Galaxy S21 Ultra or Xiaomi Mi11 Ultra Which One Should I Buy?

Samsung's Galaxy S21 Ultra is the best smartphone you can buy in the market right now, with the latest specs and features. But it looks like Samsung finally has some competition in the Android world because Xiaomi just unveiled the Mi11 Ultra where the CEO of Xioami is calling the phone the King of Android. 


The Mi 11 Ultra indeed looks like the best alternative to the Galaxy S21 Ultra since the handset isn't just exclusive to China. 


The highlighting feature of the phone is the camera. It has the world's biggest camera sensor that has put on any smartphone out there at nearly an inch of size. Of course, Samsung is the one who made this sensor. It's a 50MP ISOCELL GN2 and expect future Samsung phones to have this sensor as well. To give you some context here are the sensor size difference between the S21 Ultra and the Mi 11 Ultra.


1/1.12”( Mi 11 Ultra) 1/1.33” (Galaxy S21 Ultra)


The biggest advantage of having a bigger sensor is that low light performance gets improved as the sensor can able to get more light. Though we'll have to wait for an actual camera test between the two handsets to see if there's a difference between the camera in the real world because the camera hardware is only half of the story. The software is as much as important as the hardware. 


Galaxy S21 Ultra, Xiaomi Mi11 Ultra, Which One, Buying Guide

Even though the Mi 11 Ultra can zoom in to 120x which is more than what the Galaxy S21 Ultra can do but Xiaomi is using a 5x periscope zoom camera instead of the 10x that Samsung is using on the S21 Ultra. So that means even though the Mi 11 Ultra has 20x more digital zoom than the S21 Ultra but the quality should be much better on Samsung's phone. 

 

The rear camera bump also contains a 1.1-inch AMOLED screen, with a resolution of 126 x 294. Xiaomi says it can be used to take selfies with the rear cameras.


It can function as an always-on display as well. Although, you can essentially mirror whatever is on the phone’s main display, though watching YouTube or checking emails on a finger-sized screen probably isn’t ideal in my opinion.


The phone also has some crazy charging speeds. 67W  wired and wireless charging, which Xiaomi says can fill the 5000mAh battery within 36 minutes.  


Also, remember Xiaomi teased that the phone will have a silicone oxygen anode battery that seems to be the alternative to the graphene batteries but strangely Xiaomi didn't talk about it in detail. And the battery is still at 5000mAh on the Mi 11 Ultra. It seems Xiaomi is still including a typical Li-ion battery in the phone that’s simply augmented by a SiO battery. It's not a full-fledged silicon-oxygen tech but more like a testbed for this tech. Hopefully, in the future, we'll be able to see a better version of it.  

 

On the front, the phone has a 6.81-inch 120Hz Quad HD+ resolution display with a 120Hz refresh rate.  


There's no mention of the LTPO display panel so I'm assuming it's an older LTPS display.  


There's Snapdragon 888 chipset, 5G connectivity and an under-display fingerprint sensor. 


Basically, every bells and whistle you would expect from a proper flagship handset and at US$ 1400 it's a good alternative to the Galaxy S21 Ultra.

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