The Xiaomi 11T & 11T Pro Review: Two Chips, With a Battery Focus
by Andrei Frumusanu on September 15, 2021 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Mobile
- Smartphones
- Xiaomi
- Xiaomi 11T
- Xiaomi 11T Pro
Battery Life
Battery comparisons between the 11T and the 11T Pro are again very interesting given the fact that we have to identical devices, only differing between each other in terms of SoC employed.
As noted in the earlier sections, there are a few differences in CPU behaviour, particularly the 11T Pro really not using the Cortex-X1 cores of the Snapdragon 888 too much. However, the 2.41GHz A78’s of the Snapdragon 888 are only 5% slower than the 3GHz A78 of the Dimensity 1200 – due to Qualcomm’s larger CPU and system caches, and better memory latency. So in terms of performance, as we noted before, the Snapdragon 888 11T Pro should still exceed that of the 11T, so it’ll be still somewhat valid comparison even without the X1 cores.
Update September 17th: Our 11T sample received a software update the day of the review embargo – we retested our initial battery life results and have seen significant improvements over the initial review firmware. We’re in the process of redoing all the battery life tests and will update the review to reflect the updated experience.
In the web browsing tests, the results couldn’t be more different, and the discrepancy between both phones frankly shocked me.
The 11T with the MediaTek SoC only managed to get 57-60% of the battery life of the Snapdragon 11T Pro. Again, I have to emphasise that these two devices are otherwise identical – same battery capacity, and same screen, and I haven’t been able to measure any difference in power between the two phones at the same screen brightness. What this means, is that the delta here seems to be related to the SoC.
In PCMark as well, the 11T is only showcasing 58-61% of the longevity of the 11T Pro, all whilst showcasing worse performance numbers.
The results for the 11T both in the web test and in PCMark are just abysmal. I did run power analysis on all the CPUs in SPEC, and yes, the Snapdragon 888 is quite a lot more energy efficient than the Dimensity 1200, however not to a degree to actually end up with such a large battery life discrepancy – at least not that I would assume.
The 11T was noticeably warmer than the 11T Pro in the battery tests, which is kind of obvious given that it evidently uses more power. For me, the MediaTek powered 11T is dead in the water, as the results here are just too bad.
The 11T Pro’s battery life was good, and what surprised me the most is that it’s the only non-Samsung Snapdragon 888 phone that didn’t exhibit terrible baseline power consumption. I’m not sure what to attribute this to, but it ends up with quite good results, though still lagging behind the S21 Ultra with its much more efficient display.
Update September 17th: Our 11T sample received a software update the day of the review embargo – we retested our initial battery life results and have seen significant improvements over the initial review firmware. We’re in the process of redoing all the battery life tests and will update the review to reflect the updated experience.
Update September 22nd: The new battery tests have been completed and updated. The 11T with the MediaTek SoC now represents the expected battery life results out of the chip, showcasing slightly longer battery life compared to the Snapdragon 11T Pro. In terms of absolute results, they’re very good compared to other comparative 120Hz powered devices, and both 11T and the 11T Pro showcase excellent longevity.
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zodiacfml - Wednesday, September 15, 2021 - link
not only does 120w charging is crazy, it also appears to charge at a high rate even at 80% battery state. tricks I know is to use two batteries in series and using larger capacity batteries than advertised or lower voltage cutoff. however, those tricks don't appear enough to get up to 120w.yetanotherhuman - Thursday, September 16, 2021 - link
It'd be nice to see some phones again one day, and not just phablets.Linustechtips12 - Thursday, September 16, 2021 - link
very much agreed I will not ever go for an iPhone sorry... but I want the size in between something like the 13 mini and the regular 13 or just a smidge smaller than the s21, the s21 is actually almost perfect coming from an s10e I hope the overall size of the 22 is slightly smaller or the same size as the s10eTheinsanegamerN - Friday, September 17, 2021 - link
So, on a phone like this, how would that work with US carriers? It's not officially sold here, will it work with VoLTE or will these phones be bricks once the 3G networks go down?ATT and verizon are very picky about what is allowed, and while most US sold phones are supported they say nothign about xaiomi.
coolkwc - Sunday, September 19, 2021 - link
If you ever own a fast charging phone and power meter, you will know the 'algorithm' behind the fast charging. The charge current is reduce in staggered, however from what i saw, it is based on temperature capped rather than preset according to SoC. You will noticed that it will reduce the charge in order to keep temperature under 40'C. So if your phone temperature is at the high side when you plug in the charger, the fastest charge rate will not even activated/sustained for any longer, however it will sustain longer if the charge temperature is low. I'm using the Mi 11 Ultra with 67W charger, to preserve the battery life i normally charge using my old QC3.0 samsung charger at home and only charge until 4.3V which is 85-90% full, the sustain charge current is at around 3.5A for the whole charging period. The bundle 67W Xiaomi charger serve as my quick 'travel' charger where i will use when i need a fast top up, which not often based on my use case.Plumplum - Monday, September 20, 2021 - link
Installation of monitoring apps can show problems with CPU behavior...why wasn't it done on the first test?ROM was responsible of the problem.
Problem with Anandtech is how fast they're to accuse Mediatek without asking them questions on how the device and sometime some benchmarks (such as PCMark) behave.
That was already the same with so called cheating.
Unfortunatelly post people won't read the corrected article. The damage is done!
Should made a separate article to apologize!
Premade thought leads to unfair review.
iphonebestgamephone - Saturday, September 25, 2021 - link
Nothing was wrong in cheating one back then. Mediatek not including the cheat mode in dimensity should be enough to tell you all about it.xol - Monday, September 20, 2021 - link
Hot take 1The Cortex X1 is a bad core. Not bulldozer bad but pentium hot/bad/inneficient, which is doubly bad in a mobile environment. ARM added lots of cache and didn't add enough functional units to make it worthwhile. It's half the M1 design - all the cache but lacks the pipeline. bad.
Hot Take 2
Manufacturers (qualcom/xiaomi) know this but can't avoid using latest/"best" core in their latest designs because product spec sheets > actual real world utility.
Hot Take 3
Manufacturers know this too (hot take 2) but still need to use the "bad" X1 cores in their flagships because they need to be "flagship". But the core is crappy and give bad battery life. So they're compensating by essentially disabling as much as they can. (pretty much fact and not hot take)
A ide Hot Take 4
Snapdragon 888 is a "bad" chip too, and not just the X1 core, also the GPU. Quallcomm use the node advantage (5 vs 7nm) to squeeze extra frequency out of their designs, They claim +50% ALU in the new chip (vs 865) but/and clock it at 840 vs 650MHz (+29%). But performance is only +25%. There's real world evidence that the 888 runs hot and thermally throttles in phones way earlier than 865, despite being on 5nm -
sweetca - Tuesday, September 21, 2021 - link
I prefer my spying domestic.Yourdailytask - Thursday, September 23, 2021 - link
hello admingrate post