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Xiaomi Mi 10T Lite
The Xiaomi Mi 10T lite comes with a nice design and sports 5G connectivity for the masses. Just like most of Xiaomi phones, the Mi 10T lite comes at a reasonably good budget price. But unlike its competition, Xiaomi phones should not be regarded like other cheap phones.
Instead of the regular plastic back, Xiaomi has decided to go with a glass back finish this time. For a budget device, it has a pretty large screen with smooth scrolling 120Hz display panel. This device is built with enough juice to play Fortnite at a fairly solid 30fps.
For many, the Xiaomi Mi 10T Lite is a much more sensible buy than a high-price phone, including Xiaomi’s own Mi 10 Ultra.
An issue that may be faced by Xiaomi selling this device is that, they have already come up with something better, the Xiaomi Poco X3 NFC. The Xiaomi Poco X3 NFC is slighter better when it comes to battery life, faster camera, better ultra-wide camera and a lower price.
That said, if you are looking for what the Xiaomi Mi 10T Lite has that is better than the Xiaomi Poco X3 NFC, then that will be its classier design, sightly thinner body and a better chipset.
Put in mind that we are battling between two top phones here with an unlikelihood of you regretting buying either of these devices.
Configurations and Prices
The Xiaomi Mi 10T Lite hits the market at a starting cost of $305/£229/AU$415. At this cost, you can get the model with 64GB of storage and 6GB of RAM.
The Model with 128GB of storage and 6GB of RAM can be gotten at a starting cost of $400/£299/AU$540.
While we love high storage phones, this upgrade does not seem a particularly good deal. The entry-level Xiaomi Mi 10T Lite gets you the most tech per dollar.
[wptb id="1238" not found ]Xiaomi Mi 10T Lite Design
One thing that is sure, is that Xiaomi does not mess about with its budget phones. For a while now plastic has been the key material for producing cheap phones, but Xiaomi has changed all that with the Xiaomi Mi 10T lite. The Xiaomi Mi 10T Lite sports a Gorilla glass back and not a plastic one. This should put a big smile on your face the first time you pick up this device, because of its premium finish.
The glass finish feels better than plastic made to look like glass, and less prone to scuffs from light contact. However, the sides of this device are made of plastic which is quite expected considering the price a big brand phone like this is being sold at.
The Xiaomi Mi 10T lite has a 6.7-inch screen and a 16MP pin point front camera. This device has an 84.68% screen to body ratio.
At the rear panel, you will find a quad camera setup with a 64MP for the main camera.
The volume button is located at the right side of the device, along with the finger print sensor which serves a dual function, as the power button as well. The finger print scanner is both fast and reliable when in use.
At the left side, you will find the dual nano SIM tray with no MicroSD card slot. This means, the storage memory cannot be bumped up if need be.
What Else?
At the bottom of the device is a 3.5mm headphone jack, a dual speaker setup and a USB-Type C port. The speakers are excellent in this class too. There’s a driver down on the bottom of the phone and another on the front, above the screen. These provide stereo sound with good volume and enough mid-range bulk to make podcasts sound right.
The Xiaomi Mi 10T Lite has similar dimensions as the Xiaomi Poco X3 NFC but a little thinner at 9mm.
The rear comes Atlantic blue, Pearl gray, Rose gold colors. The plain shades have a low-key style you might expect from OnePlus. From the back this could easily be a top-end phone.
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Xiaomi Mi 10T Lite Display
The Xiaomi Mi 10T lite sports a 6.67-inch IPS LCD display with a resolution of 2400 x 1080 pixels, 20:9 screen ratio, 395 PPI and a 120Hz refresh rate. The refresh rate simply makes the Android app menu seem to scroll more smoothly, and also reduce motion blur.
Color, contrast, and maximum brightness are all very good at the price too. This is a wide color gamut display that supports HDR and looks sharp.
The Xiaomi Mi 10T Lite has a little punch-hole for the front camera, and while there is some slight variance in brightness around the hole and at the corners when viewing a full white display, it’s nothing unusual.
The Mi 10T lite has a brightness of 450 NITS which is adequate for use even under sun light.
Xiaomi Mi 10T Lite Camera
The Xiaomi Mi 10T lite comprises of five cameras, one up front and four on the rear. Picture quality taken by the back camera is good but with few issues, while the front camera as so takes good pictures, it is not nearly as good as the rear camera. This is perfectly normal for a budget phone at this price range.
