Xiaomi Mi 10 and Mi 10 Pro: Release date, specs and details

Xiaomi has been making waves over the past few years, with a more aggressive approach to international expansion and looking to get a real foothold in Europe.

The next flagship phone for 2020 is the Mi 10 and the Mi 10 Pro, which the company has announced and will land running MIUI 11 running on Android 10. But what will they offer?

Xiaomi unveiled the Mi 10 series via an online event in China for the Chinese market, where the phones are now on pre-order. There was a European event planned for 23 February, but following the cancellation of Mobile World Congress 2020, we suspect that Xiaomi's plans may change for a global launch. We have asked Xiaomi for clarification.

The prices in the China start at 4299 yuan (about £474) for the Mi 10, while the Mi 10 Pro will start at 4999 yuan (about £552). We'd expect UK and European pricing to be announced on 23 February.

Both the Mi 10 and Mi 10 Pro have the same overall design, an evolution the Mi 9 design and close to the design we saw on the Mi Note 10, which offered the same layout of those cameras on the rear. The display curves to the edges, very much in the style of Samsung, while there's a conventional metal frame and glass back construction.

There's no notch, with Xiaomi moving to a single punch hole design in the display, this time off to the left-hand side. One thing to note about the design is that this phone tops 200g - so it's on the hefty side.

There's no mention of waterproofing in the specs, but there is a liquid cooling system designed to keep the phone cool and running in optimum conditions.

There's also a dual speaker arrangement which should offer better stereo performance than previous Mi handsets.

Xiaomi uses a Samsung AMOLED display for the Mi 10 and the Mi 10 pro. It's curved at the edges, with a punch hole in the top left corner for the front camera.

It measures 6.67-inches on the diagonal, with a Full HD+ resolution (2340 x 1080 pixels) and a 19.5:9 aspect ratio. There's little in the way of bezels, resulting in a good looking device.

Xiaomi has opted for a 90Hz refresh rate, rather than the 120Hz that you'll be getting from the OnePlus 8 or Samsung Galaxy S20+, while the company says it is using a 180Hz sampling rate - to detect touches. Sure, the numbers might not be up at Samsung's levels, but we doubt that makes a real difference in the overall experience.

There's support for HDR10+, so compatible movies should look good. We've got high hopes for this display, it sounds great.

The Xiaomi Mi 10 will use the Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 platform and offer 5G on both handsets. There are a couple of RAM and storage options, starting at 8GB/128GB for the Mi 10, and 8GB/256GB for the Mi 10 Pro. Both have the option of 12GB RAM. Xiaomi has confirmed LPDDR5 RAM and UFS3.0 storage.

When it comes to the battery, it appears as though the Mi 10 might have a slightly larger battery, based on the specs. It's reported as 4780mAh, whereas the Mi 10 Pro is reported as 4500mAh, but we'll keep an eye on this to see if these details are accurate.

The Mi 10 will come with a 30W charger, supporting 30W wired and wireless charging rates and offering 10W reverse wireless charging. The Mi 10 Pro comes with a 65W charger and will offer 50W wired charging, 30W wireless charging and 10W reverse charging.

Whichever way you look at it, both Mi 10 models seem to have plenty of power on offer.

The headline feature on the Mi 10 is the 108-megapixel main camera. This boasts a large 1/1.33in sensor, optical image stabilisation and boasts that it has 1.6µm pixels after pixel combining, so it's 0.8µm natively. There's an f/1.69 aperture, and while the sensors both look the same, it seems that the Mi 10 Pro has an eight element lens and the Mi 10 has a 7 element lens, so there might be some difference in performance.

It's also capable of shooting 8K video.

Then the camera arrangement takes a bit of a diversion, with the Mi 10 Pro having what is effectively two telephoto lenses, one offering 2X optical zoom and identified as a portrait lens and the other claiming 10X hybrid optical - with a 50X digital zoom. Finally, there's a 20-megapixel ultra-wide camera.

While the Mi 10 gets that 108-megapixel main camera, it moves to a 13-megapixel ultra-wide. The two additional lenses claim to be macro and for depth - and if that's the case, you're not getting the same range of functions that the Mi 10 Pro will be offering.

Both phones have the same 20-megapixel front camera.