My 10 Pro: now Xiaomi makes mobile phones of 1,000 euros

• Xiaomi presents the Mi 10 and Mi 10 Pro, its new 108-megapixel camera phones
• Xiaomi Mi Note 10.The mobile with the 108 megapixel camera and the largest battery seen in a mobile

The same day that Xiaomi announced its new range of Mi 10 mobiles, one of the two phones came to me by mail: the Mi 10 Pro. I couldn't keep an eye on the presentation, so imagine my surprise when, after an afternoon using it, I gave to look at the price and other features.

How is it possible that Xiaomi is going to launch a 1,000-euro mobile on the market if, last year, the equivalent of this Mi 10 Pro, the Mi 9, did not reach 500 euros? Even the Mi 10, simply, the non-Pro, has a much higher price: 800 euros. It seems that this is due to two questions, one evident and the other that is not fully demonstrated because nobody wants to say it openly.

The obvious is that the competitors have left the gap open: Huawei is not in the best situation, Oppo is not as well known outside of China, LG and Sony are missing in combat and Samsung turns out to have raised the price of their phones, being their most powerful model a beast of, minimum, 1,200 euros.

The one that is not fully proven is that Qualcomm, the manufacturer of the Snapdragon 865 chip that integrates all high-end mobiles this year, has raised prices and imposed its 5G modem, which has practically no alternative at present. Come on, they had to swallow with them yes or yes and neither Samsung nor Xiaomi nor others were willing to assume that rise in the manufacturing costs of the mobile, so the user pays for it.

But obviously, this is not the only reason the Mi 10 Pro has gone so high in price. Xiaomi has taken advantage of the situation to greatly improve the materials, design and construction of its devices, being able, this time, to rival the highest-end mobiles of its competitors in the only section in which they did not yet do so.

Its 6.67-inch, 1080p resolution screen features an OLED panel with a perforation in the upper left corner for the selfie camera (which is pretty decent, not quite at the level of the iPhone 11 or Huawei P40 Pro) and features with a refresh rate of 90hz, which in Christian means that everything seems to be a little more fluid than normal because there are 30 more images per second more in the menu animations.

At the same time, it integrates 8 GB of RAM and 256GB of storage space, figures that are very good although they are already somewhat short for the high-end (there are mobiles in the same price share that have 12GB of RAM, for example, although the difference between both figures is nil). Its version of Android is the tenth, with MIUI 11 as a personalization layer and the battery reaches up to 4,500mAh, a figure that is in line with its price competition. Fast charging, yes, it is ultra-fast: 50 minutes to have it at 100% if you use its 65W charger.

Of course, the most striking thing about the phone is what is seen from the outside, and in this case, it would be the cameras, the four that it carries on its back separated in a way, at best, peculiar. Below all, the super wide angle, almost in the center of the body and that is very good for group photos with its 20 megapixels.

On top of that, the 12-megapixel portrait lens with a 2x optical zoom for a decent blur effect. It is not the mobile that best takes this type of photos, but the result is much, much better than in previous incarnations of the brand.

Above, the telephoto lens, which has a hybrid 10x zoom, that is, one part is optical (4X) and the other part is digital. The result is decent, but far from what the Galaxy S20 Plus, S20 Ultra and Huawei P40 Pro do, which throw much more clarity.

Finally, the main sensor of 108 megapixels, the jewel in the crown shared with Samsung and, yes, it makes fabulous photos for the detail they manage to capture and for the 'pixel binning' process that 'presses' the pixel information obtained by nine pixels (108: 9 = 12 megapixels).

This camera achieves very good results, but since we are dealing with a thousand euro phone and not one with 600, the comparisons are odious. The S20s perform better overall and have better night mode, the Pixel 11 Pro has better colors, and the Pixel 4 XL has smarter processing with a much worse camera, at least in hardware. Xiaomi must put the batteries in the software of its cameras because it now has much tougher competitors.

All these features are outstanding, but they make me think again and again about the good that Xiaomi had before: that it used to include the most important aspects of high-end mobiles and cut here and there so that the prices were very tight. Thus, those users who do not want luxury, but power, had a brand to turn to.

This is no longer the case, and not because the Mi 10 Pro has great technological advances: everything we have mentioned so far is normal in any high-end mobile. It is simply more expensive now.

The Mi 10 Pro is a phone that does nothing exceptional and that even lags somewhat behind its direct competitors, but this time with an almost identical price. Given the choice, surely the Mi 10, which we will talk about soon, is a better option even if it has a little less battery or a less camera.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

• Xiaomi
• Huawei
• Samsung
• Sony
• China

TechnologyHuawei P40, three new phones to get away from Google

OFFERS The bargains of the day on Amazon: A cheaper Xiaomi Mi 8 110 euros, a 50% Taurus food processor, a 45% Foreo UFO ...

GadgetsSamsung Galaxy S20 Ultra: a lot of what I like and a little of what I don't