The front camera is 16 MP, f/2.5(wide), while the rear camera has a main camera of 64 MP, f/1.9, (wide), an 8 MP, f/2.2 (ultrawide), a 2 MP, f/2.4, (macro) and a 2 MP, f/2.4, (depth). This main sensor uses the 64MP Sony IMX682 sensor. Images taken with the Mi 10T lite in day light are very good. Xiaomi’s dynamic range algorithms does a very nice job on most outdoor scenes, by getting good images details from the environment without going too far.
Xiaomi Mi 10T Lite Camera Capabilities
When compared to some other budget phones, the Mi 10T lite stacks up good when you consider the shoots taken by its camera. Taking a real good look at the photos taken by this device, you will be really amazed by the level of Xiaomi’s image processing capabilities even for its lower-end smartphones.
Actually, shooting with the Xiaomi Mi 10T Lite is another story. This phone exhibits too much shutter lag, significantly more than the very similar Poco X3 NFC. Xiaomi may be able to fix this with a software update, but right now the camera is slower than most in its class.
Some even stranger things start happening when you use the 2x zoom mode. The Xiaomi Mi 10T Lite does not have a zoom camera, so it takes a crop of the 64MP (which is really designed to be used as a 16MP camera) and uses a slightly different processing approach to make the photo look less like a digitally zoomed image.
Shoots taken of object not in motion are pretty great, you get perfectly passable shots. However, the Mi 10T lite falls apart when the object of desire is in motion. For example, when trying to take a shot of a ball in motion or an animal walking, the images will come out with lower resolution and sometimes a little blurry.
The good part of this is that it proves Xiaomi clearly does more than just taking a crop of the main view. The bad bit: it doesn’t work.
Again, hopefully it will be fixed with an update.
Other Three Cameras
Ultra-wide Xiaomi Mi 10T Lite shots often have the same high dynamic range charm as those of the primary camera. But in a direct comparison with the Poco X3 NFC’s ultra-wide’s, shadow detail and detail in general are better in that sister phone. This is no great surprise. The Xiaomi Mi 10T Lite has an 8MP ultra-wide, the Poco a 13MP one.
The other two cameras, a macro and depth assist, suck. As long as your subject is static you are much better off using the 2x view for close-up macro shots. And the Portrait mode, which adds background blur, makes a mess of complicated scenes.
Night photos are okay, but no better than we’d expect from a phone in this category. The Realme X50 5G takes better low-light images.
Video is also typical for this class. The Xiaomi Mi 10T Lite looks good at 1080p, 30 frames per second, with solid stabilization and good image quality. However, there’s no EIS at all at 1080p/60fps or 4K, rendering these settings useless unless you’ll be still or will apply stabilization with editing software in post.
The Xiaomi Mi 10T Lite’s selfie camera uses a 16MP OmniVision ov16a1q, which Xiaomi also put into the Redmi Note 9S. It actually shoots 4MP images, but by doing so it holds onto fine detail rendering until the light level gets very low.
Xiaomi Mi 10T Lite Performance
The Xiaomi Mi 10T lite sports a Qualcomm Snapdragon 750G processor which sounds like the watered-down version of their Snapdragon 765G. However, that is not the case here.
Similar to the Snapdragon 765G and the 732G used on the Poco X3 NFC, the Snapdragon 750G supports 5G with its newer CPU eight cores.
The Xiaomi Mi 10T Lite’s Snapdragon 750G is not as good as the Snapdragon 765G, but is better than the Poco X3 NFC’s Snapdragon 732G.
In practice, it performs perfectly well. Fortnite runs at ‘Mid’ graphics, at a mostly-solid 30fps apart from occasional moments of slow-down as it loads new textures.
Generally, the performance of the Mi 10T lite is commendable. The speed of the device when in use is great. Multitasking on this device perform smoothly and apps load faster than imagined, however the more apps you keep open may lead to gradual decrease in phone speed.
Though not a gaming phone, this device can handle most heavy games with low stuttering that may not be all that noticeable.
The finger print sensor also performs smoothly. Response time is within a blink of an eye which is more than I can say for most budget phones.
Xiaomi Mi 10T Lite Battery life
The Mi 10T Lite has a 4,820mAh battery. Which is a little less when you consider the 5160mAh battery on the Poco X3 NFC.
This is within the expected battery capacity of most devices; however, the battery can last up to midnight before hitting zero when using the device at 120Hz display mode.
