Xiaomi Mi 9T Pro
128 GB, Flame Red, 6.39", Dual SIM, 48 Mpx, 4G
Flagship killer that’s all about value for money: the Xiaomi Mi 9T Pro
17.10.2019
Video: Stephanie Tresch
Translation: Eva Francis
The Mi 9T Pro has a pop-up selfie camera, resulting in a beautiful notchless screen. And: the phone has one of today's rare headphone jacks. Very nice.
The Xiaomi Mi 9T Pro is described as an iPhone killer. And marketing people aren't shying away with expressions such as price wars, flagship killers and challenging the high-end class. The Mi 9T Pro has been available on the Asian market under the name Redmi K20 Pro for quite some time now – it's now been renamed for the European market.
After testing it, I have to say: the Mi 9T Pro offers a lot but doesn't cost much. It looks darn good. And the pop-up camera is just awesome.
Why? There’s no notch. No hole, no notch, no shit. Simply an OLED screen that offers beautiful colours and contrasts. A good resolution of 2340 x 1080 pixels results in sharp images while the display brightness is good enough to allow you to see what’s on the screen even in bright sunshine. The frames around the display are nice and thin.
As soon as you activate the selfie camera or face detection, the camera pops out the top of the phone. That looks pretty cool, as the sides of the camera are illuminated and glow in a red light – in the model I have.
You'll hear the mechanics as the camera appears. It sounds great. And it feels great. I could do this all day long.
Fingerprint and always-on display
The fingerprint sensor is integrated in the display of the 9T Pro. If you hit the sensor accurately, the phone unlocks quickly and reliably. However, quite often I didn't place my finger exactly on the sensor – you can see where your finger needs to go but you can't feel it. There's no haptic feedback, because everything is just glass. In my case, it often took two or even three attempts to unlock the phone by fingerprint.
In addition to the fingerprint, the 9T Pro is equipped with face recognition. What's great about this feature is that it requires the selfie cam to pop out every time you unlock the phone. This only takes a little longer than with normal face recognition, but it didn't bother me.
The recognition can't compete with that of an iPhone, but it's not bad. It works reliably during the day but not at all at night. If you're wearing sunglasses, it works sometimes. If you're wearing a hat or helmet, it works well.
The AMOLED display can also be used as an always-on display, i.e. it's on even if the phone is locked. You can choose from sixteen designs with date and clock display. Notifications are usually displayed. Usually? Yes, Miui, the system the 9T Pro runs on, isn't the most reliable.
The Software: a mess
I know no other phone that costs as little as the 9T Pro and has a Snapdragon 855 processor. It speaks for itself:
the 9T Pro is fast. Very fast. Qualcomm's latest eight-core processor makes sure that everything runs smoothly.
Sadly, Xiaomi threw its Miui surface over Android 9. Miui 10 to be precise. Sounds like the noise a cat makes and is a disgrace. If you've ever had a phone with Miui on it, you'll either love it or hate it. I belong to the latter. In my opinion, Miui is the biggest downside of the 9T Pro: the user interface is confusing, annoying and ugly. That's why I used the phone with the Nova Launcher – at least the home screen was usable that way.
Miui has a problem with notifications. It's one thing that you have to give each app individually the right to display notifications. With WhatsApp, for instance, this is what I had to do. But this didn't apply to all apps – all of a sudden I was getting spam from an old app. In addition, I couldn't get it to show me multiple WhatsApp messages from the same person: if someone sends me more than one message, I only see the last one. Miui makes the others disappears. That’s annoying. I spent two evenings trying to fix the problem. I couldn't get it to work. If you have a phone with Miui on it and know what I did wrong, please let me know.
The only cool thing about Miui could be the dark mode, which works with most apps. But I didn't use it for long, because the font was grey and I could hardly read it when the display was not bright enough.
The 9T Pro comes with gesture control, so you can navigate your phone by swiping instead of using keys to do so. This works well – only the full-screen mode doesn't work correctly on some apps, producing random weird things.
Camera: average
Xiaomi has installed a triple camera in the Mi 9T Pro: 48 megapixels wide-angle, 8 megapixels zoom and 13 megapixels ultra-wide-angle. However, the 48-megapixel sensor records with 12 megapixels as standard. As does Honor, Xiaomi works with pixel binning, i.e. combining pixels to create better images.
In good daylight, this works well: pictures are really detailed, sharp and have nice colours.
The ultra-wide-angle lens has a smaller sensor and doesn't produce quite as good quality shots, but it fits much more onto one picture.
The telephoto lens isn't really telephoto; it's only a double magnification. I thought the sharpness was okay, but compared to pictures taken with the other lenses, the images look washed-out and faded.
This phone also has a portrait mode with bokeh effect. However, this mode is quite unpredictable and the separation between foreground and background isn't always clear. This makes some pictures look strange – thanks to AI. But if you're willing to give it a few tries, you might end up with nice portrait shots.
The pop-up selfie camera has 20 megapixels. Selfies usually look fine if you switch off the typical softening effect of Chinese phones. If you want to look the way you really look, you need to switch off all the beauty settings first.
And what about the rest?
Although the 9T Pro is quite large, it fits well in my hand. If it's lying on the table without the included cover, it slips away easily. This doesn't happen with the cover, but then you can't see its nice rear anymore. You can assign colours to the notification light for different message types. That's pretty cool. What's not ideal is that this light is on the top of the phone, so you can only see it from the side, not from above.
Xiaomi decided against stereo sound – but you shouldn't use your phone to listen to music anyway. There's no IP certification either, which is a shame. The pop-op camera, however, is protected: it retracts as soon as the phone falls.
Conclusion: a good overall package
The pop-op selfie cam is the highlight of the Mi 9T Pro. Not only because it's cool, but also because it gives it a notchless display. It runs on Miui, but you get a fast processor and a headphone jack – a rare combination with new phones. On top of this, you get an elegant and notchless OLED screen.
For the good price, any criticism of the 9T Pro is at a very high level. The phone has almost everything and can do a lot of things – marketing experts would say: a flagship killer. I agree. Despite Miui.
Testing devices and gadgets is my thing. Some experiments lead to interesting insights, others to demolished phones. I’m hooked on series and can’t imagine life without Netflix. In summer, you’ll find me soaking up the sun by the lake or at a music festival.