The Mi 10 series was the pioneering work of Xiaomi’s impact on the high-end last year, and its balanced performance without shortcomings has also won the recognition of consumers. As a result, in 2021, the preservation rate of second-hand mobile phones of Xiaomi Mi 10 is still high. Therefore, Xiaomi decided to launch a small upgraded sub-flagship to continue the vitality of the Xiaomi Mi 10 series——Xiaomi Mi 10S.
As we all know, Qualcomm adopted a dual flagship chip market strategy in 2021: Snapdragon 888 pursues extreme performance, and Snapdragon 870 pursues a balance between performance and power consumption. Therefore, manufacturers who have recently released new phones often also adopt a major and sub-flagship product line.
Xiaomi first released the new flagship Xiaomi 11 equipped with Snapdragon 888 earlier , and on March 10, Xiaomi released the sub-flagship Xiaomi Mi 10S equipped with Snapdragon 870. So can this Xiaomi Mi 10S inherit the positioning of Xiaomi Mi 10’s bucket flagship? Let us explore the answer.
The packaging box of Mi 10S is similar to Mi 11, adopting a thin and environmentally friendly design, and no longer comes with a charger and charging cable. Only the phone case, card pin and 3.5mm conversion cable are included in the package. Not surprisingly, it should be the same as Xiaomi 11, using the package version with a 33W charging package, and the environmental version is only a bare-metal solution.
The Mi 10S body weighs 208g and has a certain feel of falling. The measurements are 162.58mm x 74.8mm x 8.96mm, these parameters are exactly the same as the Xiaomi Mi 10. On the front is a 6.67-inch hole-digging curved screen, which is exactly the same as the Xiaomi Mi 10.
The back of Mi 10S is very different from Mi 10, and is more like the style of Mi 10 Extreme Commemorative Edition, which Xiaomi calls the “little supreme” style. The material on the back is glass, which is not easy to be contaminated by fingerprints after frosting.
Our Mi 10S is a blue version. When you look at it diagonally, there will be some orange reflections, light and shadow flow, and the look is fresh. The hardware configuration of the four-camera module in the upper left corner is a 2 million-pixel depth-of-field lens + 100 million-pixel main camera + 2 million-pixel independent macro lens + 13 million ultra-wide-angle lens. It is exactly the same as Mi 10, but the design is the same as Mi 10 Extreme The commemorative edition is similar. The difference is that the upper periscope lens is replaced with a depth-of-field lens, and the size of the entire four-camera module is reduced, which solves the problem that the lens is easy to touch when holding the Mi 10 Extreme Commemorative Edition.
After inquiry, the supplier of this screen for Xiaomi 10S is Huaxing Optoelectronics, and it can be basically determined that it is the same domestic screen as Xiaomi 10. The peak brightness of up to 1120 nits can be achieved. With the front and rear dual photosensitive units, the automatic switching of brightness is also quite sensitive. Functionally, it supports screen fingerprints, DC dimming, DCI-P3 color gamut display, and professional factory screen color calibration. The average Delta E of the screen is only about 0.41, which is sufficient for people with high requirements for screen color accuracy.
In MIUI’s color management, users are allowed to customize the RGB color space, HVS color space, contrast, Gamma value and other options, and can call up the color style that suits their own eyes. However, since the Mi 10S has been color-calibrated before leaving the factory, it is generally not recommended to change these advanced settings. In general, this screen completely inherits the excellent look and feel of the Mi 10 series, which is in line with the positioning of the next flagship.
Through microscope observation, we found that the pixels of this screen of Xiaomi Mi 10S adopt a Pearl arrangement, which is not exactly the same as the diamond arrangement of the Samsung screen, but it is roughly the same. The only difference is that the red and blue pixels are four-pointed stars with fineness. It is also similar to the arrangement of diamonds. In general, this is a relatively good domestic screen.
In addition to the common Type-C interface, microphone and infrared emission hole, the top and bottom of the Xiaomi Mi 10S also have the signature symmetrical independent dual speakers of the Mi 10 series. The Xiaomi Mi 10 series was once well received for this speaker system and was called a “music phone”, while the Mi 10S Yangtze River after the wave was pushed forward, and it was upgraded again. It is equipped with the industry’s first 0.7mm amplitude sound unit, and is powered by Harbin. Mancarton tuned, and the measured external amplifier sound quality was quite excellent, and won the championship of the DXO sound quality ranking with 80 points.
As the second flagship of Xiaomi’s family, Xiaomi Mi 10S also inherits the style of Xiaomi Mi 10 in the stacking materials. Qualcomm Snapdragon 870 processor, full LPDDR5 memory, UFS3.0 flash memory, dual-mode 5G+Wi-Fi 6, equipped with a 4780mAh battery and 33W wired flash charging, 30W wireless flash charging and 10W wireless reverse charging. Multifunctional NFC, horizontal linear motor, P2i grade waterproof, infrared remote control and other functions are also available. In general, except that the processor is upgraded to Snapdragon 870 and the charging power is increased by 3W, it is exactly the same as Xiaomi 10.
So how does this Snapdragon 870 perform on Xiaomi 10S? Let’s proceed to theoretical test and game test next.
In the Antutu running score, which represents the overall performance, Xiaomi Mi 10S scored 653410. In GeekBench4, which represents CPU performance, Xiaomi Mi 10S scored 4667 points for single-core and 13,504 points for multi-core.
