PhoneSentral Tech in Simplicity
Xiaomi has been known to produce quality products and sell them at mid-range prices. This is no different with the Mi Note 10 Pro.
The Note 10 Pro isn’t actually far off from its ‘lighter’ sibling, the Mi Note 10.
In fact, the only difference between the two is RAM and storage space, with the Mi Note 10 Pro getting the better bargain at 8GB + 256GB storage.
The Mi Note 10 Pro brings a sleek curved wraparound Gorilla Glass build that’s equal to most premium and flagship smartphones out there.
Like most flagships, the frame of the Mi Note 10 Pro is made of aluminium.
I would personally admit that the phone feels great in the palms.
At the bottom of the phone, there’s only one speaker outlet, a 3.5mm headphone jack and a USB-C slot.
SCREEN AND BODY
The Mi Note 10 Pro has a 6.47-inch AMOLED capacitive touchscreen, with a 87.8% screen-to-body ratio screen. That’s pretty huge. It is protected by Gorilla Glass 5, which is typical to most Xiaomi phones.
The screen supports 1080 x 2340 pixels resolution with about 398ppi density. There’s no mention of the refresh rate for the screen, so I can’t put that here.
Colours on the screen are pretty sharp and I would say accurate.
There’s a small punch hole on the top centre of the screen to fit the selfie camera as well.
An in-screen fingerprint scanner helps unlock the phone bio-metrically.
It is rather disappointing that despite noticeable waterproof rubber adhesive at the SIM slot, here’s no official IP rating for the Xiaomi Mi Note 10 Pro.
The rear of the phone looks stunning with glass, but there’s a huge camera bump.
A case is highly recommended to even up the bump at the back.
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AUDIO SYSTEM
For external audio, the Mi Note 10 Pro uses an ultra-linear speaker.
The sound produced by the speaker is loud and sharp enough but it lacks that punch stereo speakers have.
Despite that, the sound produced is rich and has good bass. It also hits those highs and lows pretty well.
There’s also a 3.5mm audio jack at the bottom of the phone, and it supports HiFi sound quality.
XIAOMI MI NOTE 10 PRO SOFTWARE
I have always loved the MIUI, and this phone runs on just that, specifically the MIUI 11.
The MIUI 11 is based on the Android 9, and not the latest Android 10.
Despite that, the MIUI 11 is smooth and includes many useful apps which allow quite a number of customization such as full screen gestures, dark mode enable screen, schedule on/off, dual apps and many more. Dual apps is exclusive to MIUI.
Alarms rings and sound can be set according to the day and date, so that’s pretty fun as well.
Customizing themes is also a lot of fun with the thousand of themes available in the MIUI Themes.
Unfortunately however, the MIUI has slight flaws which is its by default advertisement ready.
This means that every time I download a new app, adverts may appear upon completion of the download.
These adverts also appear in the Games folder with suggested games appearing at the bottom of the app list upon entry.
There’s a way to disable the ads, but knowing the ads are there by default makes them feel rather intrusive.
PROCESSOR AND STORAGE
Under the hood of this flagship smartphone by Xiaomi is the Snapdragon 730G chipset which is paired with 8GB RAM.
The 730G is good enough for gaming, but it’s not great. It also doesn’t support 5G and is somewhat below what other rivals are using.
I noticed there’s some delay when loading games like Call Of Duty, PUBG and FIFA20 but the phone doesn’t heat up that much when playing these games.
Playing any of the above mentioned games is also smooth. It’s only the loading time that takes a slight noticeable hit.
Also under the hood is a non-expandable 256GB storage space.
XIAOMI MI NOTE 10 PRO BATTERY LIFE
A massive 5,260mAh battery juices up the Mi Note 10 Pro and experience tells me that the phone can last up to a whole day on a single charge on typical use. Usually, I’ll be half way draining the full battery after 12 hours of my typical usage which excludes gaming.
Test by some sites claim that the battery can last over 95 hours, but I’m not quite sure how they tested to get such figure.
Gaming will reduce its battery life by half but it can be filled up back again to 58% in 30 minutes if you use the 30W fast charging charger.
A full charge takes over an hour with the provided charger.
XIAOMI MI NOTE 10 PRO CAMERA
The Mi Note 10 Pro boast of a Penta camera set-up. This means that it has 5 cameras placed on it’s rear side.
Before I jump into the camera review, let me point out that the three main lenses are placed on a slight higher slab at the rear, hence making the phone unable to lie flat on a surface. I think Xiaomi had to do this to make room for the optical zooms.
The main camera is a 108MP (8P lens) camera. It is paired with a 12MP telephoto lens with 2X optical zoom, an 8MP telephoto with a 3.7x optical zoom and 5x hybrid zoom, a 20MP ultrawide, and a 2MP macro lens.
The main camera comes with auto focus and image stabilization and is similar to the one available in the Motorola Edge Plus and Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra.
The 12MP and 8MP telephoto lens both come with autofocus, but only the 8MP has image stabilization.
In general, images from the main camera are sharp with plenty of detail, and can have that cool natural background blur you see when using DSLRs. There’s almost no noise in day light photos as well.
Night shots by the Mi Note 10 Pro main camera is also excellent coming out detailed and clean.
Image samples taken by the phone can be seen below.
Shooting with the 108MP camera grabs more details, but processing time also takes a hit. The image also take longer to save as it’s bigger.
The selfie camera is a 32MP lens. It takes sharp selfies and does a decent job with the bokeh effect. Images are clear and natural looking, even when taken indoors.
The phone can also take 4K videos and they come out sharp with great contrast. The image stabilization does a great job when recording and you can also do macro video shooting as well.
Overall, the camera set-up for the Xiaomi Mi Note 10 Pro is pretty good, if not the best.
VERDICT PRICING & AVAIBILITY
The Xiaomi Mi Note 10 Pro is not available in the official Mi Malaysia store, but it is sold by third party retailers for about RM2,067 ($479).
I think that this phone would not go down well with those looking for excellent gaming experience, so if that’s why you are considering this phone, you may want to drop it.
You should also not consider this phone if you tend to get wet. The Mi Note 10 Pro doesn’t have any official IP rating and always getting it wet adds on to the risk of owning one.
Those that probably love this phone will be photography enthusiast because best camera lenses are great for photo taking.
It’s also great for those wanting a flagship phone which doesn’t cost over RM3,000.
Overall, the phone is a mixed bag, and I think if you aren’t too concerned about slight delays when loading a game, this phone would be perfect.
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