Xiaomi has recently launched the Xiaomi 11T Pro in India. The phone is being seen as a challenger to the OnePlus 9RT. In fact, right through the launch, the phone was being compared with the recently launched OnePlus 9 RT by Xiaomi itself.
Not too many seem to have realised in all the hype and talk that the Xiaomi 11T Pro is actually more of an upgrade to a phone the brand launched in mid-2021 in India – the Mi 11X Pro.
That might surprise many people because Xiaomi itself has made no reference to this. In fact, by name the 11T Pro should be the successor of the Mi 10T Pro in October 2020, but a look at the phones will show you that the 11T Pro is actually closer to the Mi 11X Pro. Right from the design to the hardware, the 11T Pro and 11X Pro are incredibly similar.
Mi 11X and Xiaomi 11T – look like Pro Brothers lost at the Kumbh Mela?
If the tech market was a Bollywood film, we would say that the Mi 11X Pro and the Xiaomi 11T Pro are like two brothers who got separated at the Kumbh Mela (a very popular fair in India). They both have the same design: a flat front with a punch hole in the top centre, a curved glass back, and camera units that look very similar (two large lenses with a smaller one in between) and fingerprint scanners on the side. Even the colours are similar – Black, White and a colour-changing option that Xiaomi called Celestial Silver in the 11X Pro and Celestial Blue in the 11T Pro.
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They are almost the same size too. The Xiaomi 11T Pro is 164.1 mm long, 76.9 mm wide and 8.8 mm thin. The Mi 11X Pro is slightly smaller and thinner – 163.7 mm long, 76.4 mm wide and 7.8 mm thin. They are both slightly heavy phones with less than 10 grammes of the weight difference between them – the 11T Pro is 204 grammes, the 11X Pro is 196 grammes.
Similar hardware atma for both the Mi 11X Pro and Xiaomi 11T Pro
Even on hardware terms, both phones are very similar. Both come with 6.67 inches full HD+ AMOLED Display with a 120 Hz refresh rate. Both also are powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 processor. Even the rear cameras are similar – 108-megapixel main camera, 8 megapixels ultrawide and 5-megapixel macro camera. Both also have a stereo speaker with support for Dolby Atmos, and also come with support for 5G. Right now, both are running MIUI 12.5 on top of Android 11, although the 11X Pro was launched with MIUI 12 and received an update later
A few differences, most notably HyperCharge and battery
There are some differences between the two phones of course. Most notably the Xiaomi 11T Pro comes with a larger 5000 mAh battery while the 11X Pro had a 4520 mAh battery, which is perhaps why the 11T Pro is slightly heavier as we noted above. And the difference between the chargers in the box is huge too – the Xiaomi 11T Pro comes with the much-hyped HyperCharge 120 W charger, while the Mi 11X Pro had a 33W charger in the box.
Interestingly, the Mi 11X Pro seems to have a slightly better selfie camera – 20 megapixels as compared to the 16 megapixels one on the Xiaomi 11T Pro. The display of the 11T Pro is protected by Gorilla Glass Victus while that of the 11X Pro was protected by Gorilla Glass 5. And while both phones support 5G, the 11T Pro supports 13 bands while the Mi 11X Pro supports only two (incidentally, India currently supports zero 5G bands so it really makes no difference).
The Xiaomi 11T Pro also has a 12 GB/ 256 GB variant, while the Mi 11X Pro only has 8 GB/ 128 GB and 8 GB/ 256 GB variants.
The Mi 11X Pro is still available and at a lower price
As you can see, both phones are incredibly similar and match each other in perhaps the three areas most consumers consider – display, processor and rear cameras. Remarkably, both phones are available in the market, and the Mi 11X Pro has even got a price cut to start at Rs 36,999 – Rs 3,000 below its launch price and that of the base Xiaomi 11T Pro model.
So for Rs 3,000 less, you end up getting most of the goodness of the Xiaomi 11T Pro from a phone that is more than half a year old. In fact, unless someone is really keen on the battery and charging speed, we cannot see what advantage one gets from the Xiaomi 11T Pro as compared to the Mi 11X Pro. Makes you wonder why Xiaomi had to launch a new phone to take on the OnePlus 9RT when it already had a candidate – the Mi 11X Pro!
Xiaomi 11T Pro or Mi 11X Pro NE?!
So while all the comparisons are being made between the Xiaomi 11T Pro and the OnePlus 9RT, the one comparison many should actually be making is between the Xiaomi 11T Pro and the Mi 11X Pro. The Mi 11X Pro has most of the important hardware that the 11T Pro has and right now costs Rs 3,000 lesser.
Perhaps Xiaomi should have simply called its new phone the Xiaomi 11X Pro NE or Xiaomi 11X Pro Plus. We do not know if the Xiaomi 11T Pro will beat the OnePlus 9RT, but we would certainly ask you to consider the Mi 11X Pro if you want a phone with a flagship processor for a price that is closer to Rs 35,000 than Rs 40,000.
