Xiaomi Mi 10T Pro long-term review

Camera

Spoiler alert: the Mi 10T Pro's rear camera system consists of a very good main shooter, as well as a couple of other snappers that are various levels of okay-ish. Not that any of this is a knock on the phone, by the way - historically, traditionally if you will, flagship killers have always qlacked in the camera department, and the main unit in the Mi 10T Pro is probably among the best such snappers ever put into a flagship killer grade smartphone.

So let's start with that one. The 108 MP sensor we've seen before, of course, it's a tried and tested one at this point, while the addition of OIS makes it shine more than most of its competitors, especially at night. Let's not get ahead of ourselves, though.

The daytime shots are generally very good, with ample sharpness, a lot of detail, wide dynamic range, some noise sometimes creeping in, and natural looking colors (if not accurate per se). If you want even punchier colors, use the AI feature to get an almost cartoonish level of 'enhancement' in some hues, especially sky blues and foliage greens. For the samples you see below, we chose not to go into la la land, so AI mode stayed off.

Daytime samples from the main camera

Edge softness can be an issue sometimes, but not something you're very likely to notice unless you pixel peep. You can capture shots at 108 MP resolution but you shouldn't. These images have much more noise, almost no extra detail, and way less sharpness. For this reason, and because most people will just go with Auto everything, we're not including such samples here. If you're curious about 108 MP shots, you can refer to our normal review of the phone and see some there. You won't be impressed, though.

The same goes for the "telemacro" camera, which is just a macro camera. It's one of the better ones out there because even at lowly 5 MP it turns out to be higher resolution than most, and it also has autofocus, but details, sharpness, and colors are all lacking. This is a niche use case at best with such quality sensors, we would have preferred a better ultrawide instead, with autofocus and macro abilities - but that would have required not one but two fake camera circles on the back, and maybe that's a bit too much? Clearly a phone maker can't just "get away" with launching a device with "only" two cameras on the back, no matter how good they may be.

Speaking of the ultrawide, during daytime it's... fine, but not outstanding in any way, shape, or form. The images are soft, much more so than what you get from the main sensor, lacking in detail, and the dynamic range isn't too great either. The colors remain pleasant, though, and lens correction works well enough for the very wide field of view it has to operate with here. Still, this is nowhere near on par, quality-wise, with the main sensor, so only use it if the wider framing is a must.

Daytime samples from the ultrawide

2x zoom shots are from the main sensor, as there's no dedicated telephoto cam here (don't let the "telemacro" branding fool you). That said, these are surprisingly good during the day, for mere crops. They're perfectly usable for all your social media needs, though maybe not for printing (does anyone still print photos? Has anyone ever printed phone photos?). Since the same sensor is used as for the normal wide shots, you get very similar looking results, although with some extra softness.

Daytime 2x zoom samples

At night the 1x shots are the only ones that are truly usable. If you want the best results, we'd recommend always using Night Mode when you can. If you can't wait the few extra seconds this requires, then Auto mode is good too - though not as good. You get a wide dynamic range, decent sharpness, good contrast, and very low noise.

Nighttime samples from the main camera

Switch to Night Mode, however, and you'll get even more shadow detail seemingly without a penalty in the form of extra noise, highlights that are handled even better, and more fine detail here and there with increased sharpness. Colors and contrast stay the same, so really, the only downside of Night Mode here is the ever so slightly longer capture time.

Night Mode samples from the main camera

Ultrawide shots at night are almost unusable most of the time, especially without any powerful light sources around. This is best avoided when the light goes down, unless you want to create some artistic compositions or something. The images are soft, muddy, lacking in detail and dynamic range, while the handling of light sources is generally atrocious, with blown-out highlights. Oh, and there's a lot of noise everywhere too.

Nighttime samples from the ultrawide

Things do improve if you use Night Mode, but even that can't fully rescue all of the shots. We'd err on the side of avoiding the ultrawide cam at night altogether, but if you absolutely must have an ultrawide shot - go with Night Mode and keep steady for the few seconds it takes to do its thing.

Night Mode ultrawide samples

2x zoom shots at night are decent, and would probably work for a quick social share, even if their quality is inferior to what you get in 1x mode.

Nighttime 2x zoom samples

You can apply Night Mode to these, but for some reason a lot of these samples turn out rather smudgy, while the quality otherwise doesn't go up significantly. So it's pretty much a toss-up for 2x shots between going with Auto and Night modes. It's up to your personal preference, really.

Night Mode 2x zoom samples

All in all, when we're talking rear cameras - the main one is very good in all conditions, only use it at night, and with Night Mode for 1x shots.

Selfies turn out sharp and detailed, with some noise but natural-looking skin tones. For Portrait mode shots, edge detection is mostly great, with relatively rare fails.

Selfies

The camera app is the usual Xiaomi fare of the past year or so, nothing bad stands out. It's very functional, it works every time (we haven't had any bugs), and it gets the job done in an intuitive way since navigating it is similar to how you would approach every other smartphone camera app in this day and age.