Xiaomi launches the Mi 10 Ultra to celebrate its 10th anniversary

The Mi10 Ultra is Xiaomi’s 2020 superphone.

What you need to know

• Xiaomi today announced the Mi 10 Ultra.
• The phone comes as a celebration of the company’s 1oth anniversary.
• It’s a phone that indulges in excessive specs, with Xiaomi highlighting 120Hz display, 120W fast wireless charging, and 120x AI superzoom.

Xiaomi today announced the Mi 10 Ultra, its ultimate 2020 flagship. It takes everything loved about the Mi 10 Pro and drives it up to 120%. On this phone, you’ll find a 120x AI superzoom camera, 120W ultra-fast wired charging, and a 120Hz display. The Mi 10 Ultra is being released for Xiaomi’s 10th anniversary, so it’s natural that the company felt the need to lean into the ridiculous.

Breaking down the specs, the Mi 10 Ultra comes with a massive 6.67-inch FHD+ OLED display capable of 800nits of brightness, it also has a 240Hz touch sampling rate. Combined with the aforementioned 120Hz display, Xiaomi’s hoping swiping around this phone would be as smooth as butter.

Camera-wise, the Mi 10 Ultra comes with a quad-camera set up. There’s the main 48MP main camera, a 20MP ultra-wide camera, a 12MP portrait camera, and finally, a 120x ultra-zoom camera. We didn’t find the 100x Space Zoom option to be particularly compelling on the Galaxy S20 Ultra, but Xiaomi seems to think that it can do better. The camera system has been ranked as one of the best smartphone systems for this year by DXOMARK.

Xiaomi also notes that the Mi 10 Ultra also has 50W wireless charging, able to take the phone from 0 to 100% in just 40 minutes. All of this excess is powered by a 4,500 mAh battery and driven by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 865 with RAM ranging from 8GB at the lowest tier to 16GB at the highest price range.

As for pricing, Xiaomi says the Mi 10 Ultra comes in four variants, 8GB/128GB, 8GB/256GB, 12GB/256GB, and a 16GB/512GB, priced at ¥5,299, ¥5,599, ¥5,999, and ¥6,999 respectively or $763, $807, $863, and $1,008 roughly. Expect some price adjustments if Xiaomi does bring this to the U.S. to account for taxes and duties, however.

Xiaomi also announced the Redmi K30 Ultra. Powered by the Mediatek Dimensity 1000, this phone brings a high-spec Android experience to an affordable price. The Mi 10 Ultra will go on pre-order in China from August 11th, while the Redmi K30 Ultra will go on sale from August 14th.

Xiaomi Mi 10

$633 at Amazon
$649 at Walmart

The Mi 10 isn’t as devoted to glorious excess as the Mi 10 Ultra. We praised it for the processor, sound, and main camera prowess, but the secondary cameras and MIUI as a whole diminished the experience somewhat.