Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro: the full Review

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For several years, the podium of the best sellers of smartphones has been occupied by the same three players. Samsung, Huawei and Apple reign in the market and outpace the competition, including Xiaomi installed in fourth place. The Chinese brand may progress from year to year, but it is still far from the sales volume achieved by market stars.

The good news for Xiaomi is that compatriot Huawei is the collateral victim of an economic war between the United States and China. Deprived of Google services for its smartphones, Huawei risks seeing its sales fall in Europe in the short and medium term, which, for Xiaomi, is a boon. The Mi 10 Pro, its new high-end smartphone, is making no concessions in the hope of becoming the benchmark Android device this year. For several days, we made the Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro our main smartphone. Is Xiaomi's bet successful?

Design: undeniably high-end

Despite a slightly high weight of 208 grams, which still places it in the average of high-end smartphones at the beginning of the year, the Mi 10 Pro sports an exemplary design. Xiaomi designed this smartphone with one idea in mind: symmetry. The smartphone screen has a curvature identical to that on the back, which makes handling really pleasant. The only flaw, the vertical camera module, creates a protrusion which makes the smartphone not very stable when placed back against table. It’s still less critical than some competing smartphones like Samsung’s Galaxy S20 Ultra.

We welcome Xiaomi's choice to bet on a matte glass back rather than shiny glass. The Chinese manufacturer may well have not invented this type of coating, it must be noted that it is still just as fly. The way he reflects light very slightly, without taking fingerprints, is pure joy for the eyes. It's sumptuous, Xiaomi offers with this Mi 10 Pro one of the prettiest products of this beginning of 2020.

The most beautiful screen proposed by Xiaomi

Paradoxically, the screen of the Mi 10 Pro is both beautiful and … not very original. With a diagonal of 6.67 inches with a front camera housed in a punch located at the top left, this curved screen is really very successful. It seems like the Xiaomi smartphone has almost no border (except a slightly thick chin at the bottom), which is very significant. What is unfortunate, however, is that all manufacturers offer a similar design at the start of the year, which takes the screen of the Mi 10 Pro a bit of its magic. The OnePlus 8 Pro, Oppo Find X2 Pro, Huawei P40 Pro and Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro are designed in the same vein, which leaves Samsung and Apple, the two manufacturers who do not (or no longer) use curved screens, enough to stand out. Randomly at the time, the curved screen that was once extremely rare has become commonplace.

Regardless, recognize that in use, the screen of the Mi 10 Pro offers a good level of comfort. This is all the more true since its refresh rate of 90 Hz improves the fluidity of navigation and tires the eyes much less. Confinement requires, we were not able to measure the maximum brightness of the device and the fidelity of its colors but we will do it soon. In any case, Xiaomi offers with its Mi 10 Pro, without a doubt, its best OLED screen.

However, we are more skeptical about Xiaomi's software choices. Many times, especially in applications like Instagram while holding the smartphone in our left hand, our palm accidentally touched the "health home" button, unexpectedly winding up the thread at the start. Xiaomi should clearly reduce the sensitivity in the bend area to avoid causing this kind of annoyance. But let's be lenient, this is only the second curved smartphone from the Chinese manufacturer.

Almost exemplary features

Usually, high-end smartphones from Xiaomi make some hardware concessions to reduce the bill. Price increases oblige, the Chinese brand outdoes itself this year. It must be said that between the 499 euros of a Mi 9 and 999 euros of a Mi 10 Pro, there is a big jump.

The Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro therefore ticks almost all of the boxes. It uses the powerful Snapdragon 865 processor from Qualcomm which, linked to the X55 modem, offers 5G and Wi-Fi 6 compatibility to the smartphone. Enough to ensure that his mobile will be compatible with the latest network standards once they are deployed in France. In terms of performance, without equaling Apple's iPhone 11s, the Mi 10 Pro is strong and is extremely efficient in all circumstances.

Among the other additions that we are happy to see this year, the stereo speakers of the Mi 10 Pro are very satisfactory. It was time, Xiaomi had always offered a sound quality below the competition. Now we have something powerful enough and just enough to listen to music in the shower or watch a series episode on Netflix without going deaf. The haptic feedback from the mobile is also very good, it really feels like you are handling a high-end mobile. The Mi 10 Pro's fingerprint sensor under the screen, still under the screen, also benefits from an enlarged reading surface. It is extremely fast. In short, Xiaomi really offers us a summary of the best on the market.

