Xiaomi Mi 11 launched as the first smartphone with the Snapdragon 888 chipset

Ending the year on a high note, the Xiaomi Mi 11 5G was unveiled at an event in China today as the first next-generation flagship Androids. It also claims the title as the first smartphone to be powered by the new high-end Snapdragon 888 chipset.

Before you get excited, the new Xiaomi flagship is currently going on sale only in its homecountry, with no details on global pricing or availability, except for a vague teaser. Only a single smartphone was unveiled today, busting the rumours of a Mi 11 Pro. Here’s everything you need to know about the Xiaomi Mi 11.

Xiaomi Mi 11 specs

Under the hood, the Xiaomi Mi 11 is powered by the Snapdragon 888 SoC. This is a new octa-core platform with one high-performance Cortex X1 core, three Cortex A78 cores and four high-efficiency Cortex A55 cores. Combined with LPDDR5 RAM capable of 6,400Mbps transmission and UFS 3.1 storage, it boasts of an AnTuTu score of 7,45,942, which is even higher than what Qualcomm was able to achieve with its reference devices. It also marks the debut of the Snapdragon X60 5G modem. There’s also Wi-Fi 6 onboard. 

Within the slim profile of the Mi 11, Xiaomi has also managed to fit a 4,600mAh battery. Along with 55W fast wired charging, it also supports 50W wireless charging and 10W reverse wireless charging. A full charge is claimed to take about 53 minutes. Other hardware features include true dual stereo speakers on the top and the bottom, tuned by Harman Kardon.

As for the optics, the Xiaomi Mi 11 has a triple-camera setup on the rear - a 108MP f/1.85 primary shooter (Samsung ISOCELL HMX image sensor) with PDAF and OIS, which can produce 27MP with 1.6μm pixels after 4-in-1 pixel binning, followed by a 13MP f/2.4 ultra-wide lens with a 123-degree field of view, and a 5MP macro shooter with a 50mm focal length and support for autofocus. There's a 20MP selfie shooter on the front. A bevy of useful shooting modes such as cloning, sky replacement, pro mode, night video, 8K recording and more are also available.

Moving to the front, the Xiaomi Mi 11 has a large 6.81-inch OLED display with a QHD+ (3,200 x 1,440) resolution, which curves on all four sides. It has a refresh rate of 120Hz and an industry-leading touch response rate of 480Hz. With a peak brightness of 1,500nits, it also supports HDR and HDR10+ output. For smooth transitions, it has 8,192 levels of brightness, which is also amongst the highest on any smartphone. For protection, there’s Gorilla Glass Victus on top.

For biometrics, it uses Goodix’s optical in-display fingerprint scanner, which also doubles as a heart rate sensor on the Mi 11.  

Xiaomi Mi 11 price

The Xiaomi Mi 11 starts at CNY 3,999 (~Rs 45,000) for the base variant with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, and goes up to CNY 4,299 (~Rs 48,500) for the 8GB + 256GB configuration. The top-of-the-line model with 12GB of RAM is priced at CNY 4,699 (~Rs 53,000). Colour options include black, blue and white with frosted glass, and khaki and purple in leather.

It will ship in a new slim box without a charger, but customers will get the option to add the charger to their order free of cost. Otherwise, the 55W GaN charger is priced at CNY 99(~Rs 1,100). 

Soon after the event, Xiaomi shared a teaser of the Mi 11’s global launch.

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