What’s better than four camera lens on a phone? Five of course — especially if one of those is a 108MP sensor, yes thats not a typo, 108 mega-pixels. That’s what Xioami’s latest Android phone is touting, and from a photography perspective we like where they’re headed.
We’re long term converts to the advantages of dedicated wide, telephoto and regular cameras on our smartphones. As good as computational photography is getting, adding dedicated sensors and lenses into the mix just gives better results which Huawei, Samsung and Apple have demonstrated that time and time again. The Xiaomi Mi CC9 Pro will allow for up to 10x optical zoom and an additional 50X digital zoom.
Before you get too excited about your life-size printouts of the local mountain ranges, you’re not getting 108MP images, thanks to a bit of pixel binning you’ll only end up with a 27MP output. Xioami claims this increase sharpness and reduces noise but it sort of makes the whole 108MP thing a bit of a marketing gimmick. Would a 27MP sensor with larger pixels give better or the same results?
The Xiaomi Mi CC9 5 sensors include:
- The main 108 MP f/1.7
- Short telephoto 12MP f/2.0
- Long Telephoto 8MP f/2.0
- Ultra-wide 20MP f/2.2
- Macro 2MP f/2.4 (2 – 10CM focal range)
Other specs include a 6.47-inch FHD OLED display, Snapdragon 730G, 6GB of RAM paired with 128 GB internal storage or an 8GB/256GB SKU, a whopping 5170mAh battery USB-C, a 3.5 mm courage Port, NFC, dual-SIM, in-display fingerprint sensor and a 32MP front-facing sensor. Overall this is a mid-range device from some of those specs, even with the ‘Gaming’ series Snapdragon in it. The Mi CC9 Pro will be running MIUI 11 on top of Android 10.
The Mi CC9 Pro goes on sale in China from November 11 whereas in Europe it will be launched as the Mi Note 10 tomorrow starting from CNY2,800 or around $580 AUD (before local taxes and costs). Expansion beyond Europe is unclear at the moment but we will follow up with Xiaomi regarding a potential Australian release.
Why do people buy these phones at all, cheap android phones are probably the worst when it comes to privacy and security.
Got a link to the evidence of this Harry?
Xiaomi is one of the better Chinese phone manufacturers. Sure there may not be as good as Google or even One Plus they do at least support their devices for at least 3 years if not longer with some updates which is a lot better than most.
Are you saying that expensive Android phones are more secure? My $200, Nokia 5.1 Plus (Android One) receives monthly security updates the same month as the $1400 Google Pixel 4 phone.