From the perspective of theoretical performance scores, the Snapdragon 870 on Mi 10S is 15%-20% stronger than the Snapdragon 865 on Mi 10, and the improvement is quite obvious. Interestingly, although there is no change in flash memory, it is still UFS3.0, but Xiaomi 10S has a considerable improvement in random read and write performance.
Has the actual game performance of Mi 10S improved? Mi 10S also supports Game Turbo on hardware, ensuring that users can play with the best performance and network environment when running games. In the game, you can check the game performance or open various gadgets by sliding the sidebar in the upper left corner of the screen to call up the quick game toolbar. The following test data are all measured in the game performance enhancement mode.
We found that although Mi 10S is a new mobile phone, “Honor of Kings” has been adapted to the ultra-clear and extreme 90-frame mode. The 30-minute game is also maintained at 90 frames throughout the entire 30-minute game. The game experience is very good, with an average frame rate of 87.1 frames.
In “Peace Elite”, you can turn on the smooth 90 frame mode or the HDR high-definition limit frame rate. The frame rate in the measured game is also very smooth, with an average frame rate of 88.6 frames in 30 minutes. At this time, you can feel the warmth of the back cover while playing. The temperature is about 37.2°C.
In the benchmarking software “Yuan Shen”, the pressure on the game is relatively high. The highest image quality can only be maintained at 50 to 55 frames, the 30-minute average frame rate is 54.2 frames, and the back cover is already a bit hot. The measured temperature is about 40.5°C. If you want to play the original God at 60 frames, it is recommended to lower the level of special effects except for the rendering accuracy.
After the actual measurement of these three games, we found that the performance of the Snapdragon 870 does have some improvement over the 865. As Qualcomm’s current sub-flagship chip second only to Snapdragon 888, smoothly playing most games is no longer a problem.
Thanks to the 4780mAh large battery, after one and a half hours of intensive play, the remaining power is still about 60%. After playing, you can quickly replenish it with 33W charging. Although the peak power of 33W does not seem to be high in 2021, Xiaomi’s charging solution can maintain a high power state for a long time, and it can be fully charged in about 80 minutes.
In addition, Xiaomi 10S also supports 30W wireless charging and 10W wireless reverse charging. Today, when wireless charging is becoming more and more popular, such a rich charging configuration can let us say goodbye to battery life anxiety.
Image system: From the perspective of hardware parameters, the four-camera solution of Mi 10S is exactly the same as Mi 10, both of which are 100 million pixel main camera + 13 million pixel ultra-wide-angle lens + 2 million pixel depth of field lens + 2 million pixel macro lens.
In terms of software optimization, this time it focused on supporting three major features. The first is a super night scene. When shooting low-light images, Xiaomi Mi 10 will obtain more dark details based on the RAW algorithm; the second is AI scene recognition, the new content perception deep neural network will analyze the brightness, color, and even composition of the image in real time, and then pass Artificial intelligence algorithm is enhanced to make photos more “textured”; thirdly, Xiaomi Mi 10 supports the HEIF camera format, because the introduction of 100 million pixel lens, the size of the photos taken is particularly large, turning on the HEIF switch can ensure the quality of the photos. Under the premise, save 50% of the photo volume and store more photos.
So what is the real shot effect of Mi 10S? Let’s take a look at the proofs.
First of all, under the condition of sufficient light during the day, this 100-megapixel main camera performs very well in color, restores the reality, and is not overly rich due to the intervention of AI, and the purity of the sky is also good.
However, in a large light ratio environment, the latitude performance of this lens is still not satisfactory, and it is prone to problems of bright overexposure and dark overdarkness.
Due to the lack of a telephoto lens, the image quality is poor after 5x digital zoom, and there will be some smearing after zooming in.
If you want to take pictures of distant scenery, we can take a 100 million pixels + post-cropping method. After opening the 100-megapixel mode, thanks to the large amount of detail brought by the 100-megapixel, the picture is still sharp after zooming in, even the distant windows are clearly distinguishable.
Another 13-megapixel ultra-wide-angle lens has good imaging quality, and the details and colors of the film are not much different from the main camera. The large field of view of 123° is enough to capture more information when shooting.
In the night environment, the Mi 10S can turn on the night scene mode in the “More” interface. At this time, the multi-frame synthesis technology will be enabled to increase the brightness, reduce the noise, and take a more beautiful sunset.
For the suppression of night highlights, Xiaomi Mi 10S is also doing a good job, and the two highlight light sources in the lower left corner of the proof are well controlled.
After you manually pull down to open the macro mode on the camera interface, you can call this 2 million pixel macro lens. The image quality of this lens is acceptable and can complement our shooting scenes, especially suitable for shooting text content at close range.
Summary: Xiaomi Mi 10S is a very accurate sub-flagship. It upgrades the core accessory SoC that users are most concerned about in this price range on the basis of the Xiaomi Mi 10 standard version, while also reducing the price. This wave of increase and price reduction helped Xiaomi Mi 10 stuck at the second flagship price and kept the bucket machine’s status.
It is a pity that although its imaging system adopts a “little supreme” design similar to the Xiaomi Mi 10 Extreme Commemorative Edition, the hardware quality is still at the level of last year’s Xiaomi Mi 10 Standard Edition, which is a bit regrettable.
In general, if you are more concerned about performance and battery life, then Mi 10S will be a pretty good choice. It is precisely because of the balanced performance of the Mi 10 series that its successor Mi 10S can still shine in 2021 today.
