Xiaomi – global release of Mi 11 Ultra

The brand new Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra is characterized by its camera set up, which is fairly much remarkable in its technical specs as well as design and style. The smartphone is the 1st device to arrive with Samsung LSI’s completely new GN2 sensor which measures in at a enormous 1/1. 12” optical format, offering native 50MP of 1. 4µm pixels, able of binning all the way down to 12. 5MP 2 . 8µm pixels. Xiaomi also provides a 48MP ultra-wide module, as properly as a 48MP 5x periscope telephoto module for far reaches. Weirdly adequate, the Mi 11 also includes a little 1 . 1” OLED display along with the camera setup – possibly enabling more full-fledged selfie experiences using the rear cameras.Interestingly, the phone’s design and dimensions mostly match that of the Mi 11, with the camera layout, thickness and weight really being the major differences in the new Ultra model.
The Mi 11 Ultra is powered by the Snapdragon 888 – much like the Mi 11. In terms of performance, we should expect the new phone to pretty much match what we’ve seen in the Mi 11, which means excellent device experience with pretty much the best of what we can expect of an Android device for this device generation. Xiaomi does advertise advanced cooling solutions, however generally phones of this form-factor are simply limited to a thermal envelope of 5W, as that is the rough external heat dissipation through convection and radiation of any device with this kind of thermal behaviour.
The phone comes in a sole 12GB LPDDR5-6400 and UFS 3. 1 256GB memory and storage configuration.
Other novelties on the Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra is the Wi-Fi upgrade from a regular Wi-Fi 6 capable chip to a newer Wi-Fi 6E implementation, and naturally it retains all the 5G connectivity features of the base Mi 11 model.
The display of the Mi 11 Ultra seems to be the exact same as on the Mi 11. This is a 6. 81” model along with a QHD+ resolution of 3200 x 1440, a software structured adaptive refresh rate of up to 120Hz, and advertises itself as a 10-bit capable screen, with a great touch sample rate of 480Hz for low-latency input. While the display is superb in picture level of quality, we have noticed that the Mi 11 wasn’t one of the most powerful devices on the marketplace, characterised by greater base device power consumption and a 120Hz mode that is not as efficient as current LTPO-based displays on Samsung devices. We’ll have to see if the Mi 11 Ultra suffers from identical effectiveness disadvantages.The good thing about the design of the Mi 11 Ultra is that from the front it’s very much similar to the Mi 11. With the same screen sizes, the device form-factor is also nearly the identical, featuring an identical 164. 3mm x 74. 6mm height and width as the Mi 11.
The top-line function of the Mi 11 is its completely new triple-camera setup. Let’s get started off with the oddest feature that isn’t truly a camera: a secondary small rear OLED screen, 1 . 1” in diagonal and a 126 x 294 resolution. It’s positioned within the extremely large camera bump to the right of the cams. It’s pretty gimmicky, but allows for much easier usage of the higher-quality rear cameras for selfies and selfie videos as it can work as a view-finder.
The some other evident headline feature is the usage of Samsung LSI’s latest GN2 sensor. This is at the moment the largest camera sensor in any mobile phone on the market, measuring in at 1/1. 12” optical format – keep in mind that optical format doesn’t actually correspond to the physical dimensions of the sensor which actually falls in at 11. 4 x 8. 6mm (14. 3mm diagonal) active area.
What’s special about the sensor is also that Xiaomi is transitioning away from their 108MP resolution from the past 2 generations to 50MP. The actual native pixel size of the GN2 is 1 . 4µm, and the sensor has a Quad-Bayer colour filter setup, able to 4: 1 bin to 12. 5MP pictures with effective pixel sizes of 2. 8µm. Due to the lower resolution, the actual per-pixel size is significantly larger than the 27MP 1 . 6µm picture shots of the Mi 11 and previous Mi 10 series – at the same time, it’s also the largest per-pixel size of any smartphone in the market.The GN2 is also the first sensor in the industry to offer a new “Dual Pixel Pro” technology – essentially this is the return to dual-pixel phase detection which we had in previous generation devices and had to be abandoned with the newer 108MP sensors. The “Pro” part of the new GN2 refers to the alternative diagonal separation of pixels: usually the traditional dual-pixel PD would allow phase-detection in on axis, while this new dual-pixel setup would also allow phase detection in the 90° angle of the DP arrangement, improving auto-focus speed.
It’s also a staggered HDR sensor, much like the new HM3 sensor in the Galaxy S21 Ultra, being able to capture subsequent different shutter speed captures directly following the rolling shutter readout of the previous frame, instead of waiting for complete sensor readouts between frames.
Xiaomi’s optics on the Mi 11 Ultra’s main camera should be extremely challenging given the ginormous sensor size, and therefore falls in a comparatively smaller f/1. 95 aperture. It’s a 24mm equivalent focal length which has been standard for Xiaomi’s recent flagships, and features OIS.
Generally speaking, this main camera module right now is by far the most powerful in the smartphone market, and should be easily able to outperform most other rivals – as long as Xiaomi’s processing also is able to keep up.
Lastly, we see a new 48MP ultra-wide module. This appears to be the same sensor as on the telephoto, meaning a 1/2. 0” module with 0. 8µm that bins down to 12MP 4: 1 1 . 6µm images. It has an remarkably wide 128° FoV with a 12mm equal focal length.It’s really crystal clear that the Mi 11 Ultra is highly camera centric. We consider Xiaomi’s image processing to be very good, however the newer generation sensors of the competitors still had clear advantages in comparison to say the base Mi 11. The Ultra’s new hardware is truly next-gen although, and hopefully should allow the smartphone to reach new levels in photography. Photo: blog.mi
Being a device of the “Ultra” status, the new Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra comes at a pretty higher price than its regular Mi 11 comparable version. Xiaomi does not quite uncover timing of the availability, but announces the Mi 11 Ultra at 1199€ for the standard 12+256GB version. This is the same price as the 128GB variant of the S21 Ultra, so Xiaomi is absolutely targeting higher than they ever did before in terms of product positioning.

Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra specs: