. So I emptied out my (virtual) coins and stumped up for one.

All that was a couple of months ago. Did I make the right choice? Here’s my take.

Design

If you’re looking for something unique in the design department, the otherwise conventional-looking Mi 10 Ultra does have it, as long as you have a case that can suitably show off that camera bump:

Eat your heart out, Samsung and Apple! The frame surrounding the lenses, plus the aluminium-coloured one for the “120X” telephoto lens, takes up so much of the phone's back that the Mi 10 Ultra has been mistaken several times for a compact digital camera by uninitiated acquaintances. The offset placement of the camera bump also means that the phone won’t sit on a desk or table without rocking from side to side without a case.

At almost 222 grams (yup) the Mi 10 Ultra should feel like a ton of bricks, but thanks to its compact size, thin bezels and curved sides, it thankfully just feels dense. “Solid” is, in this case, the perfect word to describe it. It’s also well-balanced and doesn’t feel like it will slip out of your hand, as long as you have a case of some sort on.

Haters of slippery phones: add the Mi 10 Ultra to your hit lists. With Corning’s finest on the front (Gorilla Glass 5) and back (Gorilla Glass 6), the keywords here, in bold uppercase, are “smooth” and “slick”. This is one of those devices that will spend time trying to reach the nearest floor (or asphalt surface) unless restrained by a case.

There’s nothing to see around the highly polished edges of the Mi 10 Ultra. Some may find the IR blaster on the top useful:

Now for the Debbie Downer: the Mi 10 Ultra has no stated water resistance and no IP rating; though (given the seals on its SIM slot) we think it would survive some rain, you’d be well-advised not to throw it around at pool parties since no Mi 10 Ultra you can buy here is ever going to have an official Xiaomi Singapore warranty. There’s also no microSD slot and certainly no 3.5mm headphone jack...

Display

The 6.67-inch curved OLED panel is made by TCL and boasts full 10-bit colour support, as well as HDR10+. Other numbers include a 120Hz refresh rate, 240Hz touch sampling, and 4,096-level auto brightness. The 20MP punch-hole cam is at the top left and isn’t likely to bother you unless you’re a lover of white desktop wallpapers paired with white icons.

The colour reproduction is a little more muted than the usual sort of Samsung AMOLED panel, but has an interesting luminosity to it.

It doesn't get extremely bright in broad daylight, though, so if you need to use your phone in the hot sun a lot, please look elsewhere:

Software

The Mi 10 Ultra ships with MIUI 12 - though based on Android 10, which will be another dealbreaker for some. As of the time of writing the phone had received two updates, both of which added only security updates and minor fixes.

MIUI has always been a love-it-or-hate-it affair, and Xiaomi’s aping of iOS without attaining the consistency of iOS continues to be a real weak link for me. Lots of UI elements take up unnecessary and variable amounts of space on the screen, and the interface sometimes just feels like it was made for toddlers - one case in point is the notification shade here (look at that wide font and all that space above and below each notification:

If you have your eye on a Mi 10 Ultra, and haven't used MIUI in some time - stop by a gadget chain store and check out the (local) Mi 10T Pro first to see if MIUI 12 feels right for you. (You might also find that phone’s S$749 sticker price easier to stomach if you grow tired of the phone.)

Note that the Mi 10 Ultra, being a China-only release, comes with no Google services out of the box. However, the Mi 10 Ultra is strangely actually Google certified, and you’ll find a setting to enable Google services in the menus. From there, it’s a simple step to download a suitable installer and get up to speed.

You can be very sure the resulting product is certified for Google services, with it passing Google's SafetyNet verification as proof:

Another thing to watch out for is that China-only Xiaomi phones only have access to the Chinese Xiaomi theme store and fonts. Given that most fonts on that store are in Chinese, good luck getting hold of anything other than the stock Xiaomi font, which is just too wide and generally unpleasant for a mobile device:

Performance

It’s a real pity that MIUI 12 is designed the way it is, because the Mi 10 Ultra delivers the kind of performance where the phone itself just gets out of the way and you can really enjoy whatever you're doing. The 120Hz refresh rate is switchable between 60Hz and 120Hz, but even at 60Hz it’s obvious that the 240Hz touch panel sampling rate is a major factor in the phone’s excellent performance and usability. Design aside, interface elements respond instantly, accurately and proportionally when swiped or otherwise interacted with, and I've never found any perceptible slowdown or lag.

Benchmarks: JetStream 2.0

The JetStream benchmark measures web browsing performance. It evaluates JavaScript performance over a range of real-world browsing scenarios.



