A portion of this video is sponsored by LastPass. Today we're going to take apart the Xiaomi
Mi Note 10 Pro with it's massive 108 megapixel camera. We're going to compare the internal
hardware side by side with the almost 3x more expensive Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra, which
also has a 108 megapixel camera. We'll see if the camera sensors inside look different
than each other. It should be pretty interesting.
Huge thanks to LastPass for sponsoring a portion of this video. One thing that makes life easier
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video.
Now it's time to take apart this Xiaomi Mi Note 10 Pro. Let's get started.
[Intro]
So I mentioned before that this Mi Note 10 Pro is probably the most feature-rich phone
for the price on the market right now. And today we're going to see what all those features
look like from the inside. Taking off the back is easy enough. I'll use some heat and
be careful around those curved corners, because breaking a phone in front of everyone would
be kind of embarrassing.
The heat softens the adhesive underneath that glass and my razor blade can cut it away.
Unfortunately this phone does not have an IP rating. Lack of water resistance is one
of the downsides. Once the adhesive is cut all the way around, the back glass panel can
lift up and away from the phone. There's nothing important attached to the back glass. There
are 17 screws however, holding the internal plastics to the motherboard. Most of the screws
are green which is kind of fun. Matches the exterior of the phone.
Once the screws are removed I can flip up the small NFC pad and the rest of the side
plastics can pull away from the device. The 5 cameras are what's really interesting inside
of here so we'll keep going. The battery gets unplugged like a little Lego and then the
exterior metal camera lens can pull away from the phone. We see the 4 flash LEDs – two
regular and two soft flashes. It also has a ribbon cable that goes to the sensors between
the two camera lenses. With that out of the way we get our first look at all 5 cameras
lined up here inside the phone. They take up quite a bit of space. The large main 108
megapixel camera is the one there in the center. If I slide over the S20 Ultra, which costs
about 3x as much as the Note 10 Pro, we can see that the cameras themselves look to be
about the exact same size. And both of them have the same physical optical image stabilization.
We'll go deeper in just a second. A clear version of this phone would look pretty awesome.
If enough people are interested, I'll scan this one in and make a teardown skin out of
it. Let me know down in the comments.
The loudspeaker can wiggle out. It does have the waterproofing mesh at the bottom, but
inside the housing there are no little balls like we saw inside of the S20 Ultra. The SIM
card tray does have a red rubber ring around the opening. Once again, no IP rating, but
Xiaomi has at least taken a few precautions against liquid damage. The battery inside
of the Mi Note 10 is massive and removable. Thumbs up for that. This guy is a 5,170 milliamp
hour capacity. The Samsung S20 Ultra is a tad smaller at 5000. Once again, pretty impressive
for a phone this inexpensive.
If I peel away the battery adhesive plastic we can see the mill markings inside of the
battery slot where this phone was carved out of a solid block of aluminum. And, more importantly,
we can see the underscreen fingerprint scanner. This guy is probably the largest underscreen
fingerprint scanner that we've seen yet. And definitely gives more credibility to the idea
that maybe we'll see larger, whole bottom half of the screen fingerprint scanners someday
in the future. Since the screen is AMOLED and because of that LED technology, it's transparent
enough to let the sensors see fingerprints through the display. Even if we had a few
of these sensors grouped together for a larger fingerprint sensing area I think it would
be pretty useful.
There is one more screw hiding up here under the front facing camera ribbon cable connector.
That's the only thing left securing the motherboard to the frame. Once that's removed, the whole
motherboard can pull away. There's a bit of thermal paste on the back of the board, which
then uses the metal phone body as a heat sink. The circular vibrator motor down at the bottom
is the smallest I think I've ever seen. And both the charging port and headphone jack
are permanently attached to the motherboard and not replaceable.
If we come up to the top of the phone, we can see the IR blaster LED. This is for remote
controlling TVs and stuff. This phone has so much going on inside it's pretty crazy.
Now let's check out the cameras. The bottom two cameras, the 2 megapixel macro and the
20 megapixel ultra wide, are not permanently attached to the top three cameras. Kind of
interesting. They have their own separate housings. The 108 megapixel camera is obviously
the largest of the group. Then above that we have the 12 megapixel portrait camera and
the 5 megapixel telephoto camera.
But today we're going to be mostly focusing on the 108 megapixel. The only two phones
that exist with 108 megapixel sensors right now are this one and the Samsung S20 Ultra
– both of which are right here in front of us. Getting all the cameras lined up in
one row actually looks pretty cool from the inside...like one giant shish kabob of image
takers. Each of these image takers is made up of two main parts: the lens, which focuses
the light, and the sensor itself, which is the part that we are interested in. The sensor
portion rests underneath or behind that clear lens, which we can see here. The little colorful
rectangle might look familiar. It's kind of just like that underscreen fingerprint scanner
we just removed. Both of these rectangles receive light so they can take pictures. The
clear lens on the exterior moves independently of the sensor.
Now let's get the 108 megapixel camera out of the Galaxy S20 Ultra. If a 108 megapixel
camera is your main concern or selling point when buying a smartphone, it might be interesting
to know that Samsung actually makes the sensor inside of both of these phones. That's right.
Samsung made the sensor inside of the Xiaomi Mi Note 10, as well as it's own Galaxy S20
Ultra. It's not that surprising actually. Samsung makes a lot of components for a lot
of different phones manufacturers. Even some of the iPhones are using Samsung OLED display
panels. Both 108 megapixel sensors are about the same size. And if I shuffle them around
it would be hard to remember which one came out of which phone without looking at the
frames they are attached to. And if I scrape off the copper shielding on the back of the
ribbon, it's interesting to see that they both have the same style of manufacturing
date and were made just a few months apart.
Now, on professional cameras, these clear camera lenses would be made of glass. But
since cellphone lenses are internal and protected, they can get away with being made out of optical
plastic. Both of the 108 megapixel cameras in each of the phones have plastic lenses.
When taking pictures, sensor sizing is important of course, but the size of the sensor is not
directly correlated with how many pixels it has. For example, the sensor inside of my
regular camera is physically larger than these cell phone sensors, but only has 20 megapixels
instead of 108. Another equally important aspect is the software that's actually receiving
and interpreting the images from the sensor itself. There are a lot of variables that
come into play when talking about cameras. I just think it's super interesting that out
of the two 108 megapixel smartphone cameras that exist right now, Samsung makes both of
them. And one phone costs 3x more than the other.
Of course the software from each phone does play a big part in the image quality from
each camera. So you'll have to watch a few camera comparison reviews to see what the
real life picture quality ends up looking like. But from an internal perspective, Samsung
has made some nice hardware. Cramming 6 cameras into one phone...7 if you count the fingerprint
scanner, is pretty impressive. Xiaomi has done a good job of building the Mi Note 10
Pro, and it's nice to know that we can get a phone that does everything at a price that
doesn't break the bank.
Once I get all the screws in place, and the back panel placed on, we can see that the
phone still works and we can check out the camera, since the lens, you know, isn't exactly
in place anymore. It looks like the macro and wide angle camera still work. But without
that lens focusing light, everything else is just blurry for the 108 megapixel camera,
and it just, you know, doesn't work anymore. But still, a pretty fun experiment.
If you enjoy seeing phones reviewed from the inside, hit that subscribe button if you haven't
already. And since we're all doing the social distancing thing, come virtually hang out
with me on Instagram and Twitter. And let me know what you think of these two phones
down in the comments. Thanks a ton for watching. I'll see you around.