However, we admit that we are less enthusiastic on certain points. For 999 euros, difficult to understand why the Mi 10 Pro does not have an IP68 certification for guaranteed watertightness? Another problem, why can this cellphone accommodate only one SIM card? Some manufacturers claim that this is due to Qualcomm’s 5G modem. But others, like OnePlus, have managed to integrate two SIM locations on their 5G mobile. Finally, even if this is a detail for many users, why did you choose a Full HD + panel and not Quad HD +? Some will argue the argument "Apple does the same" but let us remind them of the price difference between the Mi 10 Pro and its predecessor of around 500 euros. At this price, the most geeks are entitled to expect the best of the best, right?

Mi 10 Pro recharges in 46 minutes

If there is one aspect on which Xiaomi should be taken as a model, it is certainly recharging. In fact, the configuration offered by the manufacturer is surely the most complete on the market. The Mi 10 Pro uses a 4500 mAh battery, is compatible with ultra-fast 50W charging, 30W wireless charging and even includes a 65W wired charger in its box. It’s much more than the competition offers and it allows you to charge your computer and phone from the same outlet. Fearfully clever.

According to our measurements, it only takes 46 minutes for the Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro to recharge. 10 minutes are even enough to recover 33% of autonomy. It is one of the best performances on the market. No one does better than Oppo. Xiaomi nevertheless has the advantage of offering wireless charging in addition to wired, which makes its mobile more versatile than those of its competitor.

Regarding autonomy, we would be lying to you by giving you an estimate today. No laboratory Review has yet been carried out and life in confinement is not really representative of that which we will find once again outside. Our first tests are nevertheless encouraging. For equal use, the Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro does significantly better than the Samsung S20s.

Photo: weakness of the Mi 10 Pro

Of course, a high-end smartphone deserves its letters of nobility only if it offers a photo quality that is exceptional enough to accompany you everywhere without ever taking the slightest blurred shot or almost. Xiaomi knows it is eagerly awaited on this point and offers a quadruple camera module with the main sensor Isocell Bright HMX from Samsung with a definition of 108 Mpix (associated with a wide-angle lens opening at f / 1.69). This giant sensor (1 / 1.33 inch, which remains, it is true, smaller than that of the new Huawei P40 Pro) is cut to take photos in low light. It is also based on the principle of pixel binning and combines four pixels into one to get 32 ​​Mpix images in the end. We had tried it twice with the Xiaomi Mi Note 10 and the Galaxy S20 Ultra and each time we were disappointed.

Despite excellent daytime photo quality, we encounter the same problems as with the Mi Note 10. Some background elements are smoothed, some slowdowns are felt after taking a photo and, above all, something obviously bell in the night shots. Under certain (difficult) light conditions, we just weren't able to get sharp photos. Compared to a Huawei P40 Pro, Galaxy S20 or iPhone 11 Pro, the comparison hurts. Xiaomi will have to improve all this later through a software update if it hopes to be at the level of the best smartphones on the market.

Quite cleverly, Xiaomi had the idea of ​​using two telephoto lenses with a different magnification possibility. The Mi 10 Pro thus offers an optical zoom x2 and an optical zoom x5 thanks to the presence of two different lenses associated respectively with 12 and 8 Mpix sensors. Few manufacturers have made such a choice. The quality of these two telephoto lenses is satisfactory even if problems of chromatic differences are unfortunately felt between the two modules. In addition, beyond the x5 zoom, we immediately notice a loss of quality. Xiaomi did not choose a periscopic zoom like Huawei, Oppo or Samsung, which prevents going much further.

Finally, the last photo module of the Mi 10 Pro is an ultra wide-angle attached to a 20 Mpix sensor. The latter is therefore very satisfying, it fulfills its mission with perfection even if, at night, it is better not to rely too much on it. It can also be used to take photos in macro mode, but the quality varies greatly depending on the quality of the light.

Last point that we wanted to mention in this photo part, the application Camera of Xiaomi is simple but suffers from some faults. For example, switching from one mode to another is much too slow. Another point on which we return to each Xiaomi smartphone Review, why leave a watermark with the name of the mobile on all the photos by default? Xiaomi, deactivate it on mobiles sold in Europe!

An effective overlay with a lot of Google

Let's finish this Review with a point on the Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro software. Working with MIUI 11, the overlay used by the Chinese manufacturer for several years, the mobile has an excellent interface. We’ve said this in the past, we appreciate MIUI. Its design is very good.

However, we wonder where the application drawer on other Xiaomi smartphones has gone. Here, we have to display all of its icons on its health home screen, like Apple's iOS. It is of course possible to opt for a third-party launcher in order to benefit from a different interface.

Delivered with Android, the Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro has of course all the Google services. In fact, Xiaomi has abandoned its selection of widgets on the left of the health home screen to make room for Google Discover recommendations. By default, more and more Google apps are being chosen instead of their Xiaomi equivalents. In short, facing Huawei, Xiaomi is increasingly relying on its American partner to convince new customers.

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