The Mi 11 Camera System: A Breakdown of its Capabilities and Limitations

This camera system technically has three sensors and three lenses, but I'm not sure if it's taking full advantage of all three. The five megapixel macro sensor is probably not going to be a game-changer, but I wanted to see what this new camera technology with the Snapdragon 8 delivers. This is the same sensor we've seen in Xiaomi's phones, so I was curious to see if I could spot any differences between the image processing on the Snapdragon Triple H and the previous generation.

Some of the photos taken by the Mi 11 are really good, but the difference between the main sensor and the ultrawide lens is not as significant as I had hoped. The main sensor shoots incredibly well, but the ultrawide lens still lags behind in terms of image quality. You can tell when it switches to that ultrawide sensor, and there's a noticeable drop in image quality.

However, one feature I was particularly interested in seeing implemented is the ability to switch focal lenses fluidly, as mentioned during the Qualcomm presentation of Snapdragon 8. This would allow phones like the iPhone to smoothly transition between different lenses, creating a seamless experience for the user. On most Android phones, this feature simply doesn't exist, with a noticeable stutter when switching between focal lengths.

Unfortunately, it seems that Xiaomi's Mi 11 does not have this feature implemented. Despite being powered by the Snapdragon Triple H, which was touted as having the capability to switch lenses fluidly, this feature is not available on the phone. I'm not sure if it's an implementation issue with the chipset or simply a decision made by Xiaomi.

On the other hand, the Mi 11 does perform well in low-light conditions, and its camera capabilities are significantly improved over previous years. The phone's ability to record low-light video with AI enhancements is also a notable feature that didn't exist without the Snapdragon Triple H. This technology allows for brighter images with more accurate colors, even in challenging lighting conditions.

However, I couldn't help but feel that this new chipset wasn't as revolutionary as I had hoped. Processing speed and graphical performance aren't particularly significant improvements over last year's models, and they're already quite good as it is. The phone does come with some nice features like an under-display heart rate sensor, which is a cool touch.

But what really caught my attention was the lack of competition in the Android market space. Qualcomm has become quite comfortable at the top, and it's easy to get complacent without enough rivalry. I want to see Google's custom SOC and more importantly, what Samsung brings with their upcoming Exynos announcement. If they can deliver a competitive chipset that takes on Qualcomm's dominance, it would be a game-changer for the industry.

