Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro long-term review

Camera app

Like everything else, the camera app has received a revamp in MIUI 12, to bring it in line with the new visuals. It's also more customizable now than it was before, but it does lose easy access to shooting with 5x magnification, which we hope is just an oversight and will return soon with a new update. Otherwise, we're betting that most people won't ever get to use the 8 MP telephoto camera, which has 3.7x optical zoom and produces the 5x hybrid zoom shots. It's really weird to see this go away, so we're hoping it's just a glitch.

You can still get to it, but you have to either pinch to zoom on the viewfinder or scroll on the magnification selector to have more options revealed. The defaults now are 0.6x (ultrawide), 1x, and 2x. That's it.

The camera app behaves like pretty much any other camera app out there at this point in time. Still, it does let you customize the modes you see, their positions, and even the color accent throughout the UI and whether you want the 'More' menu to appear as a text after you scroll past the last mode, or if you'd rather swipe up from below the viewfinder (in portrait mode) to access it. Some other manufacturers go with one or the other, Xiaomi lets you pick whatever you like. The former option is the default, by the way.

Camera app customization

In all our time with the Mi 10 Pro, the camera app has never once crashed or hanged, and the 'double-tap the power button' shortcut to access it, once enabled in Settings, has always been incredibly reliable. So the experience of shooting with this phone has been great. Now let's move on to camera samples to see if the results match up to that.

Camera samples

Use the main 108 MP snapper in its Auto mode, where it uses pixel binning to make one bigger pixel out of four, and you'll get amazing results in broad daylight, with ample detail levels, very high dynamic range, almost no noise whatsoever, and good looking colors. We should note we left everything on Auto as usual in a long-term review, including Auto HDR. Still, we chose not to employ the AI Camera toggle because of its propensity to ridiculously oversaturate colors. Then again, if that's something you want in your life, it's there, and just one tap away.

Daytime samples from the main camera

While the Mi 10 Pro doesn't have the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra's focusing issues, the sensor being as large means that the focus plane is still quite small, and so sometimes when you shoot objects from a close distance, you will find that part of the thing is in focus while its edges may not be. It's just a limitation of the physics of the sensor, there's nothing to do about it sadly. This makes for some nice 'natural bokeh' shots without needing to employ Portrait mode but could get annoying if you shoot objects at close range a lot.

The Macro mode uses the ultrawide camera, which would be fine if that shooter had autofocus, but it doesn't, so you'll end up with defocused shots more often than not. This is why we didn't test the Macro mode, it's just pointless. If you want to go in close, it's better to use the main sensor.

When used for its primary purpose, the ultrawide cam produces nicely detailed shots (though the levels aren't up to par with the main sensor), with decent dynamic range, good contrast, and good colors. Still, there is some unescapable softness around the edges. It's good to have an ultrawide option on a phone, but this one is not the best we've seen, and the lack of autofocus is a sad omission.

Daytime samples from the ultrawide

Shooting at 2x zoom during the day results in outstanding images, easily on par with what the main camera produces. You get great detail levels and sharpness, good colors that are also identical to what you have from the main shooter, and high dynamic range. What sets this one back is slight noise creeping in sometimes.

Daytime 2x zoom samples

If you go to 5x, detail levels start to be less impressive, but you still get good contrast, accurate colors, and low noise.

Daytime 5x zoom samples

When the lights go down, the main sensor doesn't seem to mind at all. It shoots detailed and bright photos with balanced exposure and good colors that are still saturated enough while not going overboard. However, sharpness in these shots isn't exactly on par with competing flagships out there - then again, those are even more expensive than the Mi 10 Pro, for what it's worth.

Nighttime samples from the main camera

Night Mode is only available on the main camera, rare to see in this day and age. This mode is very good at restoring highlights, sometimes to unexpected extents - yet this is all about your subject matter. When there aren't many highlights to restore, Night Mode shots come out quite similar to what Auto mode can produce. Since Night Mode snaps take more to capture, it's always a matter of balancing time with results - when you're in a hurry, the Auto mode will do most of the time, yet when you do have a few extra seconds, perhaps it's best to employ Night mode, especially in shots with artificial light sources visible.

Night Mode samples

If you wanted to have Night Mode on the ultrawide as well, just look at how bad these Auto shots from it are at night. There's no amount of Night Mode that would make any of these anything more than 'barely usable', so that was probably why Xiaomi decided not to bother. Long story short - skip the ultrawide at night unless you really have to fit more in the frame and don't much care about the quality of the resulting image.

Nighttime ultrawide samples

2x shots at night are usually handled by a crop from the main sensor, with the dedicated 2x camera only pitching in when there's enough light around. Regardless of which snapper is used, the 2x zoom shots are usually usable, if barely, with decent detail levels, although the noise is inescapable.

Nighttime 2x zoom samples

Oddly enough, if you pick 5x, then you're always getting output from the dedicated camera for that magnification. These shots are good, considering the limitations of the sensor, but you'll always need to hunt for some level of ambient lighting. Otherwise you aren't getting anything usable.

Nighttime 5x zoom samples

For selfies, the full resolution of the sensor is used, even though it's a Quad-Bayer unit, so this is akin to shooting in 108MP mode on the main rear camera - not very advisable, which is why, as usual, we skipped that mode for this review. And yet there's no way to create pixel binned 5 MP selfies, so we're stuck here.

Selfies, daytime, portrait mode off/on

They're not bad, especially in daylight, with good dynamic range aided by the HDR function kicking in when it has to. Colors are good, contrast is too, and your social media contacts will probably not see any issues.

Selfies, nighttime, portrait mode off/on

At night, things unsurprisingly become worse, as with all selfie cams. The more light there is around you, the better, while in pitch darkness, you'll never achieve any sort of usable shot without employing the screen flash effect. Portrait mode snaps are nice with good subject separation and neat looking background blur, day or night.