Two chips, with a focus on the battery

Today Xiaomi is announcing three new devices: the 11T, 11T Pro and 11 Lite 5G NE. We have looked at the first two for a while and are able to give first-hand experiences with phones today.

The Xiaomi 11T series – which incidentally is no longer called “Mi” in the name, it is literally “Xiaomi 11T” now, are meant to be additions to the company’s flagship range, but at lower prices. . We reviewed the Mi 11 in March and the big brother, the Mi 11 Ultra in July, so be sure to read these parts as the 11T series fits into the lineup, albeit it is different.

What defines the 11T series is the fact that they are slightly cheaper and more economical than the original Mi 11, especially on the display side which has now been reduced to a 1080p panel. The build quality is also different, and finally, we see a different set of SoC options depending on whether you get the standard 11T or the high-end 11T Pro.

Starting with the SoCs, the two 11T devices are absolutely interesting phones because in addition to the usual Samsung Galaxy devices each year that are powered by Snapdragon and Exynos SoC, Xiaomi uses a similar strategy here with the 11T series dual-sourcing both. from Qualcomm and MediaTek.

The standard 11T is powered by the MediaTek Dimensity 1200 “Ultra” – we don’t know what the Ultra stands for here, but it appears to be tied to a high frequency NPU – there are no differences on processor clocks. The SoC includes one Cortex-A78 up to 3.00 GHz, three A78s at 2.60 GHz and four A55s at 2.00 GHz. The GPU is a MaliG77MP9, although we cannot confirm the frequency. It’s MediaTek’s most high-end chip right now, so it’s quite interesting. What also makes it special is that it’s on TSMC’s 6nm process node, and it’s the first chip we’ve got our hands on on that node.

The Snapdragon 888 doesn’t need to be introduced, and that’s what powers the 11T Pro. There are a few quirks with the chip though, which we’ll cover in the system performance section, but the way Xiaomi configures the chip isn’t quite a flagship level in terms of behavior.

What’s very exciting about the two devices with different SoCs is that the two phones are otherwise absolutely identical in terms of specs. It’s basically the same phone, but with a different SoC and different charging capabilities. For apple-to-apple chipset comparisons, it rarely gets any better than this, although we will see that there are some deviations in behavior.

The back of the phone is relatively generic with its glass back. One thing to note here is that the phone is a bit wider at 76.9mm. The weight is reasonable at 203-204g due to the 5000mAh battery.

In general, the build quality and design of the phone isn’t as attractive and stylish as what we’ve seen on the Mi 11, and it looks like a slightly cheaper / lower end model from the flagship Mi 11 series.

On the camera side, Xiaomi uses a 108MP sensor, but it’s not the HMX that was found in the Mi 11 but rather the smaller HM2 sensor that uses 0.7 µm pixels compared to 0.8 µm on the sibling. The optics have a focal length equivalent to 24mm at an f / 1.75 aperture, but without OIS.

There is a 5MP telephoto module, but it is only used for macro shooting, it cannot be used for actual zooming.

Finally, there’s a basic 8 MP ultra-wide with f / 2.2 and 120 ° field of view – it’s really basic. In general, the whole camera setup is straightforward and Xiaomi doesn’t give it too many specs.

Xiaomi focuses on fast charging of these devices, most notably the 11T Pro comes with a 120W charger. It works as advertised; however, we will talk about the topic in more depth in the review.

The 11T starts at € 499, which is quite reasonable, and the 11T Pro starts at € 649 – which is actually quite high considering that one can have the Mi 11 for around € 715 these days, the phone should somehow be streamlined in its differentiations from its serial sibling.