The Xiaomi Mi 9 was something of a wonder when it was released back in 2019. Despite selling for under £500, it was the first handset we got our hands on that was powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 processor. It also had the rare distinction of having “none whatsoever” as the only entry in the ‘cons’ column of our Pros and Cons section.
So the Xiaomi Mi 10 and Mi 10 Pro should be pretty exciting handsets. And with MWC 2020 cancelled due to the Coronavirus, Xiaomi has decided to reveal all the details of the new handsets ahead of time. Here’s everything you need to know about them.
Xiaomi Mi 10 and Mi 10 Pro: Everything you need to know
Xiaomi Mi 10 and Mi 10 Pro specs: Just how powerful are the handsets?
Like their 2019 predecessor, the Mi 10 family will be powered by the latest top-end Qualcomm processor, in this case, the Snapdragon 865. Unlike the Mi 9, both will be 5G ready – at least in China.
It’s not just the processor that’ll be best-in-class, either. Xiaomi has sourced new LPDDR5 RAM for memory, following in the footsteps of Samsung and its new S20 series . You’ll get a minimum of 8GB, but this rises up to 12GB on either handset. You can get a model with either 128GB or 256GB of UFS 3.0 storage, depending on your needs.
Both flavours come with a 6.67in, 90hz OLED screen with a resolution of 2,340 x 1,080. They will support the HDR10+ standard and promise a super bright user experience, with a peak luminance of 1,120 nits on the standard Mi 10 and 1,200 nits on the Mi 10 Pro. Said displays have a fingerprint scanner embedded within, but there’s also facial recognition from the 20-megapixel selfie cameras too.
Xiaomi Mi 10 and Mi 10 Pro features: So what’s the difference?
That’s an awful lot of similarities but, that small difference in screen brightness aside, what’s the justification in picking the Pro over the vanilla flavour?
Well, it’s not the battery, so let’s get that disappointment out of the way first. The plain Mi 10 has a 4,780mAh cell, compared to the Mi 10 Pro’s 4,500mAh battery. To be clear, both are large by smartphone standards, but it’s a bit odd that the more expensive version comes with a lower-capacity unit.
The flip side is that the Mi 10 Pro supports 50W charging, compared to the 30W available for the plain Mi 10, so it should at least fill up more quickly. Both have 30W wireless charging, and 10W reverse charging too.
Whoops, I drifted back into similarities again there. The biggest contrast of all is with the camera setup. While both have a quad-camera array on the back, led by a Galaxy S20-matching 108-megapixel lens, the rest of the specs are quite different.
The regular Mi 10 has two 2-megapixel f/2.4 lenses in the mix – one for depth sensing, and the other for close-up macro photography. On the Mi 10 Pro, these are replaced with two far more useful-sounding lenses: a 12-megapixel f/2.0 portrait camera and an 8-megapixel telephoto sensor with 10x hybrid zoom. The fourth camera is an ultra-wide lens on both, but it’s better specced on the Mi 10 Pro: 20-megapixels instead of 13, and with an aperture of f/2.2 instead of f/2.4
Oh, and the colours are different too, if that matters to you. The Mi 10 comes in Ice Blue, Titanium Silver Black and Peach Gold, while the Mi 10 Pro gets the Starry Blue or Pearl White treatment.
Xiaomi Mi 10 and Mi 10 Pro price: How much will they cost?
The regular Mi 10 starts at 3,999 yuan, which is around £440. For that, you get the version with 8GB RAM and 128GB of onboard storage, but you can go all the way to 12GB RAM and 256GB of storage for 4,699 yuan (~£516).
The cheapest Mi 10 Pro, meanwhile, starts at 4,999 yuan, which is around £550. That configuration comes with 8GB RAM and 256GB of storage, but you can up the RAM to 12GB and whack in 512GB of storage at a cost of 5,999 yuan (~£659)
Xiaomi Mi 10 and Mi 10 Pro release date: When will they be available to buy?
If you’re in China, the answer is “right now”. Realistically though, if you’re reading this, you’re not in China, so when can you expect it to hit the rest of the world?
Well, good news and bad news on that score. The good news is that a RoW release is planned, the bad news is that thanks to the Coronavirus and the subsequent cancellation of MWC, we don’t know when that’ll be.
As you can see above, the launch of 23 February has now been changed to “a later date”. So your guess is as good as ours for now. We’ll update this piece when we know more.
