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00:36Alright, so this is the Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra.
00:39It's Xiaomi's latest and greatest creation for 2021.
00:43With a camera bump the size of the moon on the back.
00:47It's a big one. So you might have seen that I posted a picture of this phone on Twitter.
00:51And I asked, just, would you rock a phone like this?
00:53And the answers were mostly two things.
00:56One, no, just make the rest of the phone thicker
01:00to match the thickness of the camera bump.
01:01Just add some battery and make it flush.
01:04Or two, yeah, if the camera is actually amazing.
01:11All right, well, that being said,
01:12let's just jump straight into this camera, shall we?
01:14Also, stay tuned to the end of this video
01:16where I have a trailer for Retro Tech season two.
01:20It's finally ready and it's dropping daily,
01:23starting tomorrow on this channel.
01:26It's gonna be lit.
01:27But this is the world's largest smartphone camera
01:31in more than one way.
01:32So it's not even like it's that many cameras
01:35by today's standards anyway.
01:36It's got three on the back along with a triple LED flash
01:40and a whole touchscreen, which I'll get to.
01:42But each of these cameras on the back of this thing
01:43appears to be a world's largest in some way.
01:47So the primary sensor
01:48is the world's largest camera sensor in a smartphone.
01:52Then the ultrawide gives you
01:54the world's largest field of view,
01:57the widest ultrawide of any I've seen in a smartphone.
02:00And the zoom at 120X is the biggest zoom
02:04in any smartphone so far.
02:06So right off the bat, on paper, pretty impressive.
02:09So, all right, the main camera.
02:11That, ladies and gentlemen, is a 1 over 1.12 inch sensor.
02:15That is really close to one inch.
02:18And you know what else has a one inch sensor?
02:20The Sony RX100.
02:22Now, of course, that also has a whole real optical zoom lens
02:25and it can do a lot more.
02:26It's a dedicated point and shoot,
02:27but to fit nearly the same size sensor inside a smartphone
02:32is pretty incredible.
02:33It's kind of hard to understand how awesome that is.
02:35So that 50 megapixel sensor bends down to 12 megapixels,
02:38has an F 1.95 aperture and OIS.
02:42Now, if the question is, can this phone hang
02:44with the RX100, the answer is still mostly no
02:48because that glass does make a huge difference to a photo,
02:51even if you do have a similar sensor,
02:53but that huge sensor does deliver a certain look.
02:57And that look is high detail
03:00and shallow depth of field all the time.
03:02So literally anytime you have a closeup subject,
03:05you can count on the background being blurred out of focus.
03:08None of these shots are portrait mode.
03:10This is just straight snapping photos.
03:12It absolutely epitomizes that big sensor look
03:14in a smartphone, but guess what?
03:16That also means if you have even more closeup subjects
03:19like I do, you're gonna start to see fringing
03:21around the outsides because the plane of focus is so thin
03:26that most of the object, unless it's flat,
03:29is actually going to be slightly out of focus.
03:31We've seen this from other big sensor smartphones.
03:33I do really like the processing though.
03:34I gotta say, it's very naturally sharp.
03:37It's not like this over-processed hyper sharpened look
03:41like I've seen a lot lately.
03:42So these are just some of the photos
03:43I've been taking with it.
03:44There's plenty of detail and information.
03:46And when you zoom in, they retain that detail.
03:49So that part's really nice.
03:50Aside from that though, the colors aren't really
03:53all that amazing to me.
03:54The HDR works well,
03:56though it does still occasionally overdo it.
03:59And the fringing sometimes gets really annoying
04:01when you have very closeup subjects,
04:03and I take a lot of those,
04:04but generally this camera's quite nice
04:07at not looking over-processed until nighttime.
04:11So that huge sensor is specifically letting in
04:14tons of light.
04:15So at night, you can pretty easily take low noise photos
04:19with a pretty fast shutter speed.
04:20Some phones just like to make shots at night
04:22look like they were taken during the day.
04:24Maybe you're into this look, maybe you're not.
