Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro long-term review

Display

The screen is curved, and as we mentioned in the Design section, its curve is symmetrical to that of the rear glass. Now a lot of people have issues with curved screens and their associated accidental touch issues, and it looks like Xiaomi is aware of those concerns, because in the Mi 10 Pro you can actually set how far the touch layer will respond in the edge.

Edge detection settings

So if you find that the default setting gives you a lot of accidental touches, you can tweak this to something that fits your hands and use better. This is the first time we've seen something like this on a smartphone, and we're big fans of the idea. It definitely seems like a better solution than Samsung's decision just to curve its flagships' screens less. But this is subjective, inevitably, as this particular reviewer appreciates curved screens and the more bezel-less look they enable on the sides.

Speaking of bezels, for a flagship device, the Mi 10 Pro's chin is quite pronounced, and not symmetrical to any of the other three sides. You get used to this, of course, but it is odd to see that chin at first - it's as big as most upper mid-rangers have them nowadays and noticeably bigger than other flagships'. Then again, we're talking one millimeter or two here, so it's no big deal, it was just surprising to see.

The hole-punch is in what we'd call the most unobtrusive place it can be, to the left. Don't get us wrong, we like the look of a centered hole-punch better, but the left positioning makes much more sense when you're watching videos in landscape mode. That's because then the hole-punch is in the bottom left of the content, and there's usually nothing happening there to get your attention to the literal hole in your screen.

The centered punch-hole, on the other hand, that one you can never just ignore when you're watching videos. As for day to day use in portrait orientation, the centered position is better because it acts as a natural splitting point between the notification icons on the left and the other status bar icons on the right, but to be honest we adjusted to the indentation caused by the left-aligned hole-punch within a few hours. It's... fine. In-display cameras are about to become a thing, though, and we can't wait for their image quality to be good enough so we won't have to live with holes in displays for much longer.

Speaking of the punch-hole, you can "hide" it in software, and you even get two options for how to go about this, depending on whether you want the status bar to be to the hole's right, or underneath it all together - although in the latter option you are losing screen real estate.

Notch hiding, refresh rate settings

While the screen isn't QHD+, we're going to reiterate that we can't see a difference between FHD+ and that higher resolution at these sizes unless we go pixel peeping or have a QHD+ device alongside an FHD+ one. In our subjective assessment, the 90 Hz refresh rate improves the day to day experience of using this phone much more than a higher resolution could have. Then again, we do wish both were present since this handset is anything but cheap.

Display features

Quality-wise, this is a great panel, with accurate color reproduction if you set it as such. We went with the Auto color scheme preset, because we're not sticklers for absolute accuracy, and we like how it adjusts the colors based on the current lighting around you. Apple's been doing something similar for a while, other Android makers too, and Xiaomi's take on this comes with subtle but definitely noticeable changes in colors depending on what light sources you have around. It ensures that the content on the screen 'pops' regardless of what's around you, and it undoubtedly improved the experience of using this phone for us, but if you want accuracy, you can get that too, at the expense of such adaptability.

Color settings

Peak brightness in Auto mode is sufficient to make the screen viewable in any ambient light conditions - even on the sunniest of summer days. There's a toggle in Settings for Sunlight mode, which will trigger the high brightness mode of the screen even if you don't use Auto brightness, and that's a welcome addition although we're not ones to go manual on this.

And that's because Auto brightness itself is very good. We're spotting a trend this year. It seems like phone makers have finally started focusing on making their default Auto brightness curves much better than they used to be, at least for the top tier devices.

Display settings, brightness controls

The Mi 10 Pro takes the podium in third place for best Auto brightness we've ever used, only being surpassed, ever so slightly, by the Huawei P40 Pro and the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra. We honestly can't remember the last time we had to make a manual adjustment, and even when you make such an adjustment once - it's then remembered for that light level so it will be automatically applied from that point on. If you're sensitive to the flicker induced by the standard PWM method of lowering brightness, you can turn on DC dimming, which is called Anti-flicker mode. There may be some image quality degradation when you do this, so unless PWM makes you dizzy, leave it off.

