A new stress-test video may highlight performance differences between the global and Chinese-market versions of the Xiaomi Mi 11

A tech vlogger called Frankie Tech (or Frankie Herrera) regularly conducts what he calls "AnTuTu throttling tests" with the premium phones he acquires in the course of their review. This process consists of running the benchmark end-on-end (ideally 4 times over) to see if the devices in question drop in terms of scores and rise in terms of temperature under this stress.

The latest in this series featured the Chinese-market-derived Mi 11 again. This time, however, it was compared, not to the iQOO 7 or Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra (non-Exynos variant) as before, but to an international (or "Global") unit of this same phone.

They both run on the Snapdragon 888 processor and MIUI 12 at present, although the former has a different, region-specific version that does not require Google Mobile Services (among other possible differences) as the global software does.

Frankie Tech attested that both phones had the most up-to-date version of its respective MIUI version. This apparently resulted in better AnTuTu scores over 4 rounds of the benchmark for the 'Chinese' Mi 11, even though it exhibited a steeper increase in temperature during the test. It also held off dimming the display (a strategy MIUI 12 has been shown to enact in response to overheating) for longer compared to the global variant.

This suggests that the "China-ROM" version of the Mi 11 has access to performance-related optimizations that MIUI 12 (Global) does not. It now remains to be seen whether the latter catches up over time, and if the situation gets better when the latest 12.5 version of this Android 11 skin comes into force. However, there are already signs that the discrepancies between the global and Chinese-market software might just get more severe over time.

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