Nothing surprising here; the Android flagships are blown away by the iPhone as usual...

Benchmarks: Antutu V7

The Mi 10 Ultra turned in a very respectable performance in the all-around Antutu benchmark. We had to get a copy from Antutu's own website - the app is no longer on Play Store, apparently because reasons.

Benchmarks: Geekbench 5

Geekbench drills down into multi- and single-core processor prowess to focus more on compute performance. A great showing here from the Mi 10 Ultra, only bested by the iPhone as usual:

Benchmarks: 3DMark

We now turn our focus to 3DMark, which measures overall graphics performance and which we run in Unlimited mode (which ignores screen resolutions). First, the usual Sling Shot:

We're also collecting scores for the new Wild Life Unlimited benchmark:

Hmm. The Mi 10 Ultra puts up a great show in "vanilla" 3DMark, not so much in Wild Life (against the iPhone 12 Pro), probably because Wild Life gets access to the new performance-enhancing Metal API in iOS.

Benchmarks: Battery life

In our usual 720p looping test, with:

• screen brightness and volume at 100%
• Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity turned on
• constant data streaming through email

the Mi 10 Ultra didn't really stand out compared to the competition - not badly, but then not outstanding either. 

We suspect a better result would have been obtained if the display had been switched to a 60Hz refresh rate.

The Mi 10 Ultra has wireless charging (yay) and fast charging to the tune of, get this, 120W (though some tests have found Xiaomi’s official charger only provides 80W to the device.) The 4,500mAh battery uses graphene technology to supposedly extend its lifespan and is split into two 2,250mAh cells to make for cooler and safer charging.

Unless I’m hammering the battery hard with web browsing, social media or photography/videography, I've found the Mi 10 Ultra capable of lasting me from around 8am till at least 9pm on a constant diet of web browsing and Instagram, half an hour of Waze, and some TikTok and YouTube. And if you were wondering, don't worry - TraceTogether app doesn't have any battery drain issues on this device.

As with all phones with high refresh rate displays, those expecting to get to midnight will need to disable the 120Hz refresh rate mode, though this problem is less pronounced than on some other phones I’ve tried such as the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra.

Camera

Given Xiaomi’s track record with mobile photography, and the tech built into the Mi 10 Ultra, let’s get the obvious out of the way: this phone is a highly dependable pocket camera that acquits itself well in virtually all situations.

You don’t even have to think in the daytime; anything you shoot is going to look great...

Xiaomi’s processing is more natural than, say, Samsung or Huawei’s slightly oversharpened output, and only those used to extreme HDR in things like clouds and sky will have complaints. So what's powering the quad-rear camera system? Here's the rundownd:-

• Rear main: 48 MP f/1.9, 25mm, 1/1.32-inch, 1.2µm, PDAF/laser autofocus w/ OIS, OmniVision OV48C
• Rear tele 1: 48 MP f/4.1, 120mm periscope telephoto w/ OIS, 1/2.0-inch, 0.8µm, PDAF 5x optical/120x hybrid
• Rear tele 2: 12 MP f/2.0, 50mm telephoto, 1/2.55-inch, 1.4µm, Dual Pixel PDAF, 2x optical
• Rear ultrawide: 20 MP f/2.2, 12mm, 1/2.8-inch, 1.0µm, PDAF

One feature the Mi 10 Ultra has that needs reading beyond the spec sheets is Xiaomi’s use of a 48MP main camera it co-developed with Omnivision, not a name widely known for top-shelf sensors. The OV48C sensor has 1.2μm pixels, compared to 0.8μm or 1.0μm pixels in similar Sony or Samsung sensors, dual native ISO, and single-frame HDR, all of which are claimed to translate into improved performance and reduced noise, especially in low light. It also outputs real-time 8K video, enabling that feature on the Mi 10 Ultra. The sensor sits behind an 8-element lens with OIS. 

Night mode on the Mi 10 Ultra isn’t as saturated or “luminous” as, say, Samsung’s processing on the S20 series, but it also isn’t as oversharpened:

One thing that strikes me about the Mi 10 Ultra is how well it juggles exposure, noise, sharpening, and colour rendition at night:

This is a phone you should have quite a bit of fun for night cityscapes, for sure. (The shot below was taken using Night mode - not manual, in case you were wondering from the reflections on the water.)

Features are features, but less has turned out to be more in one very important area: food photography. Compared to phones with 108MP sensors, such as the Mi 10/10 Pro, the Mi 10 Ultra doesn’t suffer as much from irritating blurred edges in close-ups of food and other objects, though it's still not as great as phones with 12MP sensors and/or smaller apertures.

