Xiaomi Mi 10 Ultra Vs. Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra.

 

Camera Shootout: Xiaomi Mi 10 Ultra Vs. Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra.

The Xiaomi Mi 10 Ultra (left) and Samsung's Galaxy Note 20 Ultra.

Ben Sin

The year 2020 marks Xiaomi’s 10th anniversary as a company, and the Beijing-headquartered tech giant is celebrating with a surprise announcement of the Xiaomi Mi 10 Ultra. Despite keeping the same model name as the Mi 10 series that was released a few months ago, this phone isn’t just a minor spec bump. It’s got a new design and uses a different main and zoom camera.

Of course, to audiences in the west, using the moniker “Ultra” will seem like it’s following in Samsung’s footsteps, whose highest-end flagship phones began using the same moniker this year, and had just announced a Galaxy Note 20 Ultra. But that wouldn’t be entirely fair, one because HTC had used the Ultra name before, and two, Xiaomi’s phone isn’t set for release outside of China, and its official Chinese name translates more literally to “Xiaomi 10 Supreme Collector’s Edition.”

Regardless, a camera shoot-out is in order, not just because Samsung’s and Xiaomi’s latest share a word in their names, but also because Xiaomi’s Ultra also moves away from that 108-megapixel Samsung camera sensor that Xiaomi had used in the Mi 10 Pro. It is that same 108-megapixel camera that had given Samsung’s spring flagship the S20 Ultra troubles due to focusing issues and is now still being used in the most recent Note 20 Ultra.

The main shooter of Xiaomi’s latest is now a custom-manufactured 48MP ultra-large pixel main camera that adopts a 1/1.32-inch sensor. This drastically improves low-light performance, because the image sensor is larger and the lower megapixel count actually helps light intake.

Xiaomi’s Ultra phone also introduces a couple of industry firsts: it charges via an included 120W fast charger that can fully charge the 4,500 mAh battery from 0-100 in 23 minutes. I haven’t tested the 0-100 run yet, but I did test the phone for a five-minute top-up and the 120W charger pumped 22% of the juice in five minutes (video below). The phone also supports wireless charging up to 55W speeds if you use Xiaomi’s official charger. Needless to say, these speeds are jaw-droppingly fast and make the charging on an iPhone look like it’s five years behind.

Samsung’s Note 20 Ultra is no slouch either: it added a new laser autofocus sensor to mostly fix the focusing issues of the S20 Ultra, while the Periscope and ultrawide angle cameras remain mostly unchanged on the hardware front, but with some software fine-tuning. Like before, Note 20 Ultra’s 108-megapixel camera is used to shoot 9-in-1 pixel-binned photos.

Standard 1X daytime shot

1X standard shots with the Mi 10 Ultra and Note 20 Ultra.

Ben Sin

(Note: the Mi 10 Ultra watermark can be disabled, but I left it on for this test for easy differentiation between a Xiaomi image and a Samsung image. For cropped shots without the watermark, note that Xiaomi’s image is on the left.)

This is a slightly challenging shot due to the extremely sunny mid-day sky, the ground drenched in deep shadows cast by tall buildings and a moving vehicle. Despite all that, both cameras knocked it out of the park. The skies are properly balanced in both shots, though Samsung’s sky exhibits the same exaggerated dialed-up contrast that some love, some do not. Xiaomi’s shutter speed is a bit faster, hence why the taxi is a few steps behind in the shot (I took both pictures simultaneously).

Let’s move to more challenging shots.

Ultra-wide angle camera

Ultra-wide angle images.

Ben Sin

Both Xiaomi and Samsung’s ultrawide angle cameras have some of the widest field-of-view around. Xiaomi’s 20-megapixel camera 20-megapixel lens captures a 128-degree field of vision, of a 12mm equivalent, while the Note 20 Ultra’s 12-megapixel ultrawide grabs a 13mm equivalent field of view. Results are, once again, very close, but Xiaomi’s f/2.2 aperture pulls in slightly more light than Samsung’s f/3.0.