04:26There's no doubt though about the light gathering advantage
04:28of such a huge sensor.
04:30This is the same shot in a one and a half second exposure
04:32from the Mi 11 Ultra versus a three second exposure
04:35from the iPhone 12 Pro.
04:37And same deal here.
04:38They're both very detailed photos
04:39and they look very similar,
04:40but the Xiaomi is a little brighter.
04:42And more importantly, it took less time than the other one.
04:44All right, so then the ultrawide.
04:47This ultrawide camera with 128 degree field of view.
04:52So look, I've seen a lot of ultrawides
04:55on the back of phones in my day ever since that LG G5.
04:58And I think it's safe to say
04:59this is the widest ultrawide I've seen yet.
05:04It gives you the biggest field of view.
05:06And it has a lot of the same processing characteristics
05:08as the main camera.
05:09It's 48 megapixels and it's got the detail,
05:12the pretty flat color, the HDR.
05:15But what I noticed is because it's so incredibly wide,
05:19the outer edges of the frame, like near the corners,
05:23are much softer and more distorted than most of the middle.
05:26So by the time you crop in from that super soft corner,
05:29you end up with a pretty normal looking ultrawide,
05:32but it's nice to have that extra flexibility
05:34of a camera that can just capture everything
05:36in one shot for sure.
05:38I literally never had to worry
05:39about backing up from a subject.
05:40So then lastly, your zoom.
05:42You got yourself another 48 megapixels
05:44at a 5X optical zoom,
05:47which can take you up to 120X on the digital zoom side,
05:51which that's the biggest number.
05:53That's the furthest digital zoom you're gonna find today
05:57in a smartphone camera.
05:58Now the usability of 120X zoom is very debatable.
06:02You know, they do the same software trick Samsung does
06:04by showing you where you are in the overall frame
06:07when you're zooming in.
06:07So you at least have an idea of what you're looking at.
06:09But most stuff you shoot past about 50X,
06:13just looks not great.
06:14And the 120X photos just look like a smear of pixels,
06:17like a guessing game.
06:18Unless you know exactly what you're looking at,
06:20it's not gonna be great.
06:21I file this directly into the novelty drawer,
06:24but there is no doubt that you can get much, much sharper,
06:28like five to 20X zoom photos from this camera.
06:31And they still have shallow depth of field,
06:33which is pretty nuts.
06:34All three of these cameras will shoot night mode photos.
06:36And all three of these cameras will also shoot 8K video,
06:41which is pretty great.
06:42Although 8K video is locked up to 24 FPS.
06:46So I found myself shooting in the correct frame rate
06:49at 4K 30.
06:51You can also do 4K 60,
06:53but pretty impressive on the video front.
06:54And you can see the staggered HDR really working here.
06:57I feel like I can see way more into the shadows
07:00with this video camera, like in clips like this.
07:03You can switch also somewhat smoothly
07:05between all three cameras while shooting video at 4K,
07:08which is sweet.
07:09And I was impressed with the color consistency
07:10between all three cameras.
07:12Now the minimum focus distance is not nearly the same
07:15from the telephoto when it kicks in.
07:17So if you're shooting something close up,
07:19probably don't switch to the telephoto.
07:20But aside from that,
07:21whether you like the color tuning or not,
07:23they've gotten it very consistent between all the cameras.
07:26It's good stuff.
07:26But something else I've noticed with Mi 11 Ultra,
07:29it seems to be working really hard doing this camera stuff.
07:34So it's, you know, there's a couple of features
07:36that are enabled by the Snapdragon 888,
07:39but just because they're enabled
07:40doesn't mean they're efficient or easy for it.
07:43So with heavy camera use, I actually noticed two things.
07:46One, the battery plummeted.
07:51Look at this graph.
07:51This is a 5,000 milliamp hour battery
07:54going from about 45% to near 25% in a couple of minutes.
07:59And Xiaomi software is just straight up telling me like,
08:01yeah, it's the camera that's killing your battery.
