Xiaomi Mi Note 10 long-term review

Design, handling, build quality

The Mi Note 10 is big and heavy, so if you have small hands one-handed use won't be an option at all. It's also unashamedly top-heavy, so if weight balance is important in your day to day life, and it's part of what makes a phone comfortable to use for you, then it's bad news. Let's just say you will never forget that this phone is in your pocket - or your hand while you use it, for that matter. It's substantial, in one word, and part of that feeling clearly has to do with the humongous 5,260 mAh battery fitted inside.

In the looks department, it's very similar to every other upper-midrange or high-end smartphone launched in the past few months, with a glass sandwich design and all that. Additionally, the screen is curved on the sides, but not as much as some other phones - the Huawei Mate 30 Pro comes to mind. There's no 'waterfall' screen here, staying closer to recent Samsung flagships instead.

The back glass is curved too and 'flows' into the metal frame symmetrically to the screen, which makes for a pretty sight (even more so for the OCD types) but it also means that the aluminum sides are incredibly tiny. This adds to the overall slipperiness that comes from the glass being used on both sides, meaning this phone is tough to convince not to slip out of your hand constantly.

Thankfully, there's the huge camera hump at the rear to somewhat ironically help with that. Because the main camera island that houses 3 of the 5 snappers is so elongated you don't get a huge amount of wobble when using the phone on its back on a desk or something similar. Actually the only issue is pressing stuff in the lower-right side of the screen, for everything else the phone stays put.

As for in-hand use, if you don't slap a case on it, you might be able to rest your index finger at the bottom of said island for some added stability, especially if you're left-handed. Unfortunately, that means the lower two camera lenses are almost guaranteed to always get smeared. You win some, you lose some.

Because this is a big, heavy, slippery phone, in all honesty a case is the way to go. The one that comes in the box could be a good start - it doesn't cover the screen's sides so you still get some of the advantages of having a curved screen - like how awesome swipes from or to a side feel. The case itself offers basic protection but nothing close to heavy-duty, which is obvious by how bendy it is. Still, it's more than nothing.

At this point in time we're used to glass slabs that are at least somewhat slippery, but even by those standards the Mi Note 10 is a bit more difficult to handle than most devices out there. However, you'll probably get used to its quirks in a few days, and all of this might be worth the cameras you're getting and the battery life as well - we'll circle back to that later.

The 3.5mm headphone jack is in, which is a nice touch, and there's an IR blaster up top, although these features seem to be increasingly rare nowadays. The earpiece grille is elongated enough that we thought it would serve as a faux stereo element alongside the bottom-firing speaker, but alas, that's not the case.

You only get audio from the bottom speaker and it's not the loudest or clearest or highest-quality we've heard by any stretch of the imagination. Watching videos and even taking speakerphone calls is slightly less than ideal, especially for the former because you're practically required to cup the phone in your hand to make the sound come your way.

The buttons are all on the right side which is fine in theory (at least you won't be accidentally touching the volume down one while trying to hit power on the other side, like with some other phones). The downside is they're too close to each other for our liking, so we found ourselves practically in the same situation as described above, but for a different reason. It doesn't help that the power button isn't ridged or anything like that, it's impossible to tell it apart from volume down based on just touch. So prepare for a few misclicks.

Build quality is outstanding but this is sort of a given considering it's been like that for practically every glass and metal sandwich device we've handled recently, regardless of price point. The manufacturing technology for such slabs has simply reached tolerance levels that are close to perfection, so maybe now would be the time to experiment with different materials? Or maybe all phones sort of look similar these days because that's simply what works, and what people crave. Probably a combination of the two.

Overall, while we would have preferred a lighter build and a less pronounced camera hump, the Mi Note 10 isn't unwieldy and considering the tech in those cameras it's understandable how things got this big. And if you associate heft with a premium feeling, then this one will deliver.