The New Xiaomi Mi Note 10: A Phone That’s a Tablet, a PC and More

Introduction

I’ve been looking forward to trying out the Xiaomi Mi Note 10 since its announcement in August, and had a few reasons to be excited. The Mi Note line is the flagship line from Xiaomi with a focus on the most impressive specifications, and the Mi Note 10, priced at €1079 ($1366), was no exception. That price gets you quite the device. It features a Snapdragon 845 processor with 6 GB of RAM, 64 GB of storage and a massive 6.39 inch AMOLED screen that seems larger than the Samsung Galaxy Note 9. That’s only a small part of the impressive spec sheet, though. The Mi Note 10 comes with dual 12 MP rear cameras, a 20 MP front-facing camera and a massive 4,000 mAh battery. All of that is impressive, and this is what makes it a strong competitor to the Galaxy Note 9.

The Design

The Mi Note 10 feels like the ultimate phone for Android fans; it has a 5.99-inch screen, a phone-like power button, a metal unibody, a real fingerprint sensor and is just a tad bigger than the 6-inch Mi Max 3. It’s a big phone, and probably not one for anyone who has small hands or a small purse. The screen and its edge-to-edge design mean the Mi Note 10 isn’t as portable as, say, the 5.99-inch Honor View 20. That said, the Mi Note 10 is relatively easy to grip, especially because its bezel is almost negligible; I’d call its front bezel an 8 percent difference in size from its competitors. Plus, the bezel isn’t all that thick. At least not compared to Huawei’s Mate 20 Pro (14.8mm), which has an almost bezel-less screen and a triple-lens camera system.

Camera

It’s all about that dual camera setup on the back, which features a 12-megapixel wide-angle camera and a 12-megapixel telephoto lens, along with two-tone LED flash and f/1.8 aperture. And as we’ve come to expect from Xiaomi, it’s top notch and offers a ton of features: bokeh effect, four times optical zoom, OIS, 3-axis electronic image stabilization, dual-tone LED flash and 4K video recording. The selfies are also great. The 5MP front-facing camera has AI beautification, and AI exposure smoothing. Overall, the Mi Note 10 offers a solid camera experience. Display The display looks fantastic. For those who are familiar with Xiaomi devices, this is old news. But for those who aren’t, this is definitely the top feature of the Mi Note 10. Its 6.

Screen

The phone’s screen looks sharp, even at its 1080p resolution, and colors are vividly vibrant, thanks to the AMOLED display. Text looks razor sharp and icons pop in most apps. However, I found I had to tilt the screen in order to see some elements well, such as the status bar or text labels; the screen doesn’t get as bright as an OLED panel would; and the brightness is only slightly higher than most LCD panels, so I had to keep the brightness down. Most media and video content will look great, but there’s a slight problem: video and still image displays are pixelated in comparison to the screen on my iPhone X, and using the phone in landscape mode gives you a frustratingly blurry portrait-only display.

Performance

The Xiaomi Mi Note 10 is powered by the top of the range Kirin 980 CPU, Huawei’s flagship chip which has been built in the company’s own HiSilicon factory. Although Huawei has long boasted the fastest processor on the market thanks to the efficiency of its Kirin chips, the Kirin 980 is the first mobile processor to come built in a 7nm manufacturing process, which makes it even more efficient and powerful. This is an impressive feat, and in the Mi Note 10, the Kirin 980 is a great match for the 6.39-inch 1080 x 2340 Super AMOLED display, with a 600 nits brightness and DCI-P3 colour gamut. The graphics are also provided by Huawei’s in-house Kirin 980 GPU, which is backed up by 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage.

Battery Life and Connectivity

The battery life of the Mi Note 10 is probably one of the top selling points of this device. The 4,000mAh cell is big, but not huge, and while it will easily see you through a day, if you have to make a quick run to the coffee shop or need to use it the following morning, the Mi Note 10 will need to be plugged in. Xiaomi claims that the Mi Note 10 can charge 50 percent battery power in half an hour, and by 10 minutes with the included USB Type-C cable. I found the Mi Note 10 to get pretty close to Xiaomi’s promised 50 percent charge after a little more than two hours of charging time. This means that you can be charging it at 100 percent in just 15 minutes, although this process also means that the Mi Note 10 is useless until it has finished charging.

Conclusion

There are few phones out there that are so easy on the eye as the Xiaomi Mi Note 10. The Mi Note 10 has a unique look that’s far removed from any other phone out there, with an almost FHD+ screen that comes in 5.99-inches and a huge edge-to-edge frame. In terms of build quality and materials, the Mi Note 10 comes highly recommended, with the metal body feeling much more sturdy than the cheaper Honor Play and the glass-covered design being much more durable than many smartphones out there. Read more: The phone’s 5.99-inch FHD+ display has a higher resolution than most other phones at 2,280 x 1,080 pixels, with a full HD+ resolution on top of that, and so the colors and image quality are really good.