But a 20-megapixel camera has more pixels to fill an ultrawide, and so when blown up to actual size, Xiaomi’s image is larger, and if I scale up Samsung’s image to match, you can see Xiaomi’s ultrawide image is sharper, particularly on the Chinese characters of the sign and the vents to the left of it.

zoomed in ultrawide.

Ben Sin

10x zoom

Both of the Periscope zoom lenses here produce 5x lossless optical zoom and 10x near loss-less. Xiaomi’s hardware appears a bit superior, as it’s a 48-megapixel quad Bayer Periscope lens that uses pixel-binning to achieve the equivalent of a 1.6μm pixel size while the Note 20 Ultra’s Periscope lens is a 12-megapixel sensor with a 1.41.0μm size.

Here’s the reference image from where I was standing; I’m going to zoom into the tires of the pink truck.

1X reference image.

Ben Sin

10X zoom images, with Xiaomi (left) and Samsung (right).

Ben Sin

Both 10x zoom shots are very good but not quite true lossless, like what the Huawei P40 Pro Plus is capable of. Samsung’s image (right) has more accurate colors, but Xiaomi’s image is a tad crisper, especially the texture in the steel plate under the wheels.

Let’s examine another 10x zoom.

10X zoom.

Ben Sin

Here, Xiaomi’s lead is more noticeable. The textures of the Marvel figurine in Samsung’s photos are clearly digitally sharpened, and there’s noticeable noise behind the figure, whereas the Mi 10 Ultra’s image is cleaner and more naturally sharp all around.

Still, both of these are very good shots. For reference, below is the same 10X zoom with an iPhone 11 Pro (right).

10X zooms

Ben Sin

50x zoom

Samsung’s spring flagship, the S20 Ultra, advertised a 100x zoom that was a bit too blurry to be of any real use. Samsung decided to tone down the marketing hyperbole and cap the Note 20 Ultra’s digital zoom at 50x. Xiaomi, however, takes the approach in the other direction and pushes the digital zoom limit to 120x, the highest we’ve seen yet. For this test, we’ll focus on 50x, since that’s the maximum Samsung’s phone can do.

50X zoom.

Ben Sin

50X

Ben Sin

None of these 50x shots are particularly sharp or detailed, but considering how far 50x zoom is, it’s still impressive modern-day smartphone cameras can do this. For me, zooming like this is still useful because it allows me to read signs from far away.

120x zoom

As mentioned, Xiaomi’s camera can boost zoom all the way up to 120X. In the below sample, I zoomed into the basket of a bicycle outside my room window.

120X zoom.

Ben SIn

It’s a blurry shot, sure, but I can actually make out the contents in the basket—dry Chinese noodles, some wrapped in Chinese newspapers.

Extreme low light shot

The Mi 10 Ultra’s custom-built main camera was designed to excel in low light conditions and it shows here. In the below sample, shot in my living room with all lights off and just a bit of natural light from a window at the other end of the apartment, Xiaomi’s large 1/1.38-inch sensor was able to pull in drastically more light than the Note 20 Ultra’s 108-megapixel camera.

Low light shot.

Ben Sin

The good news for Samsung is it has a better night mode than Xiaomi; when I turn night mode on for both phones, the Note 20 Ultra pulls back ahead. But this night mode requires standing still for five seconds, so it’s not always possible to shoot with this model in real-life situations.

With night mode on.

Ben Sin

Bokeh portrait shots

Bokeh portraits.

Ben Sin

Both phones capture excellent bokeh images, with natural-looking depth-of-field blurred effects. Xiaomi uses a dedicated telephoto camera to help with the portrait, while Samsung appears to make do totally with software.

The Xiaomi Mi 10 Ultra and the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra.

