Testing this 108MP camera makes me wish the Samsung Galaxy S11 DOESN'T have one

Samsung's recently announced 108MP camera sensor is a curious piece of tech – not only for the sheer number of megapixels that it packs, but also because a version of it might end up in the Samsung Galaxy S11 next year. But on top of that, it serves as a reminder that megapixels aren't all that matters in a camera and that more isn't always better.

The Xiaomi Mi Note 10 is the first phone in the world to use the aforementioned 108MP camera sensor. It is also the phone I've been using for about a week now. There are many things to like about it, including the great battery life and the unbelievably low price, but sadly, it's hard for me to put its 108MP camera on the list.

More megapixels, more problems

Let us step back for a moment and answer a fundamental question: what camera do most people need on their phone? The answer, in my opinion: a camera that is fast, reliable, and takes good photos and videos in a variety of conditions with minimum effort on the user's side. Does the 108MP camera on the Xiaomi Mi Note 10 meet the criteria?

Let's get speed and reliability out of the way first. Sadly, this is one of the slower cameras I've tested in a while. If I haven't used the camera for some time, it literally takes several seconds to launch. Taking photos in the default 27MP mode is a reasonably quick process, but switching between photo and video modes takes longer than it should. The bottleneck in the Mi Note 10's case could be the mid-range Snapdragon 730G that it's powered by, but I can't imagine the chipset being the only culprit when the phone is overall very fast and responsive.

Okay, okay. But those 108MP photos look outstanding, don't they?

As I hinted above, the 108MP camera on the Xiaomi Mi Note 10 merges data from four pixels into one and produces 27MP pictures by default. You can take 108MP pictures if you wish as there's a dedicated 108MP mode in the camera app. However, taking a 108MP picture makes the camera app unresponsive for several seconds as it processes the image and you lose features like HDR, not to mention that the output file varies between 10 and 20MB in size.

The good news is that in many cases, the images do look fine – not as fine as the record-breaking number of megapixels would suggest, but fine nonetheless. In fact, I took a few pictures with the Mi Note 10, the iPhone 11 and the Samsung Galaxy Note 10, and the ones out of the 108MP camera did look more detailed. Shocker, I know. Here's a photo that I took at the office:



And now here's what that photo looks like from up close. Even the crop From the Mi Note 10 in the collage came from a 27MP image, it's clear to see that it is more detailed.



At night, the situation is no different. The photo from the Xiaomi Mi Note 10 is more detailed compared to those from its rivals, although you may have to zoom in on the crops collage to see the difference. Again, below is a 27MP photo shot with the Mi Note 10 along with crops for comparison against top smartphones.