As I'm writing this, the sun is setting, and the light is fading away quickly. I had to rush through wrapping up this article, but I hope you guys enjoyed it!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enokay so the first phone that's come out with the new snapdragon 8 chipset is this guy here the xiaomi me 11 but because this phone is an exclusive to asia right now i'm not going to focus too much on this particular phone i'm gonna go through some of the more interesting features but i want to focus this video more on the snapdragon triple eight itself just mostly the features that qualcomm was talking about i kind of like hyping up during their presentation of the snapdragon triple eight particularly the camera stuff so yeah this phone itself uh there's two or three things that really jump out of me number one the screen this is an amazing like truly amazing screen it's awesome to see this kind of screen in a 600 650 phone 1440p 120 hertz very responsive it's bright it's colorful it's a really nice screen uh the other thing that really jumped out at me was the speaker array so the me phones have always had good speakers and this is just it's on another level like it's weird how much better these are than a lot of north american phones like i think one of the big things they put like a speaker aperture cutout at the top frame so it's just like you're just getting a really good audio experience the other thing is battery life this is a 4600 milliamp hour battery it's not huge it's big but because of the snapdragon triple eight and because it's a five nanometer fabrication i was hopeful that it would be able to deliver a way better battery experience than previous generations of phones it doesn't like it's good like this is a six six and a half hour screen on time for me it's just that it didn't seem as it didn't seem significant from previous you know seven nanometer chips so and this is just the first one maybe other snapdragon triple eight equipped phones will be able to deliver something different but i tested it several times i'm getting good but somewhat expected battery life now the camera system is a triple camera system they got a wide and ultra wide and a 5 megapixel macro we all love those macros right so this is where my interest was kind of focused on on this particular phone uh during the snapdragon triple eight announcement they mentioned well they really focused on camera improvements right that was the whole thing this year they mentioned the inclusion of a new triple isp so a triple image signal processing capability where you're basically taking three photos at at once right and combining that data into something that's better and more usable now this camera system technically has three sensors and three lenses but i don't know if it's taking advantage of all three because there's only two cameras that are of significant value like that five megapixel macro is probably not amazing but i just wanted to see what does this new camera technology with snapdragon 8 deliver right because this is the same sensor we've seen in xiaomi's phones so i wanted to see if i could spot the difference between the image processing on the snapdragon triple h and the previous generation some of the photos are really good on the mi 11 but the difference is not as big as i was hoping it would be so the main sensor shoots incredibly well but the ultrawide still lags behind like you can tell when it switches over to that ultrawide sensor there is a significant drop in image quality but there was one feature i was particularly interested in seeing uh implemented in these phones so during the qualcomm presentation of snapdragon 8 they mentioned the capability for phones and phone manufacturers to be able to switch uh focal lens fluidly so on the iphone when you switch between like the wide and the ultrawide sensor there's this kind of stitching of images so it's a very fluid motion you'll tap between the two different lenses and it'll smoothly transition between those two lenses as if you're just adjusting a zoom ring on a regular camera lens there's this smooth and fluid motion but on most android phones that's just not a thing you want to switch between your focal lengths there's like a bit of a stutter between them right during the presentation qualcomm said that that would be a feature that the new triple eight equipped phones would be able to do this phone can't do it i don't know if it's like an implementation that uh xiaomi hasn't put in yet but i just expected it and it's not there the mi 11 shoots really well in low light conditions but it didn't feel like a huge step up from 2020 xiaomi phones now there is one feature that didn't exist without the snapdragon triple eight it's the ability to record low light video with ai enhancements so they're working with i think the company's called blink ai but they're tapping in to the snapdragon triple eight and they're able to shoot low light video with some significant enhancements you do lose some detail right but you do get a significantly brighter image in that video as well as more accurate colors now this type of feature isn't useful for everybody right not everyone cares about low light video recording but i do think it's something that the snapdragon plate is doing that couldn't be done before but my overall take on the chip is that it's good but like there's a part of me that was hopeful of i guess like more significant improvements i mean processing speed and graphical performance isn't that big to me right and they're so good already that the year-on-year improvements in those elements are expected and they seemingly dumped the charging cable and charging brick kind of like apple did but they do offer free ones if you want them at least in asia right now but i was hopeful for a much bigger jump in camera capabilities just through the chipset itself but at least on this phone it seemed not as big as i was hoping it to be but the phone itself otherwise it's great if this is your type of phone you're probably gonna love it and the under display heart rate sensor is pretty cool but the snapdragon 8 i got to be honest there's a part of me that feels like qualcomm's getting too comfortable at the top without enough competition and it's easy to get complacent up there i want to see competition i want to see google's custom soc and more importantly i want to see what samsung brings in a couple days the exynos announcement if you think about it if you think about what samsung's doing here this is the first time they've had an announcement for a chip in a while right and it's not just to promote the new s21 and those new phones it's to promote the chip because hopefully the new exynos chip is so good that other companies start using it they want to sell these chips to other phone manufacturers it feels like qualcomm has a huge foothold in the android market space with like everyone uses their chip right almost everyone and to have another player that's competitive and with a huge company like samsung backing it excellence chips i want to see what they delivered in a few days okay but that's my take on this phone and the snapdragon triple eight so far hope you guys enjoyed this video thumbs if you liked it subs if you loved it see you guys next time i