This includes a lot of web browsing activities among other things. The battery life of the Mi 10T lite beats that of devices like the Samsung Galaxy Note 20.
If you want a two-day phone, we’d suggest dropping down to 60Hz. We have never got the Xiaomi Mi 10T Lite to last near two days – we use our phones too much for that – but at 60Hz we tend to have 30-45% left by bedtime.
The Xiaomi Mi 10T Lite has 33W fast charging just like the ‘non-Lite’ 10T devices, which gets you from zero to 63% in 30 minutes.
Specification
Network
| Network Technologies | GSM / HSPA / LTE / 5G |
| Network Technology 3G | HSDPA 850 / 900 / 1700(AWS) / 1900 / 2100 |
| Network Technology 4G | 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 20, 28, 32, 38, 40, 41 |
| Network Technology 5G | 1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 20, 28, 38, 41, 77, 78 SA/NSA |
| Speed | HSPA 42.2/5.76 Mbps, LTE-A, 5G (2+ Gbps DL) |
Launch Date
| Announced | 30, September 2020 |
| Market Availability | Available. 13, October, 2020 |
Design
| Dimensions Mobile | 165.3 x 76.8 x 9 Mm (6.51 x 3.02 x 0.35 inch) |
| Weight | 214.5 Gram (7.58 oz) |
| SIM | Dual SIM (Nano-SIM, dual stand-by) |
| Materials | Interface glass (Corning Gorilla 5), glass back (Corning Gorilla 5), Plastic frame |
| Colors | Blue, Gray, Rose |
DISPLAY
| Type | IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen, 16 Million colors |
| size | 6.67 Inch, (~ 84.6% screen-to-body ratio) |
| Screen Resolution | 1080 x 2400 Pixels, ratio 20:9, 395 Pixels per inch |
| Screen protection | Corning Gorilla Glass 5 |
| Other features | – Refresh rate 120 Hz – HDR10 – 450 nits typ. brightness |
Performance
| Operating System | Android 10.0 MIUI user interface 12 |
| Chipset | Qualcomm Snapdragon 750 5G – (8nm) |
| CPU Speed | Octa core (2×2.2GHz Kryo 570 And 6×1.8GHz Kryo 570) |
| GPU graphics processor | Adreno 619 |
Storage
| External memory | No |
| RAM | 6 GB Ram |
| Storage | 64/128 GB UFS 2.1 / UFS 2.2 |
Cameras
| Rear camera | Quad: – – 64 Megapixel, 26mm (Wide), PDAF, f / 1.9 lens – 8 Megapixel, 120˚ (ultra-wide), f / 2.2 aperture – 2 Megapixel, (Macro), f/2.4 – 2 Megapixel, (Depth), f / 2.4 lens |
| Camera Features | Dual-LED flash, HDR, panorama |
| Video | – 4K video recording @ 30 Fps – Electronic stabilizer gyro-EIS |
| Selfie camera | 16 Megapixel, 25mm (wide), f / 2.5 aperture |
| Features | HDR |
| 1080 Pixel 30 fps |
Battery
| Battery | 4820 mAh, Li-polymer, non-removable |
| Fast battery charging | Fast charging 33W |
Sound
| Loudspeaker | Yes, with stereo speakers |
| 3.5mm jack | |
| Other Sound features | audio 24 Bit / 192 KHz |
Connectivity
| Wi-Fi Technology | Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, dual-band, Wi-Fi Direct, hotspot |
| Bluetooth | A2DP ،LE |
| GPS | Dual-band A-GPS, GLONASS, BDS, GALILEO |
| NFC | Yes |
| Infrared | Yes |
| Radio | No |
| Charging port | USB Type-C 2.0, USB On-The-Go |
| Sensors | Fingerprint, accelerometer, proximity, gyro, compass |
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Should I buy the Xiaomi Mi 10T Lite?
Buy it if you:
- want a classy, affordable 5G phone.
- want a device with a reasonable amount of RAM (6GB) for a low price.
- Are in need of a budget phone with good Speaker quality.
- Like a low-key design device.
- Want a good gaming device at this price tag.
- Can do without a flawless camera.
- Are not all that concerned with the device thickness (9mm thick).
The Final Verdict
The Xiaomi Mi 10T Lite is an accomplished, great value phone, with a surprisingly premium build, a big battery, and a high-spec screen, but the competition from rival Realme is fierce and there are issues with the camera.
I would totally recommend this device to people looking for a budget device are willing to overlook the short comings of the Mi 10T lite.
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