Verdict for the Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra - The flagship smartphone needs some polishing

The Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra is a powerful high-end smartphone that can go toe to toe with the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra. The Mi 11 Ultra has only one major shortcoming, namely the USB-C 2.0 port. This type of port is not appropriate for a high-end smartphone. It is becoming increasingly hard to understand why Xiaomi keeps cutting costs in this area.

The Mi 11 Ultra’s software is not particularly impressive. There is a secondary AMOLED display on the back, which is also used in the Mi Band 5. The rear 1.1-inch AMOLED screen can display notifications or serve as a viewfinder for the main camera. However, it does not offer Always-On-Display functionality, which could be quite useful. We hope that Xiaomi will bring such features to its flagship smartphone in future updates. At this point in time, though, the usefulness of the secondary display is questionable.

The high temperatures, which we saw in our review, are not caused by a poor cooling solution. According to Xiaomi, the Mi 11 Ultra is the world’s first smartphone with a tri-phase cooling system that relies on phase changes (from solid to liquid to gas) to improve the cooling efficiency. Nevertheless, other manufacturers manage to keep the Snapdragon 888 cooler without using such advanced technology.

Xiaomi is also behind its competitors in terms of long-term software support. Samsung promises to provide at least three major software updates for all of its high-end smartphones. Xiaomi should pledge at least three years of software support for its flagship smartphones as well.