The Xiaomi Mi 11 arrives in Malaysia: Here’s what you need to know

The wait is finally over—Xiaomi has announced the world’s first Snapdragon 888-powered flagship phone for the Malaysian market! The Xiaomi Mi 11, launched globally earlier this month and in China at the end of 2020, is the company’s top-of-the-line model, and we can now confirm the full details for the Malaysian spec variant.

This is, alongside the Galaxy S21 series, one of the earliest 2021 flagships that run on Android—and if you’re deciding between the two, click here for a side-by-side glance at each competitor. In the meantime, here’s everything you need to know about the Xiaomi Mi 11.

Price and availability

Xiaomi Malaysia has confirmed that there will be two variants that will be coming to Malaysia, with up to 256GB of non-expandable UFS3.1 storage mated to a single memory option of 8GB of LPDDR5 RAM. There are three colour options available: Midnight Gray, Horizon Blue, and Cloud White. The last colour option will only be available at a later date, unfortunately, although Xiaomi did not provide an explanation for this omission.

In any case, official pricing for the Mi 11 in Malaysia is as follows:

Mi 11 – 8GB RAM, 128GB storage- RM2,799
Mi 11 – 8GB RAM, 256GB storage – RM2,999

The 8GB+256GB variant will be available at the Xiaomi official store on Lazada and authorised retailers from the 13th of March 2021, while the option with 128GB of storage will be available “at a later date”, according to Xiaomi.

Meanwhile, customers who make pre-orders from 9.30pm on 25 February till the 10th of March 2021 will stand a chance to get a Mi Air Purifier 3C included for free (first 1,500 pre-orders on Lazada and Xiaomi Malaysia’s website). The first 100 customers who register their purchase receipts for the Mi 11 will also receive a Mi AIoT “premium pack”, while stocks last. You can register your receipts here.

Xiaomi is also offering a two-year warranty for the Mi 11, with a one-time free screen repair policy for the first year of warranty coverage.

Specs

As mentioned earlier, the headlining spec is the 5nm Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 under the hood of the Mi 11, which also means that this is a 5G phone. Something else that Xiaomi has clearly put a lot of focus on is the display of the device, with a 6.81″ “Quad-Curve” AMOLED display pushing a WQHD+ resolution of 3200×1440 pixels. You’re also looking at 1500 nits of peak brightness and a contrast ratio of 5,000,000:1, as well as support for HDR10+.

What’s also interesting is the Super Resolution feature, which can supposedly bump up low resolution images from 480p up to 1440p with HDR10+, plus 10-bit colour support. Like many flagship smartphones today, the Mi 11 comes with a 120Hz high refresh rate display, along with an industry-leading 480Hz touch sampling rate—which should come as good news to mobile gamers out there.

All of that has combined to earn the Mi 11 the “best smartphone display” title from DisplayMate, with 13 new records set in the process. These include records for peak display brightness, contrast ratio, native colour gamut, and full-screen brightness for OLED smartphones. The gist of it? This should be one of the best smartphone displays you can find today, according to DisplayMate. Plus, you get Gorilla Glass Victus to protect that gorgeous display.

The Mi 11 isn’t any slouch for photography, or at least, on paper. It features a triple-camera rear setup including a 108MP f/1.85 main camera using a large 1/1.33″ sensor, 7P lens and optical image stabilisation (OIS). There’s also a 13MP ultra-wide-angle camera, as well as a 5MP telemacro (marketing speak for a macro lens) shooter which lets you capture images that are as close as 3cm. To round that off, the Mi 11 has a 20MP front-facing selfie shooter that sits in a hole-punch cutout upfront.

The in-display fingerprint scanner on the Mi 11, meanwhile, isn’t quite your regular fingerprint scanner. What’s unique about it is its extra ability to measure your heart-rate—personally, I don’t think I’ve come across this feature on a smartphone from a major brand before, so kudos to Xiaomi here. As for sound, you get a pair of Harman Kardon-tuned stereo speakers, and the sound wave-inspired grill on the bottom speaker is a subtle, but nice touch.

And no, there isn’t a 3.5mm headphone jack—sorry, guys. You do, however, have the ability to connect two pairs of Bluetooth headphones at the same time, a feature that we’ve seen on iOS in the past. You also get an IR blaster (for when mamaks re-open), although there is no official water resistance rating on the Mi 11.

To sustain all of that, the Mi 11 has a relatively big 4,600mAh battery that can be charged at up to 55W for wired charging and 50W for wireless charging. If you have other Qi-compatible devices, you can even charge those with the Mi 11’s reverse wireless charging at up to 10W. According to Xiaomi, a full charge for the Mi 11 will take 45 minutes via USB-C, and up to 53 minutes with a compatible wireless charger.

And yes! We can confirm that Xiaomi Malaysia is providing a 55W GaN charger in the box, while the Mi 11 will run on Android 11-based MIUI 12. And as previously reported, global variants of the device will come with Google Mobile Services (GMS)—which means that you’ll have full access to Google’s apps and services.

So, what do you think? Is this the best smartphone you can get in Malaysia for under RM3,000? Probably, yes, but if you want to be sure, look out for our full review of the Xiaomi Mi 11, which is in the works.

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