More budget, but with 144Hz

Today Xiaomi announces its year-end flagship devices with the introduction of the new Mi 10T and Mi 10T Pro devices. This year’s updates are a bit less mainstream, as they are not exactly direct successors to the Mi 10 and Mi 10 Pro. , but lower cost alternatives. Still, the new devices promise to bring a host of new software camera features, as well as being the first phones on the market to adopt new 144Hz displays with AdaptiveSync variable refresh rate functionality.

The biggest selling point of the new Mi 10T series is probably its lowered prices, which start at just € 499 for the base model Mi 10T, and still offer you a Snapdragon 865 SoC, a competitive camera, as well as the 144Hz OLED display. aforementioned, with a huge capacity of 5000mAh. drums.

Starting with the guts of the phones, Xiaomi has stuck to the Snapdragon 865, which has proven to be an outstanding SoC for 2020. The lack of the + variant here isn’t really a downside, as users won’t miss out on much. The Mi 10T comes in either 6 or 8GB LPDDR5 configurations, while the Mi 10T Pro has 8GB in both options. On the storage side, we are looking at 128 or 256 GB options, however we have now seen an update to the newer UFS 3.1 modules.

While filling in the spec table above, I noticed a rather big quirk on the part of the new Mi 10T phones: Although both are advertised as 5G phones, Xiaomi made a footnote in the cellular connectivity section that both devices are only supported. NSA 5G networks. This is a rather strange and very unusual aspect given that the X55 modem supports both NSA and SA networks, and such a limitation was apparently not present on the Mi 10 series devices earlier in the year.

If this is related to any cost reduction measures by the RF backend of the phones, it raises a bigger question mark regarding the future longevity of the devices once network operators switch to SA-only networks. We reached out to Xiaomi to comment on this aspect of the phones and we are awaiting a response.

The new phones are also, from a design standpoint, very different from the Mi 10 series devices, as they share very little in common with each other, and the new phones represent a more substantial redesign and diversion from ships. brothers badge of the beginning of the year.

The biggest notable change is that the new phones employ a flat screen panel instead of the curved edge design of the Mi 10 and Mi 10 Pro. Xiaomi says this decision to go back to a flat design was made following feedback from the community, since there are still many people who really prefer the flatter design to curved phones.

While the front is flat, Xiaomi still curves the back of the phone, which is important for the ergonomics of the device. Still, the new phones are quite a bit larger than their counterparts, going from 74.8mm wide to 76.4mm. They have also grown in all other dimensions, being taller and also thicker up to 9.3mm. The weight has also increased slightly from 208g to 216g, but Xiaomi notes that the battery capacity has increased slightly, now reaching 5000mAh.

Xiaomi does not mention wireless charging in its list of device specifications, so apparently that is one of the features that had been on the chopping board when the company was targeting the low prices achieved for the phones.

Xiaomi notes that they are using a new battery design that instead of having the anode connected from one end of the battery pack, it is actually connected from the middle of the battery, which it calls this a “center tab design. intermediate “. This was introduced to the POCO X3 earlier this month and theoretically allows for lower anode resistance since you are essentially cutting the anode dimensions in half. This allows for better charge distribution within the battery cell and less heat dissipation, with Xiaomi offering 33W fast charging out of the box with the included adapter, upgradeable to 65W with a separate charger unit.

The new screen is a key feature point of the phone, not only because it is not a flat design again, but also because Xiaomi has updated the specifications to a new 2400 x 1080 LCD panel with refresh rate capabilities of up to 144Hz. The cool new feature of the new display is the inclusion of AdaptiveSync capability, with the panel being able to vary refresh rates on the fly up to 30Hz. This should be the same VRR technology that was introduced to the Note20 Ultra a month ago and which we investigated in detail in our dedicated article on the feature.

Xiaomi explains that beyond adapting the refresh rate to the frame rate of the actual content, resulting in a smoother experience with less vibrations, the feature also reduces the phone’s power consumption by 8%, which is Quite in line with what we had experienced in the Note20 Ultra, and a major factor in allowing 144Hz refresh rates without too much of a battery hit on newer devices.

The cameras are probably where things have changed the most compared to the Mi 10 series. Starting with the Mi 10T Pro, there is actually no identifiable difference here in hardware compared to the Mi 10 Pro as they both feature the 108MP Samsung HMX sensor with 0.8μm pixels shrinking to 27MP in regular use. In addition to software processing that could have evolved over time, one of my complaints about that module was its rather poor optical quality, which reduced the value of the high resolution sensor.

This time around, the lower-end Mi 10T actually has a different unit, with a 64MP sensor, which is still quite large at 1 / 1.7 ”and with 0.8 µm pixels, downgrading to 16MP in regular use. The smaller f / 1.89 aperture lens in this module should have better optical quality than its bigger brother, and 64MP is still sufficient, however the only critical feature missing here is OIS. Unfortunately, this means that the Mi 10T might not be that good for some videos and especially low-light photography.

The ultra-wide module sensor appears to be in line with the Mi 10’s UWA module sensor specifications, however the optics seem to have changed as Xiaomi now advertises a larger field of view reaching 123 °.

If you’ve noticed, the only thing missing from the camera setup is any kind of telephoto module. This is a similar function option to the regular Mi 10, and all phones have to rely on digital cropping on the main camera sensor if you want a more accurate framing of your subjects. There is a 5MP macro camera that focuses between 2 and 10 cm; however, these modules are generally not very good in terms of quality and are only there to increase the count number of the camera module for marketing purposes.

From only € 499

The biggest selling point of the Mi 10T series is not so much its features as its prices. At € 499, the Mi 10T is an incredibly aggressive price phone. While it certainly doesn’t feature all the specs you’d want in a phone, this is still a Snapdragon 865-powered device with a state-of-the-art 144Hz LCD screen, a 5000mAh battery, dual stereo speakers, and a reasonable camera setup. An extra € 50 gives you an extra 2GB of RAM and upgrades the storage to 256GB.

The Mi 10 Pro launches at € 599, essentially the differences here lie solely in the larger camera module and sensor and its OIS inclusion. Whether that’s worth it to you depends on how much you use the device’s cameras, but neither phone is exactly positioned to have the best camera performance. The 8 + 256GB variant is priced at € 649.

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