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Will Your Next Smartphone be a Xiaomi? S20 FE 5G vs Mi 10T!

I must start off by saying WOW. Just a few short years ago, I wouldn't have dared to compare a pretty high end Samsung device to any Xiaomi phone. Here we are though, it's 2021, Huawei is pretty much out of the picture given that their phones don't have access to the Google services, Samsung makes great phones, but are usually quite pricey and Xiaomi isn't focused on making only cheap, budget smartphones anymore. Although not available worldwide, the Mi 10 Ultra, which takes every spec and brings it to the max is Xiaomi's way of giving us a sneak peak into what the future holds when it comes to their high end phones.

We are going to divide this comparison into 6 categories: Design, Screen, UI, Performance, Camera and finally, which one deserves your hard earned cash the most? If you're only interested in a specific, feel free to jump to that section through the video progress bar.

Ok, so first of all, the design and quality of the phones. This one is pretty easy, with Samsung you can feel that some corners were cut in order to bring the price down, we have seen this happening with most flagship killers. The back is made out a hybrid material, something that Samsung calls glasstic, but really, it feels like matte plastic. On the Mi 10T, we have Gorilla glass 5 not just on the front, but also on the back with this mirror-like effect. Also, the color of the back shifts from dark grey to almost silver, depending on the light. The frame is made out of aluminium on both, which is to be expected, but overall, the design of the S20 FE is just uninspiring. From the plain camera bump, to the larger bezels, I just don't think the S20 FE takes the crown when it comes to design. The bezels on this phone are slightly larger than on the predecessor, the Galaxy S10 Lite, so I can't say I'm pleased with this. Although the bezels aren't really slim on the Mi 10T either, when holding the phone, you can feel that the materials are of much higher quality, mostly because of the back. The camera bump is more pronounced but at least more interesting than just throwing 3 cameras in column and making the bump much wider than necessary. I must mention, this is not a 4 camera system, as the holes would lead you to believe, one of them is there just for the sake of symmetry. I will say though, the Mi 10T is quite a bit heavier than the S20 FE, a bit larger, mostly because of the larger screen and about a milimeter thicker, so if you appreciate thin & light, the Mi 10T might not be for you. If these things don't bother you, the Mi 10T is an absolute winner, being much closer to flagship territory than the S20FE, when it comes to the design.

Things are going to get a lot more interesting now, let's talk about the screens. On paper, the screen of the Mi 10T might look like the winner. After all, it's larger, coming in at 6.67 inches instead of 6.5 inches and it has an impressive 144Hz refresh rate, rather than 120Hz. There's a catch though, the screen on the Mi 10T is an IPS LCD panel, unlike the Samsung which has an AMOLED screen. This right here is a significant difference and the sole reason why the screen on the Mi 10T is not as good as it could be. Blacks are not as deep as on the AMOLED, because of the backlighting, the refresh rate isn't as impressive as it sounds on paper, because of the high response time, which looks like ghosting if you pay attention. I'm not sure it would've fit the budget, but I can honestly say a 90Hz AMOLED screen would've been the better choice, instead of going all out on the refresh rate but not feeling this benefit because of the LCD panel. Because of the LCD panel, it also means that you are missing out on Always on functionality, but this is the smallest of drawbacks, if you ask me. On the other side, with the Samsung, it's the usual AMOLED with really saturated colors. If you switch colors from vivid to to normal, the colors become too washed out, much more than I'm used to on my iPhone. What I ended up doing is using vivid mode with the blue light filter activated. I'm sure color accuracy suffers because of this, but at least the screen looks closer to what I'm used to.

Next up, we'll discuss the UIs, because it's an important category. This does come down to personal preference though, so what I'll do is tell you what each one can do and any drawbacks that they may have. Let's start off with Samsung, this S20 FE 5G rocks One UI 3 on top of Android 11 and to be honest, Samsung has got their stuff together when it comes to UIs. I get updates quite frequently and will continue to get Android updates until Android 13, Samsung has their own identity now, I like their browser better than Chrome. Also something great that Samsung did for one-handed use is using these large headers at the top, which disappears when scrolling, but mean that you can easily access the buttons when opening the app. Samsung's dedicated one-handed mode is elegant and can be adjusted so the screen shrinks to exactly the size you need. As far as bugs and glitches go, I can happily say that I haven't experienced none and the interface is smooth. On the Mi 10T we have MIUI 12 running on top of Android 10, so we're starting off already with an older version of Android, but this should be updated to Android 11 at some point, hopefully... MIUI feels a bit snappier and it has a lot of great looking notifications, maybe a bit overdone, but it cheers me up seeing stuff happening instead of the boring notifications we all got used to. I like the fact that I can get to the quick settings panel through a single swipe on the right side of the screen instead of two swipes on Samsung. The video toolbox is extremely useful as it lets you listen podcasts on Android with the screen closed. It's not all rosy though, the phone app is for example the stock android one and the UI elements just don't seem MIUI-like, the background of the app is blueish, whereas all the other apps are black because I have dark mode on. Sometimes, an app I use frequently, cellmapper is stuck open and the only way to close it is by force-closing. I am happy to report, though that there are no ads here. In the end, it comes down to personal preference, if you like your phone to be more animated, you'll like MIUI, if you want a more sober experience, go with One UI.

Performance wise, not much to say, both are at the flagship level, given the Snapdragon 865 equipped by both. 6GB of RAM on both, as these are the base models, MIUI seems to be a bit more aggressive with RAM management but this can be tweaked on a per-app basis, so your most used apps aren't going to get closed. I'm impressed that I don't feel the change in the refresh rate on the Xiaomi, as it is adaptive, it's smooth all throughout. One thing I like about the Xiaomi is the side mounted fingerprint reader, it's blazing fast, much faster than any phone I've used so far. With the on screen fingerprint sensor on the S20 FE, I almost always struggle to get it to unlock, it's harder to keep your finger stationary on glass and it seems to have a hard time reading my finger. Overall, I'll give this to the Mi 10T, the fingerprint scanner tips the scale in its direction for sure.

Cameras are a category where sometimes you can really feel that corners were cut. In this case, the Mi 10T doesn't have a telephoto camera, Xiaomi choosing to offer a 5MP macro lens, which although miles better than the 2 MP, it still doesn't come anywhere close to the telephoto when it comes to usefulness. The main camera is a 64MP shooter on the Mi 10T, using pixel binning to get 16MP photos, whereas on the Samsung we have a 12MP sensor. Overall, both take good shots, with the Xiaomi having more details, but losing out on dynamic range and in low light conditions, which is why I'll give this one to Samsung. The Mi 10T shoots 8k video, but that's a gimmick, as there is no video stabilisation at 8k, so you'll most likely end up shooting 4k to get usable video.

So, now the final question. Which one should you get? Well, here's the deal, both of these smartphones are great, but for the price difference, $699 vs about $499, it's hard to justify the price of the Samsung. Yes, the camera is better on the Samsung, but on the other hand, the design on the Mi 10T is higher quality than on the Samsung. I can only recommend the S20 FE if you want an all-around better camera system, partly due to the telephoto, partly due to better dynamic range and low light capabilities or if you absolutely can't live without OLED, though I'd recommend checking it out in real life before making the call. If the camera's not your main focus, spare the money and get the better looking, higher quality built Mi 10T.  

Mi 10T (US): https://amzn.to/3bpXrlq

Mi 10T (UK): https://amzn.to/2NXvfi4

S20 FE 5G (US): https://amzn.to/3pKokpC

S20 FE 5G (UK): https://amzn.to/2ZKs67C