Xiaomi Mi 12 Pro first evaluation: Is it strong enough to be a benchmark against iPhone?

December 31, 2021 Savior

In the past year, the ridicule about Snapdragon 888 has never stopped.

After a year, its successor, Xiaolong 8, has finally arrived. The Mi Digital series is still one of the first models to eat crabs.

The new look is not Xiaomi

In appearance, the Mi 12 Pro has changed a lot from the previous generation.

Its camera module adopts a common rectangular design, but the arrangement style is quite unique. One for two, three lenses are not on the same axis.

Between each lens and flash, there is a thin line as a separation. This line is really the finishing touch. Without it, the sense of order would disappear all at once.

The material on the back is AG glass, the color is very fresh. If you pay attention to texture, we recommend the purple version of the flash sand process and the plain green of the plain leather.

In the hand, the feel of the Mi 12 Pro is greatly improved compared to the previous generation. The middle frame has almost no sense of existence, and the seams are chamfered and filled with glue, and the connection is very smooth.

Still the top screen

From the front, the screen of the Mi 12 Pro is no longer four-curved, but it has a normal R angle, which is much pleasing to the eye.

The quality of this screen is very top, the specific parameters can refer to the screenshot.

With the four-unit speakers tuned by Harman Kardon, the audio and video experience of the Mi 12 Pro is very good.

Regarding the screen, we are most curious about its dynamic refresh rate experience. After all, Xiaomi says that it is the first Android phone to achieve sliding speed change, which is more friendly to battery life.

How does it shift? In the setting interface, you can see that the initial speed is 120Hz. We slide the page, slowly decreasing as the speed, until the screen freezes. The refresh rate dropped from 120Hz to 90Hz, 60Hz, and finally remained at 30Hz.

The whole process is visually smooth and there is no sense of fragmentation.

However, this seemingly beautiful feature is currently only supported by some system apps.

We have counted the commonly used third-party apps, and their refresh rate performance is shown in the chart. Although some apps have variable refresh rates, they can only switch between 120 and 60 Hz.

It can be said that the adaptation of the intelligent dynamic refresh rate is a long way to go.

Is it still a "hand warmer"?

After so long, the performance test you care about the most is here.

The new generation of Snapdragon 8 uses Samsung's 4nm process technology. After 10 years of ARMv8 instruction set, it was finally replaced with ARMv9, which has stronger security and machine learning capabilities.

The CPU follows the 1+3+4 core architecture. In terms of GeekBench's running scores, compared to Xiaomi 11 Pro's Snapdragon 888, the single-core score has not increased much, and the multi-core has increased by about 10%.

There is a gap between this and the score of Qualcomm's engineering machine. Xiaomi engineers said that this is related to the system version and software adaptation.

The performance of the GPU under the new architecture has improved significantly. GFXBench's individual test scores are 63% higher than the previous generation.

We use GFXBench to run scores and conduct power consumption tests. The results showed that the peak power consumption of Snapdragon 8 exceeded 10W. Let us worry a little bit about its fever.

In a room temperature environment of 20°C, we compared the following mobile phones with Mi 12 Pro in two rounds of game testing.

The first round is the 30-minute King of Glory, with the highest picture quality and frame rate turned on.

The frame rate in the Mi 12 Pro game can always be maintained at 120 frames. Mi 11 Pro does not work, the start is less than 120 frames, and the subsequent drops to about 100 frames.

The other two mobile phones can only open up to 90 frames and 60 frames respectively, and the frame rate is relatively stable.

The second round is a 30-minute run of the well-known software Yuanshen, the picture quality and frame rate are fully tested.

Mi 12 Pro provides a small easter egg "Extreme Mode" in the developer mode. Let's open it and see how it performs.

Whether it is running a map or fighting, the Mi 12 Pro can be stabilized at more than 50 frames. After just 3 minutes of playing with Mi 11 Pro, it dropped to 40 frames.

Huawei P50 Pro will fluctuate between 40-60 frames with the body temperature. The most stable is the A15. The iPhone 13 Pro Max has 60 frames almost all the way, which is too strong.

More importantly, I haven't talked about temperature.

The heat dissipation material of the Mi 12 Pro looks very luxurious. In addition, it is equipped with dynamic performance scheduling technology, which is currently adapted to the glory of the king.

To put it simply, the mobile phone will independently analyze the current game scene, intelligently schedule the core, run at different frequencies, and control heat generation and power consumption.

Therefore, not only can the Mi 12 Pro run 120 frames in the glory of the king, but the maximum temperature is also controlled at 42.1°C, which is 1.2°C lower than the Mi 11 Pro, which runs less than the number of frames.