08:04The built-in battery setting lets you play around
08:05with the graph and look at exactly how much battery
08:08certain apps drain in certain time periods.
08:10And the camera was the culprit here.
08:12But the other thing I noticed is shutter lag,
08:15or at least I thought it was shutter lag,
08:17but it's actually just a lag of the shutter animation.
08:21The photo you're taking is actually
08:24as soon as you touch the button,
08:26but then the animation plays a split second late.
08:29So it kind of feels like the opposite problem
08:30the OnePlus 9s have, where you think you got the picture,
08:33but then you didn't.
08:34With this camera, you might think you missed it,
08:37but you actually did get it.
08:38So it feels a bit slow overall,
08:40but the shots are in fact very quick, if that makes sense.
08:44So now you got the world's largest smartphone sensor,
08:46the world's largest field of view ultra wide,
08:48the deepest zoom in any smartphone camera.
08:51Might as well finish it off
08:52by making it the world's largest camera bump
08:56by adding a screen to the back.
08:59Because why not?
09:00So actually I had to think about this.
09:01I'm not sure if it actually is the biggest ever camera bump
09:05by volume, just because phones like the Lumia 1020 exist,
09:08but this display on the back here is pretty funny.
09:11Fun fact, it's actually the same display
09:14that's in Xiaomi's Mi Band 5.
09:16It's like they realized they had some extras leftover
09:18and just thought,
09:19hey, why don't we put these in the back of the phone?
09:21So it's a 1.1 inch AMOLED touchscreen
09:24with a 126 by 294 resolution.
09:27It's not super sharp at all.
09:29I can literally see pixels and it's also not very bright,
09:32but it can show you a couple things.
09:36It can show you the time, your battery status,
09:38and a notification light if you have any waiting for you.
09:40And I can also show you any number of preloaded images
09:43with a black background.
09:44That's kind of cool if you just want a cactus
09:48on the back of your phone all the time.
09:49But there's also a whole customizer built into the software
09:52where you can put a text quote permanently
09:54on the back of your phone,
09:55or even upload your own custom image.
09:58Hence the thumbnail for this video.
10:00Not quite as custom as the ROG Phone 5 Ultimate,
10:03but it's up there.
10:04But really the only actually useful thing I've seen it do
10:07is act as a tiny viewfinder for the main camera.
10:10So you can take high quality selfies
10:11on those massive sensors,
10:13and you can zoom in and out and everything.
10:15And that'll be a much higher quality selfie
10:17than the perfectly average 20 megapixel selfie camera
10:20could ever manage.
10:20Other than that, honestly, not super useful.
10:23It's pretty cool, of course, it's a touchscreen,
10:26but yeah, I think you spend most of your time
10:28looking at the front of the phone.
10:30But here's what I guess you can say here
10:31is that screen brought the camera bump
10:35all the way to the other side of the phone here.
10:37So now you have this big square camera bump
10:40that doesn't rock side to side on a table.
10:44So I guess if it's between screen and no screen,
10:46then I'll take the screen all day.
10:49By the way, the rest of this phone is sick.
10:51It's called the Ultra for a reason.
10:53This is Xiaomi's absolutely high-end
10:55top of the line flagship,
10:56and it's got all the specs and the features to back it up.
10:58It's a Snapdragon 888,
10:59like we talked about, 12 gigs of RAM,
11:02256 gigs of fast storage,
11:04and the 5,000 milliamp hour battery,
11:06like we talked about, is pretty impressive,
11:08but not as impressive as 67 watt wired charging
11:11and 67 watt wireless charging
11:14on an optional Xiaomi wireless charger.
11:16I don't have that specific wireless charger,
11:18but it's definitely good that a phone
11:20that can run down your battery like this
11:22can also charge up real quick like this.
11:25And so it also has an ultra high-end display,
11:27as you can see, 6.81 inches, 1440p, 120 Hertz OLED,
11:32with an in-screen fingerprint reader, curved edges,
11:35and a super bright 1700 nits maximum brightness
11:40that makes it very readable indoors, outdoors,
11:43pretty much everywhere.
