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The Xiaomi Mi Ultra.
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The back is ceramic.
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This first leak from YouTuber Tech Buff still shows the rear screen better than any official Xiaomi snapshot.
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The top and the bottom. Look at the size of that camera bump!
Following a leak in February, Xiaomi’s Mi 11 Ultra went official today. This phone’s main claim to fame is the inclusion of a second screen tucked into the camera bump. Additionally, now that the official specs are released, we can see that “the world’s largest camera” is also home to one of the world’s largest smartphone camera sensors, the Samsung GN2.
The base specs are high end for a high-end 2021 Android phone: a 120 Hz, 6.81 inch, 3200 × 1440 front OLED screen; a Snapdragon 888; 12 GB of RAM; 256 GB of storage; IP68 dust and water resistance; Android 11 with MIUI; and a 5000 mAh battery. Xiaomi offers 67 W wired and wireless charging, which with OnePlus is a step above most other phones. Xiaomi has touted the 5,000mAh battery as being a “silicon-oxygen” battery, although the company hasn’t pointed out any serious benefit from its new battery formula. There is also Wi-Fi 6E, which significantly expands the capacity of Wi-Fi by adding 6 GHz spectrum alongside the existing 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands.
On the back, you get a 1.1-inch, 126 × 294 screen with touch support. Xiaomi says the rear display supports an always-on display mode showing the time, date and notifications. It can also serve as a small viewfinder for rear camera selfies. There are three rear cameras, but the big news is that the main camera has a Samsung GN2 sensor. This is a giant 50 MP, 1 / 1.12 ″ sensor with a pixel size of 1.4 μm and quad-pixel binning. The 1 / 1.12 ″ sensor size means modern smartphones are finally starting to match the hardware of the Nokia 808, a revolutionary camera phone released in 2012. The 808 also had a 1 / 1.12 ″ sensor with a size of pixel of 1.4 μm, and although it is 9 years old, it is still able to withstand modern devices.
Since the launch of the Nokia 808, modern image stacking techniques and new AI models have meant that smartphone makers can increasingly squeeze photo quality from a smaller camera sensor. These are all improvements behind closed doors SoftwareHowever, and if phone makers let go of their obsession with slim devices, major advancements could be made in camera hardware as well. There was nothing really magical about the Nokia 808 – Nokia just prioritized the camera hardware in the 13.9mm thick body. Xiaomi seems to have followed a similar strategy: it lists the Mi 11 Ultra at 8.3mm, but it looks like the measurement is done without the camera bump. With the camera bump, the phone appears to be 2-3mm thicker. Samsung isn’t the only company to offer larger camera sensors – the Sony IMX800 is reportedly a 1 ”sensor.
No phone can come out today without multiple rear cameras, so the device also packs in what appear to be standard 48 MP wide-angle and 5x optical zoom cameras, both using the Sony IMX 586.
The camera bump isn’t the only special thing about this phone. The device has a rare ceramic back – a feature we last experienced on the Essential phone. We cannot say that ceramic has huge advantages over the usual glass back. It is often said to be more resistant to scratches, but it is just as prone to breakage. Xiaomi also claims that the phone’s Harman Kardon stereo speakers (a Samsung brand) are “the loudest in the industry.”
The Mi 11 Ultra will go on sale internationally (Xiaomi’s press release does not say when) for € 1,199, or around $ 1,411.
Listing image by Xiaomi
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