In Yuanshen game, the highest temperature of Mi 12 Pro is 42.4℃. It turned out to be the coldest of the four mobile phones.

We suspect that there is a problem with the result, but after many tests, the Xiaomi Mi 12 Pro did behave like this, and the temperature was restrained under high load scenarios. Friends whose results are beyond your expectations, gather in the comment section.

Stronger performance, lower temperature. Say that Xiaomi Mi 12 Pro Yulong is successful, no one should object, right?

Steady and fast three shots

After talking about performance, let's take a look at the camera.

The surprisingly big one on the back of the Mi 12 Pro is the wide-angle main camera with the first Sony IMX707 sensor. The size is the same as the main camera of Huawei P40 and Mate40 series.

The other ultra-wide-angle lens and the medium-focus lens all use Samsung JN1 sensors.

The biggest feeling that the Mi 12 Pro camera gives me is stability, followed by fastness.

The first is stable imaging quality.

Compared with the previous generation, the main camera has a slightly smaller sensor size, but the imaging is more solid and brighter. The white balance is particularly accurate, the ambient color temperature is more accurate than that of the iPhone 13 Pro Max, and the atmosphere is full.

The addition of the Yexiao 2.0 algorithm makes the night scene better and will not blindly pursue brightness. However, in some scenes, the HDR algorithm is slightly aggressive, and the screen looks a bit dirty.

The quality of the ultra-wide-angle lens has been improved compared to the previous generation, and the details are richer. But the viewing angle is not as wide as the iPhone 13 Pro Max. It is recommended that you use the super wide-angle to take portraits, and there are surprises.

The imaging of the double portrait lens is very solid. The 48mm focal length is very useful for shooting people, food, and still life. However, since this lens does not have optical image stabilization, it is easy to blur when shooting in low light.

It is worth mentioning that the imaging of the front lens is also quite stable, and the beauty effect is the same as that of Xiaomi CIVI.

In addition to stability, fast is the second key word.

The camera opens fast, the night scene filming speed is fast, the continuous shooting speed is fast, and the focusing speed is fast.

The Mi 12 series of all things focus tracking system, double-click the person or object that needs to be focused, the camera can firmly lock the object, and even supports the human eye tracking focus. With a fast continuous shooting speed, the Mi 12 Pro is very good at recording motion pictures.

The daily experience that a flagship should have

Users who are not performance party or camera party pay more attention to the daily experience of mobile phones.

We believe that the three points of system, signal, and battery life greatly affect the happiness of mobile phone use.

In 2021, MIUI, as Xiaomi's "strongest combat power", has declined in reputation among various experience issues. Mi 12 Pro comes with the official version of MIUI 13 pre-installed. But after a short experience, I just want to say: Where have I seen you?

So far, we haven't found too many new features or encountered bugs.

In addition to beautiful new wallpapers, more convenient and practical notes, rich widgets. Its overall experience is like MIUI 12.5 enhanced version Pro.

Stability is a good thing for MIUI to reverse its reputation. After all, the vote initiated by Mr. Lei shows that more users still hope that MIUI 13 can be smooth and stable.

Xiaomi said at the press conference that Xiaomi Mi 12 Pro has also improved signal performance. So we took the mobile phone to a subway station with a lot of people and conducted a signal test.

The measured data shows that the Mi 12 Pro does perform better in some scenes.

Following S1 and C1, Xiaomi's third surging chip, P1, also came, which was launched by the Xiaomi 12 series.

This chip solves the problem that cannot be achieved at the same time between large batteries and high power. For the first time, a single-cell battery with a higher density can enjoy a 120W fast charge.

The 4600mAh single-cell battery of Mi 12 Pro can be charged from 0 to 100% in 27 minutes with the included 120W charging head, and it can be fully charged in about 19 minutes in fast mode.

In terms of battery life, in the 5G state, we conducted a comparative test with the Xiaomi 11 Pro. The Mi 12 Pro performed slightly better, but the gap was not big. The video test consumes a lot of power, and the temperature soars to 42°C, which needs to be further optimized.

The new Xiaomi with a stable character

Officially benchmarked with Apple and won the world's first place in three years. This is Xiaomi's slogan this year.

In order to achieve this goal, Xiaomi no longer blindly pursues fast, but regards stability as a higher priority strategy. In fact, this rational change also represents the end of the era of high growth in the smartphone industry.

Compared with the publicity of the previous-generation digital series, the ice-breaking exploration of the MIX series, the low-key and pragmatic style of the new-generation digital flagship, and the stable experience without shortcomings, I believe it can better help Xiaomi to fully impact the high-end.