11:44And honestly, it's got pretty much every other high-end spec
11:47you can actually think of in a phone.
11:49Like just name a high-end spec in your head.
11:51This phone's got it, all right?
11:53Great haptics, check.
11:54IP68, check.
11:56Reverse wireless charging, yeah, check.
11:5810 watts.
11:59It's got an IR blaster, okay?
12:01Great speaker quality.
12:03Oh, double check, there's Harman Kardon
12:05dual stereo speakers on the top and the bottom.
12:07And it's all wrapped up in Xiaomi software
12:09that I've talked about a little more in my Mi 11 video,
12:12but that I do think is also getting really good.
12:14This phone does it all short of levitating,
12:16but I just do wanna land back on that build one more time.
12:20You see the photos and the crazy bump
12:22on the back of the phone, and it just looks like a lot.
12:25But once you actually start to use the phone,
12:27I found that my finger, I naturally like kind of
12:30rested right underneath the camera,
12:32sort of propped it up like that.
12:34And that was kind of nice.
12:34And so I know a lot of you were saying,
12:36oh, just make this phone thicker,
12:38give it a 10,000 milliamp hour battery
12:40and get rid of the camera bump.
12:42But this phone is already quite heavy.
12:45It's a ceramic back phone, first of all.
12:47And if I weight it, which I did,
12:49literally up against some of the other flagships,
12:51it's one of the heaviest.
12:52And so if you add all of that battery,
12:55you lose the grip of the camera.
12:57And then it's just one big slick thing.
12:59Like I get where you're coming from,
13:01but I feel like it's surprisingly not too top heavy
13:05with this current design.
13:06And I actually don't mind it.
13:07So just something that you get a difference
13:10between seeing the phone and actually using the phone.
13:12But hey, at the end of the day, it comes down to you.
13:15Would you rock a phone with a gigantic camera bump
13:18like this or not?
13:20For the big time sensor, the big time ultra wide,
13:22the big time zoom and a screen on the back,
13:26would you be into that?
13:27Let me know in the comment section below.
13:28It's probably gonna keep getting more extreme
13:30from here on out.
13:31Okay, Retro Tech time.
13:33It's finally back.
13:35Season two of Retro Tech is finally ready for your eyeballs.
13:38And it's a little bit different this time.
13:40So last time on season one of Retro Tech,
13:42we went through six gadgets
13:44that changed the course of history
13:46and affected everything that came after them, right?
13:49Left a ripple in our universe,
13:50things like the Walkman and the Mac and the Dynatac.
13:54This season, it's a little different.
13:56This time we're exploring some of the ideas from the past
14:00that we thought would be our future by now
14:04and whether or not we got there.
14:06So every day this week, starting tomorrow,
14:08we're dropping daily new episodes of Retro Tech season two.
14:12It's gonna be so sick.
14:14They'll all be at 9 a.m. Eastern sharp,
14:17just like this video was.
14:18So whatever time zone you're in, write that down.
14:21You can do the calculations,
14:22but come back here at the same time every day for this week
14:25for a new episode.
14:26I'll see you there.
14:28Roll the trailer.
14:31I don't know what exactly we're about to take out the box.
14:34Let's find out together.
14:38Oh my God.
14:42When you think about the future,
14:46what comes to mind?
14:49For decades, people dreamed of technologies
14:51that would change the way we travel, look, and live.
14:55So have we already reached our retro-futuristic dreams?
14:59And if not, what could possibly lie ahead?
15:04Let's energize.
15:06Yes, my dreams have been realized.
15:09What is your experience with hoverboards?
15:11Almost none.
15:11Okay.
15:12Oh jeez, oh my God.
15:14This season on Retro Tech.
15:17We're doing technology.
15:19This is gonna explode if we keep pumping.
15:22How does the technology of the past?
15:25I got an eye in.
15:26Predict our vision.
15:27You're about to see everything for the future.
15:31All your particles will disappear simultaneously
15:34and then show up in another place.
15:36We need pioneers to see how this can all come together.