The blue light filter (aka Reading mode in Xiaomi parlance) works very well and doesn't get as orange as others, which we call a good thing in our book. The Night mode in Display settings isn't a dark theme or anything like that. Instead, this lets you set how dark the screen will be if you manually take the brightness slider to the left in low ambient lighting conditions.

Speaking of the brightness slider, even in MIUI 12, you still can't tap on it to get it to a specific level, you have to swipe across it, and this has been one of our pet peeves/niggles with Xiaomi's skin for years now. It just makes manual adjustments a tad harder to accomplish, every single time.

DC dimming, Reading mode

The Always on Display implementation in MIUI 12 (and MIUI 11 before it) is probably among the best ones out there. The amount of customization you can apply is just insane, and we were never really left wanting more. With the new Super Wallpapers, the Always-on display gets even more interesting, with (mostly) smooth transitions between it and the lock screen and the home screen, while zooming into different parts of Earth or Mars.

Always on display settings, Super Wallpapers

It's a cool party trick, this one, although the transitions between states do still need some work. Things are better in MIUI 12 than in MIUI 11, though, so it looks like Xiaomi is aware of this. Hopefully, subsequent updates will make the experience 100% smooth because right now, there are still stutters when going to the AOD or from it to the lock screen.

Fingerprint sensor, face unlock

The in-display fingerprint sensor is one of our disappointments with the Mi 10 Pro. It's not that it's bad, far from it, it's just that we've used faster ones this year. It's still an accurate optical scanner, that is, if you give it the time to do its thing. And the time it takes it to work seems close to how long Samsung's ultrasonic sensors need, and we were bashing those for not being on par, speed-wise, with the optical ones. We're not sure what happened here.

Maybe it's the fault of the animations, which are pervasive throughout MIUI 11 and 12. We have done what we could through Developer Settings, but it seems like those animation settings don't impact the speed of the unlock animation. Again, we're not sure what happened, but while this sensor is accurate, it loses the speed race with other optical ones on flagships from this year. And that's a shame, because we thought we had gotten to a place now where optical in-display sensors were so close to being as fast as capacitive ones that most people wouldn't be able to tell the difference unless they used both side by side.

Biometrics settings

There is, of course, face unlock too, though it works with the camera, it's much less secure than a fingerprint or a PIN. It is insanely fast, however, easily among the fastest implementations we've seen, and despite the fact that there's no "require eyes open" setting anywhere, we tested, and it won't unlock if your eyes are closed.

Speakers, vibration motor

The speakers here deserve a mention because to our ears, they're easily the highest-quality set on any mainstream flagship smartphone right now. In our subjective experience, they don't seem to be the loudest, but that may just be down to the positioning of the 'top' one - it's not the earpiece doubling as a speaker, it's actually a separate speaker pointing up (or left, in landscape). That may make some sound 'escape' more easily hence why we feel some hybrid setups sound louder. Quality-wise, though, these are outstanding considering the amount of internal space they have to work with.

The Mi 10 Pro also has what is definitely among the best vibration motors in the Android world. Subjectively, to this reviewer, it feels like the best one out there on anything that isn't an iPhone. This may seem like a minor thing when you read it, perhaps, but trust us when we say it massively impacts how nice the phone feels to use day in day out.

The software smartly takes advantage of how good the motor is, and presents more quick gentle vibrations whenever you interact with UI elements than we've seen so far in any other skin. These add up to making the experience of using the Mi 10 Pro very pleasant indeed.

Haptic feedback level settings

And yes, since this is MIUI and MIUI loves giving you customization choices, there's a slider in Settings that controls how intense the haptic feedback for UI elements will be. It's a pretty generous scale, too, not just a few presets like "high", "medium", "low".