Ben Sin

So far from this early camera test, it appears Xiaomi’s Mi 10 Ultra has a slightly more capable camera system. But there’s still more testing to be done, and of course, there’s a lot more to a phone than just the cameras. Both of these are among the most powerful flagships around, with Xiaomi’s specs perhaps unrivaled by anyone other than Huawei’s P40 Pro Plus.

I’ll have a full review of these two phones after further in-depth testing.

Xiaomi announces Mi 10 Ultra with 120W fast charging.

Rumors about Xiaomi’s Mi 10 Ultra have been swirling this week, and the company has now formally announced the product. Xiaomi revealed key features of its anticipated handset in a press release and a series of tweets. “Whatever you can imagine, #Mi10Ultra has it,” the company said.

The highlight is that the Ultra supports 120-watt wired fast charging. It has a 4,500mAh battery (the same size as that of the Samsung Galaxy S20 Plus); Xiaomi claims it’ll fully juice up in 23 minutes and hit 41 percent after just five minutes. The Ultra also supports 50W wireless fast charging. Xiaomi claims you can get a full charge in 40 minutes going this route.

The Ultra also houses an impressive camera array, including a 48-megapixel primary shooter with a 1/1.32-inch sensor, a 120x hybrid zoom camera, and 8K video recording capabilities. There’s also a 20-megapixel ultrawide camera with a 128-degree field of view and a 12-megapixel portrait camera.

The 6.67-inch OLED display also looks to be top-notch, with a 120Hz refresh rate. That can lead to smoother animations and scrolling than you’ll get with a traditional 60Hz display, but it can also be a battery suck on some phones. And it’s all powered by a Snapdragon 865, the same chipset that’s in many of the fastest Android phones on the market (including the Galaxy S20 and S20 Ultra).

The Mi 10 Ultra will be available in mainland China on August 16th, and it’ll start at 5,299 Yuan (around $760).

Xiaomi teased a number of other products as well, including a 20W wireless charging pad, a 55W wireless charging stand, a Redmi K30 Ultra phone with 33W fast charging and a 120Hz OLED display, an ultra-thin OLED TV called Mi TV Lux, and a GoKart called the Ninebot GoKart Pro Lamborghini Edition.

Xiaomi's Mi 10 Ultra has 120x zoom and can fully charge in 23 minutes.

Xiaomi is celebrating its 10th birthday in the coolest possible way: By launching a new flagship smartphone. 

The Xiaomi Mi 10 Ultra is an absolute beast of a phone in terms of specs. It has a 6.67-inch curvy OLED display with FHD+ resolution, a 120Hz refresh rate, and a 240Hz touch sampling rate, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 processor, as well as 8/12/16GB of RAM and 128/256/512GB of storage. 

On the front, the 20-megapixel selfie camera is located in a punch hole on the top left. On the back, there's a quad-camera with a 48-megapixel primary sensor, a 20-megapixel ultra-wide sensor, and a 12-megapixel portrait lens. The camera system features a 120x hybrid zoom with the help of a periscope lens and can record 8K video at 24 fps, as well as slow-motion video at 960 fps. 

The Mi 10 Ultra packs a very powerful camera system on the back.

Finally, the phone has a 4,500mAh battery with 120W wired, 50W wireless, and 10W reverse wireless charging. Xiaomi claims that the phone's wired charging will get you from zero to 41 percent in 5 minutes, and from zero to 100 percent in a blazing-fast 23 minutes. 

It also includes 5G connectivity, dual stereo speakers, an in-display fingerprint sensor, face unlocking capability, liquid cooling, and an IR blaster. 

Design-wise, the phone looks like any other modern smartphone on the front, but the massive bump on the back makes it look like a standalone compact camera. And if the regular Obsidian Black and Mercury Silver colors aren't exciting enough for you, there's also a much cooler Transparent Edition that shows the phone's innards. 

This camera bump is making a statement.

The Xiaomi Mi 10 Ultra will be available in China on Aug. 16, at a price of RMB 5,299 ($764). There's no word on international availability yet.