DxOMark: The Xiaomi Mi CC9 Pro Premium Edition is the best camera phone in the world
The Nokia 9 PureView with its penta-lens camera setup was highly-anticipated but ultimately disappointed. Xiaomi has now launched its own penta-camera phone, the Mi CC9 Pro, and it looks to be everything the Nokia 9 should have been.
It's important to note that the phone tested by DxOMark is not the regular Mi CC9 Pro, but the Mi CC9 Pro Premium Edition. The Premium Edition differs from the base CC9 Pro by virtue of its f/1.87 8P lens. It costs US$500.
Going by DxOMark's review, the Mi CC9 Pro Premium is the joint best camera smartphone in the world, earning an overall score if 121 that sees it sit alongside the Huawei Mate 30 Pro at the top of the chart.
In the still photography department, it records a score of 130. That's the second-best DxOMark has ever awarded, with the Mate 30 Pro being slightly higher at 132. Other devices at the very top of the leaderboard include the Samsung Galaxy Note 10+ (126), Huawei P30 Pro (125) and the Google Pixel 4 (117).
In the video category, the Mi CC9 Pro tops the charts, making it the best smartphone for video. Going by DxOMark's scoring criteria, of course. It comes off with a score of 102, above the Google Pixel 4 (101), Galaxy Note 10+ (98), and Huawei Mate 30 Pro (100). Just like the Mi 9, however, the Mi CC9 Pro, as tested by DxOMark, shoots at a default resolution of 4K, and that may be a factor here.
The Mi CC9 Pro is capable of 5x optical zoom, which puts it in a special class that has, until now, been exclusive to the Huawei P30 Pro and OPPO Reno 10x Zoom. It handily outdoes the P30 Pro in that aspect, too, earning a zoom score of 109. The P30 Pro, the second-best, makes do with a score of 95. It's also the second-best wide-angle shooter (39), just below the Galaxy Note 10+ (40).
While the Mi CC9 Pro Premium Edition's scores are impressive, taking a hard look at the samples DxOMark provided is a better way of evaluating...and things aren't quite as straightforward as the overall scores may imply. In most shots, the Mi CC9 Pro tended to overexpose the foreground, especially in high-contrast scenes. Surprisingly, too, it lagged behind the Galaxy Note 10+ 5G and Huawei Mate 30 Pro in terms of dynamic range.
Colors were also less pleasing than the Note 10+ 5G, and night-time shots were a bit worse. Xiaomi's software still lags behind the competition. It will be interesting to see how the phone performs with a Google Camera port, however.
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