Colours are bang-on appetizing when it comes to food. Make yourself hungry with this shot:

And this one, too:

The other star of the show has to be the 120mm telephoto camera, which employs a more humble Sony IMX586 sensor and (of course) has OIS. The lens is a periscope type, and to make it fit into the phone’s thickness, the lenses had to be cut in a D-shaped cross-section. 120mm works out to about 5x optical zoom, which obviously means you'll have to settle for digital zoom to get to “120x”. 

Let's take a look at this comparo. First, the 1x:

...then 10x:

...then 30x...

...and finally, 120x.

As I’ve said, 120x is useful for nothing more than party tricks, but at anything up to about 10x, the Mi 10 Ultra delivers solid output for the ‘gram and social media.

I also keep a comparison database of shots taken with long digital “zooms”, and here the Mi 10 Ultra holds its own against two other zoom kings: the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra with a 3.7x telephoto, and the Huawei P40 Pro+, whose periscope lens goes up to 10x optical.

Against the P40 Pro+, the Mi 10 Ultra doesn’t lose out by much, and beats the S20 Ultra. The P40 Pro+ employs some neat resizing algorithms there:

Video on the Mi 10 Ultra also leaves little to be desired. At 4K and 1080p, whether at 30 or 60fps, the level of detail and contrast is sublime. 8K recording, obviously, is impressive on paper but little more than a conversation starter in real life.

Selfies have great detail and don't look over-processed (Samsung, please take note.) Here's my CNY-ready egghead:

To Mi or not to Mi?

At the time of purchase (Nov 2020) the Mi 10 Ultra set me back $1,065 for the “base” 8GB RAM/128GB storage model; a quick check of the same seller’s Shopee listing as of 15 Jan 2021 revealed no changes to that price. 

If you want more options, the Mi 10 Ultra comes in a total of three colours - black, silver, and translucent - and a myriad of sub-variants ranging from 8GB to 12GB of RAM and 128GB to 512GB of storage. Of course, the silver and translucent colourways can only be had for more moolah with higher-spec variants. As an example, you'll pay $1,075 for an 8GB/128GB translucent model; a top-shelf silver 16GB/512GB model will run you $1,649 (all prices valid on Shopee as of 19 Jan 2021). Here are two such Shopee retailers where you can get the Mi 10 Ultra and we've heard them to be dependable - Retailer 1, Retailer 2.

Now, there are several factors to consider before putting that kind of money down. The most obvious is the lack of an official agent warranty, which will affect its resale value. There’s also no waterproofing, which some will consider unacceptable at north of S$1k.

But hey, what else can you actually get for that kind of dough? The base-model Samsung Galaxy S21 is going for S$1,248 and has a faster processor and twice the storage at 256GB, though the superiority of its camera system is debatable unless you spring for the S21 Ultra. Oppo will sell you a Find X2 Pro for S$1,699 for the 12/512GB version, which is about as expensive as a similarly-specced Mi 10 Ultra, but the Oppo phone is fully supported locally and you can also easily obtain it through a telco contract. At the value-for-money end of the scale, Realme is asking S$999 for a X50 Pro, and OnePlus S$899 for a base 8/128GB 8T, but the only thing both phones really have in common with the Mi 10 Ultra is speed - they certainly can't compete on camera performance.

And that’s the crux of the matter. Taken in isolation, S$1,065 (at minimum) may seem like a lot to pay for an export-set Xiaomi - a brand that will sell you a perfectly decent daily driver for as little as S$300. We’ve perhaps grown too used to expecting cheap-and-good miracles from Xiaomi (and there’s the local-warranty 10T Pro too!) that we may be unable to see how the Mi 10 Ultra punches above its weight.

Export set aside, the Mi 10 Ultra has proven as solid feature-wise as its dense frame suggests. Design-wise, it may not have snazzy gradient colours, but on the inside, I've appreciated its great battery life, a reliable camera system (with a nice party trick when needed), and superb multimedia features. Honestly, MIUI and questionable updates might be the only reasons to stay away.

Having said that, the Xiaomi Mi 10 Ultra is a phone that I would advise is better suited to those who understand what they are getting into, especially when there isn't any official support for this model locally. Fortunately, we've a pretty vibrant enthusiast following and the 80-page discussion on this phone could well be useful for anyone thinking of getting this limited edition model.

First anniversaries are often celebrated in the hope of a bright future, but the 10th should be a time to look back on stability and consistency. And so my take is that the Xiaomi Mi 10 Ultra makes a fitting tribute to its maker’s 10th. Just don't mind its weight.