Mi Note 10 vs. Galaxy Note10+: Do you really need 108MP in a phone?

Conclusion

If we were to try and sum up our findings, we'd say that the Xiaomi Mi Note 10 does offer resolution benefits over the Galaxy Note10+ and they are meaningful. However, they are mostly visible when viewing the images up close. On the other hand, at normal magnifications and for social media sharing purposes other aspects of the image quality take center stage - most notably color rendition and HDR processing, and at those the 'low-res' Galaxy Note10+ still reigns supreme.

So do you really need a 108MP camera in you phone? Maybe you don't yet realize it, but you do. Only it's not for the nominal resolution per se but for the sensor size that it implies and the enhanced computational photography capabilities of these ultra high-res imagers.

The Mi Note 10 gives us a glimpse of what is possible in both of these directions. We were very pleased with its noise performance, in both bright light and at night - noise reduction is one of the key benefits of the Quad Bayer approach. And then thanks to its sensor's sheer size it's capable of throwing backgrounds out of focus naturally, without portrait mode processing. It's thus able to draw attention to a subject, while avoiding distractions. In doing so, it can lend images a certain look that makes them resemble ones taken from a dedicated camera.

What the Xiaomi somewhat fails at is giving you the option to control depth of field in the way a proper camera can, which can be problematic under certain conditions. Well, the Galaxy Note10+ has the solution - a changeable aperture. Mind you, the current Samsung phones with their smaller sensors can't quite match the Xiaomi when it comes to subject isolation even with their lenses wide open - the Mi Note 10 with its bigger sensor is simply inherently more adept at that.

So too will be the one in the upcoming high-end Galaxies, but what if Samsung's able to fit an aperture blade mechanism in there, like it has in the last two generations of Notes and S-series? That would allow you to switch the aperture between a bokehlicious f/1.7 and a more sharpness-friendly f/2.4? And with the rumored 9-to-1 binning on the S20, wouldn't that be all the dynamic range and noise reduction you could ask for?

Of course you need a 108MP camera. You just don't need 108MP images.