Weekly poll: Xiaomi Mi 10 and Mi 10 Pro bring the S865, skimp on zoom – was that a mistake?

The Xiaomi Mi Note 10 was an odd duck – well-loved, but its chipset of choice left many wanting. The new Mi 10 duo is both larger and more powerful than Note and it’s usually the other way around.

The Xiaomi Mi 10 brings the Snapdragon 865 chipset, the performance of which is a class above the S730G found in the Note phone. It also enables 5G connectivity, which is becoming increasingly important as carriers have already covered major metropolitan areas around the world. The upgrade to UFS 3.0 storage (from 2.0) will be tangible as well.

Xiaomi Mi 10 and Mi 10 Pro

The screen got a major boost – a 6.67” panel, up from 6.39” of the Mi 9 and 6.47” of the Mi Note 10. Better yet, this is the first Mi-series phone to boast a high refresh rate screen – 90Hz (though the Redmi lineup already has a 120Hz phone).

Xiaomi equipped the Mi 10 with the 108MP sensor that Samsung designed for it. Thanks to the chipset upgrade, it’s capable of recording 8K video as well as 4K at 60fps.

One major downside of the new flagship is that the two telephoto cameras on the Note have inexplicably gone missing. Having a 50mm portrait lens and a 5x telephoto lens gave the Mi Note 10 great flexibility. Sure, the 108MP sensor can do 3x zoom by cropping, but it’s not same.

So you might want to look at the Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro. It has a 12MP camera with a 50mm lens (2x zoom) and an 8MP long telephoto unit. Also, the ultra wide camera was upgraded from 13MP to a 20MP sensor.

The Pro model boasts faster wired charging – 50W (but the battery is slightly smaller, 4,500mAh vs. 4,780mAh). A full charge takes only 45 minutes.

You may start living a cable-free life, however, as both Mi 10 models support impressive 30W fast charging (that’s as fast as the wired charging of the vanilla Mi 10).

So, which of the two Xiaomi Mi 10 phones – if any – would you buy? Or would you settle for the lower performance, but smaller dimensions and better zooming of the Mi Note 10?