Pre purchase research: I've been using poco f1 with a custom ROM (evolution X) for the last 2½ years and wanted to upgrade (tbh, mostly out of fomo) as I wanted a good camera on a smartphone (Poco F1 with gcam was decent but not very reliable)... I don't game a lot now and neither watch OTT content on phone (Used to but now I only use PC or laptop)The reason I chose Mi 10i over redmi note 10 Pro Max: As I don't watch a lot of OTT content on phone, amoled, although better than LCD in every way, doesn't really matter for me and Mi 10i has a good enough display (bright and accurate enough)... Mi 10i has a f/1.75 lens over the f/1.9 on max lens of max and 750G comes with a kryo 570 cores which is a generation upgrade to kryo 470 on 732G...Chose it over Poco X3 Pro cuz my main use case nowadays is only social media and camera, so 860 is an overkill and cameras on Mi 10i and RN 10 max are a step above X3 Pro..Summary is If you consume a lot of media on phone, go with note 10 max otherwise mi 10i has slightly better camera and faster. If you're a gamer, Hands down go with Poco X3 Pro...After 2 weeks of usage: It is exactly as I expected and didn't disappointBeforehand (valid for all Xiaomi phones): While setting up the device, uncheck everything you can and select the location as UK instead of India and you won't have the getapps store, which sends annoying notifications that, if you follow him, geekyranjit always complains about xD.Then enable developer options by clicking 7 times on miui version and change the animations to 0.5x..Now coming to the review:Things done right:1. The phone is crazy fast for day to day usage that it's a delight to use.. Miui with 120Hz just flies with 0.5x animations. I wouldn't say it's significantly better than Poco F1 with evo x but it's as good and that's not a bad thing at all...2. The camera is a significant upgrade over Poco F1.. the 108MP camera (9:1 pixel binned 12MP photos) with f/1.75 lens takes amazing photos in day light and very good in low light as well... The natural bokeh it produces is mindblowing. However it's not all good too. The selfie camera is above average as best. It's good enough but that's about it. Gcam significantly improves but again it's not very consistent and not exactly point and shoot kinda solution. Wide angle is not even significantly close to main camera. You're better off taking panoramas or photo spheres with gcam. Macro and depth just make up numbers... Haven't checked video recording due to lockdown. There are a tons of camera modes as well which I haven't checked, again due to lockdown but seem pretty cool and from what I've seen in YouTube works pretty well too.. Will update once I get to use those personally. HDR mode although excellent, processing is not instant and takes a second to process. Nothing to worry about at all and that's the reason for mentioning as well. Also the HDR settings reset after reopening the camera app. You need to change that in settings. One of many little miui annoyances.3. Battery life is excellent. Easily gets through a day even if you use a lot. Charges to more than 80% under an hour, even if you're using in between, which lasts a full day easily. It's a good balance between charging speed, battery health, battery life and weight. I've attached some accubattery stats4. Speakers and Display.. well not amoled but a very good LCD. Gets bright enough in daylight, gets dim enough with lights off... Sharp and color accurate... A very good display for daily usage but if it's your highest priority, there are better options that are not too far behind in other aspects as well (redmi note 10 Pro Max)... Speakers are very good. Produces excellent sound, loud enough and clear. Has a bit of punch in the low end too. You won't need an external speaker for regular usage..5. Build and design: first thing you'll notice is how big and heavy it is... Not a huge fan of it tbh. Not a comfortable single hand usage Device. Poco F1 is like the perfect size imo. Other than that, it looks gorgeous in the sunrise colour and comes with gorilla glass 5 on both sides (the reason for the heft) which is the best you could get at this price. Tbh I personally don't care about these. The in-box case is very good, protects the camera module (which otherwise wobbles quite a bit on flat surface) and the raised to protect the screen from falls as well... It does come with a plastic screen protector but I recommend getting a tempered glass for the best scratch resistance. The fingerprint reader is a but wobbly.. hope it won't be an issue..6. The basics: Xiaomi phones usually have excellent custom ROM support. Apart from that, Has all the sensors you need. Proximity sensor works fine. The call quality and signal reception, both with Jio and 5 ghz wifi is good. Fingerprint reader on power button is fast and I personally feel it's the best placement for fp reader. IR blaster is an add-on. Headphone jack is there, if you connect external mic or your high quality wired earphones.Now coming to the annoyances6. Miui: a. Biggest problem with Miui that no one talks about is the Notification management. Ads and all can be disabled but this is something where you can't do much. It needs a huge overhaul. It's pretty crap especially considering how good android 10 and 11 notification management is.whatsapp reply option cuts into the screen. It gets worse with multiple notifications. Really annoying and Xiaomi needs to work on it.Update: Notification management is worse than I thought... If multiple WhatsApp notifications arrive while you're also typing a message, the phone locks. It is pretty weird. Also notification categories are almost non existent. You can't even have separate notifications for multiple Instagram profiles which is too basic.. On the contrary stock android has one of the best notification management and Miui customized it to be worst. b. Memory management on 6gb Variant: while writing this review itself, I opened the camera app to check the modes for a couple of minutes (Vpn and tidal are running in background playing music through LDAC) and Amazon got booted out of memory. That's how bad it is xD. Luckily I copied it to the clipboard. I don't think 8gb Variant would be any better. 6gb should be more than enough for this particular use case. Never had such issues with evolution X. Games, yes but Amazon being booted out is unacceptable. Yes this is done to preserve battery life but the trade-off is too much.Update: apart from that one day, it hasn't been a problem. Do note that I don't game a lot. Personally haven't seen any issues with Truecaller or SMS organizer. c. These two are the major annoyances but there are a few others too. LDAC bitrate must be set to 990kbps from developer options which again resets to adaptive bitrate evertime you disconnect and reconnect. If I'm enabling LDAC I already know the trade-off and I'm willing to take it. Why bother about altering it? HDR resets, as said above. Will update if I encounter any more.d. Ahh forgot the good old security app scanning every app that's downloaded, even from play store, which are already protected by play protect. Another privacy concern right there. Every brand does that but not as evidently as Xiaomi. At least there aren't any ads unlike the redmi phones with India region. Another plus for mi 10i over note 10 maxe. Autorotate is bad... Ik it's bad in almost all phones but in stock android (evolution X), when you turn it off and if it detects orientation, it gives you a tiny rotate icon on the bottom left corner and if you click on it, it changes the orientation... It's not just a handy feature but an essential one especially with a Broken autorotate. Idk why these OEMs remove features of stock android in the name of customisation..Conclusion: These annoyances are not much compared to what you're getting in terms of other aspects but these are what reduces the experience to a 4 star. That being said there can't be a phone with no compromises at this price and tbh, the ones on mi 10i are easier to live with. It gets most things right and most people will be happy with it. It looks good, feels good, fast, has excellent camera and doesn't skip on basic sensors like the Samsungs and motorolas at this.