had to rush this ending because the sun is going down i feel like i'm gonna lose all the light in a momentokay so the first phone that's come out with the new snapdragon 8 chipset is this guy here the xiaomi me 11 but because this phone is an exclusive to asia right now i'm not going to focus too much on this particular phone i'm gonna go through some of the more interesting features but i want to focus this video more on the snapdragon triple eight itself just mostly the features that qualcomm was talking about i kind of like hyping up during their presentation of the snapdragon triple eight particularly the camera stuff so yeah this phone itself uh there's two or three things that really jump out of me number one the screen this is an amazing like truly amazing screen it's awesome to see this kind of screen in a 600 650 phone 1440p 120 hertz very responsive it's bright it's colorful it's a really nice screen uh the other thing that really jumped out at me was the speaker array so the me phones have always had good speakers and this is just it's on another level like it's weird how much better these are than a lot of north american phones like i think one of the big things they put like a speaker aperture cutout at the top frame so it's just like you're just getting a really good audio experience the other thing is battery life this is a 4600 milliamp hour battery it's not huge it's big but because of the snapdragon triple eight and because it's a five nanometer fabrication i was hopeful that it would be able to deliver a way better battery experience than previous generations of phones it doesn't like it's good like this is a six six and a half hour screen on time for me it's just that it didn't seem as it didn't seem significant from previous you know seven nanometer chips so and this is just the first one maybe other snapdragon triple eight equipped phones will be able to deliver something different but i tested it several times i'm getting good but somewhat expected battery life now the camera system is a triple camera system they got a wide and ultra wide and a 5 megapixel macro we all love those macros right so this is where my interest was kind of focused on on this particular phone uh during the snapdragon triple eight announcement they mentioned well they really focused on camera improvements right that was the whole thing this year they mentioned the inclusion of a new triple isp so a triple image signal processing capability where you're basically taking three photos at at once right and combining that data into something that's better and more usable now this camera system technically has three sensors and three lenses but i don't know if it's taking advantage of all three because there's only two cameras that are of significant value like that five megapixel macro is probably not amazing but i just wanted to see what does this new camera technology with snapdragon 8 deliver right because this is the same sensor we've seen in xiaomi's phones so i wanted to see if i could spot the difference between the image processing on the snapdragon triple h and the previous generation some of the photos are really good on the mi 11 but the difference is not as big as i was hoping it would be so the main sensor shoots incredibly well but the ultrawide still lags behind like you can tell when it switches over to that ultrawide sensor there is a significant drop in image quality but there was one feature i was particularly interested in seeing uh implemented in these phones so during the qualcomm presentation of snapdragon 8 they mentioned the capability for phones and phone manufacturers to be able to switch uh focal lens fluidly so on the iphone when you switch between like the wide and the ultrawide sensor there's this kind of stitching of images so it's a very fluid motion you'll tap between the two different lenses and it'll smoothly transition between those two lenses as if you're just adjusting a zoom ring on a regular camera lens there's this smooth and fluid motion but on most android phones that's just not a thing you want to switch between your focal lengths there's like a bit of a stutter between them right during the presentation qualcomm said that that would be a feature that the new triple eight equipped phones would be able to do this phone can't do it i don't know if it's like an implementation that uh xiaomi hasn't put in yet but i just expected it and it's not there the mi 11 shoots really well in low light conditions but it didn't feel like a huge step up from 2020 xiaomi phones now there is one feature that didn't exist without the snapdragon triple eight it's the ability to record low light video with ai enhancements so they're working with i think the company's called blink ai but they're tapping in to the snapdragon triple eight and they're able to shoot low light video with some significant enhancements you do lose some detail right but you do get a significantly brighter image in that video as well as more accurate colors now this type of feature isn't useful for everybody right not everyone cares about low light video recording but i do think it's something that the snapdragon plate is doing that couldn't be done before but my overall take on the chip is that it's good but like there's a part of me that was hopeful of i guess like more significant improvements i mean processing speed and graphical performance isn't that big to me right and they're so good already that the year-on-year improvements in those elements are expected and they seemingly dumped the charging cable and charging brick kind of like apple did but they do offer free ones if you want them at least in asia right now but i was hopeful for a much bigger jump in camera capabilities just through the chipset itself but at least on this phone it seemed not as big as i was hoping it to be but the phone itself otherwise it's great if this is your type of phone you're probably gonna love it and the under display heart rate sensor is pretty cool but the snapdragon 8 i got to be honest there's a part of me that feels like qualcomm's getting too comfortable at the top without enough competition and it's easy to get complacent up there i want to see competition i want to see google's custom soc and more importantly i want to see what samsung brings in a couple days the exynos announcement if you think about it if you think about what samsung's doing here this is the first time they've had an announcement for a chip in a while right and it's not just to promote the new s21 and those new phones it's to promote the chip because hopefully the new exynos chip is so good that other companies start using it they want to sell these chips to other phone manufacturers it feels like qualcomm has a huge foothold in the android market space with like everyone uses their chip right almost everyone and to have another player that's competitive and with a huge company like samsung backing it excellence chips i want to see what they delivered in a few days okay but that's my take on this phone and the snapdragon triple eight so far hope you guys enjoyed this video thumbs if you liked it subs if you loved it see you guys next time i had to rush this ending because the sun is going down i feel like i'm gonna lose all the light in a moment\n"