The Xiaomi Mi CC9 Pro Premium Edition is Xiaomi’s newest high-end smartphone, featuring a 6.47-inch FHD+ AMOLED display, and a penta-camera setup that should cover a very wide range of photographic applications. The primary wide-angle camera uses a 108MP Quad-Bayer sensor that produces 27MP image output. It is accompanied by a 20MP ultra-wide camera, and not one but two tele-lenses for optimized performance. The short telephoto provides a 2x zoom factor (50mm equivalent), and the long telephoto multiplies the primary camera’s equivalent focal length by approximately 3.5 (94mm-equivalent). There’s also a dedicated macro camera that DxOMark’s Camera test protocol does not cover.
Key camera specifications:
- Penta-camera setup
- Primary: 108MP sensor 1/1.33-inch sensor with 25mm-equivalent, f/1.69-aperture lens, OIS (27MP output resolution)
- Short telephoto: 12.19MP 1/2.6-inch sensor with 50mm-equivalent, f/2-aperture lens
- Long telephoto: 7.99M 1/3.6-inch sensor with 94mm-equivalent, f/2-aperture lens, OIS
- Ultra-wide: 20.11MP 1/2.8-inch sensor with 16mm-equivalent, f/2.2-aperture lens
- Macro: f/2.4 lens designed for close focus from 2 to 10cm (not tested)
- Dual flashes, one with hard light and one with soft light
DxOMark provided the following:
With an overall score of 121, the Xiaomi Mi CC9 Pro Premium Edition has tied with the Huawei Mate 30 Pro for the highest overall Camera score of any phone DxOMark tested so far. Its Photo score is two points lower than the Mate 30 Pro’s (130 versus 132), although it is still one of the highest Photo scores to date. Its Video score of 102 is the highest yet — edging out both the Google Pixel 4 and the Samsung Note 10+ 5G by a point.
The Xiaomi device delivers excellent results in just about every type of photographic situation. Outdoors, it has accurate exposures along with excellent detail preservation, and it manages noise well; however, there can be a pinkish color cast, and highlights are sometimes clipped. Other than that, white balance is generally accurate across the board, and the smartphone camera renders bokeh in a pleasing way. Indoor shots display a little more noise, but are still high quality.
Xiaomi Mi CC9 Pro Premium Edition, showing good exposure, white balance, and color rendering
Wide-angle shots taken with the ultra-wide-lens camera have low distortion and good detail preservation compared to similar phones, and night shots feature very natural skin tones, thanks in part to its second, softer, flash. While the phone’s multiple cameras help make it a top performer, it does have a few weaknesses—for example, highlight clipping occurs in very high-dynamic-range scenes, and images lose sharpness towards their edges.
Thanks to its dual telephoto lens-equipped cameras, the Mi CC9 Pro Premium Edition does exceptionally well in our zoom tests: having native 2x and ~4x optical zooms power it to a record Zoom sub-score of 109. The multi-camera setup also helps the Xiaomi phone do a good job with depth estimation, which results in a very good bokeh effect, with particularly pleasing blur gradients and well-rendered spotlights.
While the Mi CC9 Pro Premium Edition still performs very well in low-light conditions, with excellent detail, noise is somewhat more visible than when shooting outdoors. Overall flash performance is solid, with accurate exposures and a good tradeoff between detail preservation and noise reduction. Some color casts are visible in cityscape scenes, and there is also some slight ghosting when using Night mode to shoot moving subjects.
Mi CC9 Pro Premium Edition, cityscape at night showing good target exposure