The new Mi 10T and Mi 10T Pro manage to offer something that we haven’t seen from flagship phones in a while – genuine awe and surprise. These are high-end devices with top-of-the-line specifications, including a high 144Hz refresh rate screen, up to 108MP cameras, and Snapdragon 865 SoC. Xiaomi is offering all of this at a starting price of Rs 35,999, which is impressive considering the Mi 10 was launched in the country earlier this year at Rs 50,000.
The Mi 10T and Mi 10T Pro are more affordable than the recently-launched OnePlus 8T as well, which make them attractive options for consumers in India. But before you go Diwali shopping for the Mi 10T series, we decided to take a close look at the Pro model to give you a better idea of what you’re getting for your money. Our full review will be out in a few days, so here are our quick first impressions until then.
The Mi 10T Pro is a premium-looking phone with a glossy and reflective Gorilla Glass 5 on the front and back. The phone comes in Cosmic Black and Lunar Silver colour options and we received the black colour variant for review. The Mi 10T Pro is a large phone that feels quite substantial in the hand. It weighs 218 grams and measures 9.33mm in thickness, which makes it a pretty thick and heavy device. It also gets a really big camera bump, which will make the phone wobble on a flat surface. You’ll also notice a lot of dust gather around the camera hump.
There’s a side-mounted fingerprint sensor on the right side of the frame just below the volume buttons. The IR blaster can be seen on the top while the bottom sees a speaker grille, Type-C port, and a dual-SIM tray. The phone does not support expandable storage and there’s no headphone jack as well.
On the front, you get a 6.67-inch FHD+ (2,400 x 1,080) LCD display that supports up to 144Hz refresh rate. Xiaomi says the phone supports what it calls AdaptiveSync, which can automatically switch between seven refresh rates ranging from 30Hz to 144Hz depending on the content you’re watching. The display also supports DCI-P3 colour gamut, MEMC and HDR10. Xiaomi’s decision to choose LCD over AMOLED may disappoint users, but the company is confident it is offering a high-quality panel. We will talk more about the display quality in our full review, but our initial impressions are positive. The display offers bright and punchy colours and looks good for consuming media.
The Mi 10T Pro is equipped with triple cameras at the back that includes a 108MP high-resolution Samsung HMX sensor, a 13MP ultra-wide camera, and a 5MP macro camera. The phone also gets a 20MP front-facing camera. The M 10T Pro comes with a bunch of camera features, including portrait, night mode, VLOG, front and back, slow motion, long exposure, clone, and so on. The rear camera also supports up to 8K video recording at 30 fps. We’ll have more to say about the camera performance under different conditions and scenarios in our full review.
The flagship is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 SoC that features 5G support. The Mi 10T Pro comes with 8GB RAM and 128GB internal storage. No surprises the phone feels extremely fast and smooth out of the box. Apps open swiftly and browsing through the UI feels fluid thanks to the high refresh rate. We will be putting the phone through its paces in the days to come to see how the phone handles intensive tasks like gaming and multitasking. The device runs on MIUI 12 based on Android 10 instead of Android 11 and Xiaomi promises no ads.
The Mi 10T Pro houses a 5,000mAh battery, which should deliver an all-day battery life, but we need a few more days to get an accurate reading on this. In our full review, we will talk about the phone’s battery performance and screen time under general and heavy use cases. The phone also supports 33W fast charging with a charger offered in the box.
Based on initial impressions, the Mi 10T Pro looks like a solid all-round flagship with a high refresh rate display, a powerful chipset, high-resolution cameras, and a large battery. It gets almost all the features one expects to see from a premium phone and without carrying a high-end price tag. We will reserve our judgement about the Mi 10T Pro in our full review, so stay tuned for that.
