The Xiaomi 11T & 11T Pro Review: Two Chips, With a Battery Focus
by Andrei Frumusanu on September 15, 2021 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Mobile
- Smartphones
- Xiaomi
- Xiaomi 11T
- Xiaomi 11T Pro
Conclusion & End Remarks
Today’s review was little smaller in scope, notably missing some things such as display evaluation (it’s good), or cameras, however we got the visit the core aspects of the two Xiaomi 11T devices.
The two phones are fundamentally the same, but also couldn’t be any more different in terms of their conclusions;
In terms of design, the devices do market themselves as more budget friendly options compared to the Mi 11. The compromises that were made in design is a blockier form-factor, notably exchanging a curved screen with a lower-resolution flat one, although 120Hz is still there. The build quality of the phones is still good, but not reaching the level of ergonomics we’ve seen on the Mi 11. It’s also in general a larger footprint phone, wider than the Mi 11.
In terms of performance, both phones are good. The 11T Pro, virtue of the Snapdragon 888, is quite snappier and more responsive than the 11T with the MediaTek Dimensity 1200. There are some questionable performance abnormalities for the phones. The 11T Pro handicaps the X1 cores of the Snapdragon quite a bit, and it ends up being unused in a lot of scenarios, notably such as web browsing. The 11T has weird scheduling which also tends to affect its performance to below that of what we expect from the D1200 chip.
On the GPU side, these are the most misbehaving Xiaomi phones to date. In actual gaming titles, performance is ok and thermals are excellent, but Xiaomi only does so in a very opaque manner as there’s very misleading benchmark performance and thermal throttling settings (there’s no throttling!).
Update September 22nd: Following our updated battery test results on the new 11T firmware, we’ve updated the conclusion of the article to better reflect the evaluation of the device.
In terms of battery life, both the 11T and the 11T Pro represent extremely good longevities. Although the SoCs are different, and there are some slight efficiency differences between them, what’s actually more important for the phones is that both devices have optimised platform and display power characteristics that are generally better than other 2021 devices, including Xiaomi’s own other Mi 11 series flagship devices.
Fast-charging has been a PR centre-point for the phones, particularly the 120W 11T Pro. Yes, it’s the fastest charging device on the market, however we are unconvinced of the claims that it doesn’t impact battery longevity. We’ll address the topic in a dedicated article soon, but it’s shocking at how misleading the companies have become in this regard.
The 11T starts at 499€, which really puts the phone at the high end of the mid-tier price category. Thanks to its adequate performance, long battery life, and reasonable compromises, it represents a good value package. The only thing that I would say would have sealed the deal more would be the inclusion of OIS on the main camera, an aspect where both 11T phones still notably struggle behind the Mi 11 or Mi 11i.
The 11T Pro starts at 649€ - it’s a much better device, but its pricing isn’t quite as aggressive as what I had expected from Xiaomi. For only around 50€ more, you can get the Mi 11, which has a much nicer screen, better camera, and although you lose a bit on battery life, it’s a very hard choice to make. There is also the Mi 11i, a phone that is essentially identical to the 11T Pro and comes in at 599€. Xiaomi here is its own toughest competitor in terms of price and value, so I wonder why they felt the need to make the 11T Pro, besides for showcasing 120W charging.
Out of both devices, the 11T Pro is a bit weird because it overlaps so much to Xiaomi’s other phones. The pricing and value of the 11T is something that is able to differentiate itself more, and is a more good overall value package that might interest users.
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zodiacfml - Wednesday, September 15, 2021 - link
not only does 120w charging is crazy, it also appears to charge at a high rate even at 80% battery state. tricks I know is to use two batteries in series and using larger capacity batteries than advertised or lower voltage cutoff. however, those tricks don't appear enough to get up to 120w.yetanotherhuman - Thursday, September 16, 2021 - link
It'd be nice to see some phones again one day, and not just phablets.Linustechtips12 - Thursday, September 16, 2021 - link
very much agreed I will not ever go for an iPhone sorry... but I want the size in between something like the 13 mini and the regular 13 or just a smidge smaller than the s21, the s21 is actually almost perfect coming from an s10e I hope the overall size of the 22 is slightly smaller or the same size as the s10eTheinsanegamerN - Friday, September 17, 2021 - link
So, on a phone like this, how would that work with US carriers? It's not officially sold here, will it work with VoLTE or will these phones be bricks once the 3G networks go down?ATT and verizon are very picky about what is allowed, and while most US sold phones are supported they say nothign about xaiomi.
coolkwc - Sunday, September 19, 2021 - link
If you ever own a fast charging phone and power meter, you will know the 'algorithm' behind the fast charging. The charge current is reduce in staggered, however from what i saw, it is based on temperature capped rather than preset according to SoC. You will noticed that it will reduce the charge in order to keep temperature under 40'C. So if your phone temperature is at the high side when you plug in the charger, the fastest charge rate will not even activated/sustained for any longer, however it will sustain longer if the charge temperature is low. I'm using the Mi 11 Ultra with 67W charger, to preserve the battery life i normally charge using my old QC3.0 samsung charger at home and only charge until 4.3V which is 85-90% full, the sustain charge current is at around 3.5A for the whole charging period. The bundle 67W Xiaomi charger serve as my quick 'travel' charger where i will use when i need a fast top up, which not often based on my use case.Plumplum - Monday, September 20, 2021 - link
Installation of monitoring apps can show problems with CPU behavior...why wasn't it done on the first test?ROM was responsible of the problem.
Problem with Anandtech is how fast they're to accuse Mediatek without asking them questions on how the device and sometime some benchmarks (such as PCMark) behave.
That was already the same with so called cheating.
Unfortunatelly post people won't read the corrected article. The damage is done!
Should made a separate article to apologize!
Premade thought leads to unfair review.
iphonebestgamephone - Saturday, September 25, 2021 - link
Nothing was wrong in cheating one back then. Mediatek not including the cheat mode in dimensity should be enough to tell you all about it.xol - Monday, September 20, 2021 - link
Hot take 1The Cortex X1 is a bad core. Not bulldozer bad but pentium hot/bad/inneficient, which is doubly bad in a mobile environment. ARM added lots of cache and didn't add enough functional units to make it worthwhile. It's half the M1 design - all the cache but lacks the pipeline. bad.
Hot Take 2
Manufacturers (qualcom/xiaomi) know this but can't avoid using latest/"best" core in their latest designs because product spec sheets > actual real world utility.
Hot Take 3
Manufacturers know this too (hot take 2) but still need to use the "bad" X1 cores in their flagships because they need to be "flagship". But the core is crappy and give bad battery life. So they're compensating by essentially disabling as much as they can. (pretty much fact and not hot take)
A ide Hot Take 4
Snapdragon 888 is a "bad" chip too, and not just the X1 core, also the GPU. Quallcomm use the node advantage (5 vs 7nm) to squeeze extra frequency out of their designs, They claim +50% ALU in the new chip (vs 865) but/and clock it at 840 vs 650MHz (+29%). But performance is only +25%. There's real world evidence that the 888 runs hot and thermally throttles in phones way earlier than 865, despite being on 5nm -
sweetca - Tuesday, September 21, 2021 - link
I prefer my spying domestic.Yourdailytask - Thursday, September 23, 2021 - link
hello admingrate post