[Xiaomi Mi 11 Lite 5G] GroovyFox:
Yes it can be fixed. (Mostly)

*for those that don't want to read detail and explanations you can skip down to Calibration*

There are actually two issues with this panel, both related to calibration.

I'll start with color temperature since I think this is the one causing the most issues for folks. I won't bother to link the specific review sites, but some tech reviewers take the time to run calMAN on smart phones and my numbers are based on those.

Most phones are calibrated to around 7400K, this is a "cool" temperature. This gives a slight blue push, and the human eye (mostly) likes this profile. It makes the colors "pop" and seem more vibrant, it gives the impression of sharpness and detail. The Mi 11 Lite however has a color temperature set at 5400K. This is a "warm" temperature, and gives a slight orange/yellow push. Our eyes perceive this as dull, and less sharp/detailed. Neither of these temperature is correct, but one is (better) preferred over the other. The correct temperature is 6500K which is the color temperature that all movies, TV and photography are created in. If any content made at 6500K is viewed on a screen with a higher or lower temperature the color rendering will be wrong. I think what people are seeing when they compare two phones is a difference in the color temperature between the two phones and it comes down to the way our eyes perceive color and detail.

Gamma.

Gamma calibration - Lagom LCD test

www.lagom.nl

Gamma should be set at around 2.2 and it should be fairly consistent between 48%, 25% and 10%. On my phone the Gamma is 1.5, 1.7 and 1.8 respectively. These numbers are clearly too low, way off the standard. Gamma that is set too low will reduce the ability of the panel to display proper color range/detail. This is most evident in the Black/Grey color space and is likely the culprit when people talk about pixelation and "black crush".

The Saving Grace. Settings > Display > Color Scheme > Advanced Settings >

Pre-Calibration:

I used my DataColor Spyder Express colorimeter and Auto-calibrated my PC monitor.

Photo Friday: Monitor Calibration Tool

The above pattern is used to set brightness and contrast on LCD panels, brightness sets the black and contrast sets the white point.

Calibration images for calibrating your monitor & printer

Images for calibrating your monitor & printer

www.pasidor.com

These pictures were used to check the results of calibration. In particular the 2nd picture with the three ladies, a very fair skinned blonde, an Asian women and a Black women. The skin tones should look natural not tinted or "off", in general none of the colors on this picture should look over saturated or over sharp.

CALIBRATION:

On My Phone - Adjustments were made in "light mode" (not dark mode) < important. I selected the sRGB color space because that is what would have been used for the photos AFIK. Using the first test pattern, https://www.photofriday.com/info/calibrate to set the black and white levels. I turned the brightness to 80% ish on the slider (Auto off obviously) and the contrast I left as is.

[Note: The correct method to set white point is usually to crank the contrast to max and then back it off until you see the 3 distinct white shades in the circle. On this phone though that was only slightly higher than the 50% default setting anyway so I left it as is. I kind of felt that setting it higher might be counter productive since part of the issue I was trying to resolve is lower detail in blacks and I thought a higher setting might just amplify the problem.]

The sliders are approximately 60mm, so my adjustments are from left to right in mm.

R - 29mm so just a hair under 50%

G - 24mm ,so slightly lower than the red

Saturation - bumped this up to 35mm 60% ish to compensate for the reduction in all the RGB adjustment sliders. This can be tweaked slightly but I found this to be a good compromise for both the DCI-P3 color space and the sRGB settings. Tweak to your own preference, just don't go too far.

Blue - I set this last, My setting ended being around 41mm or around 66%. After you've adjusted the R&G sliders and with the B still at 100% you'll see that the screen has a pretty strong Blue tint. If you drop the Blue slider down to the left you'll see a distinctive orange/yellowish tint the lower it goes. The correct level should be somewhere in between when the screen actually looks white. For me this was approximately 41mm.

Gamma - this is a funny one. I'm not sure what this is actually supposed to do (on this phone) or what it actually ends up doing. Setting the slider down to the left does seem to reduce/eliminate the pixelation on very dark/black screens. I ended up setting Gamma to 10mm roughly 17%, seemed to be a sweet spot for my panel.

[Note 2. Normally a Gamma adjustment would be specific numbers like 2.0 or 2.2 or 2.4, but this is a slider. And turning it all the way to the right or all the way to the left has no apparent impact at all on the Gamma test pattern.

http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/gamma_calibration.php#gamma-test-2.png]

Post Calibration

Looking at the second pic on http://www.pasidor.com/phototools/ the skin tones on the ladies look spot on when compared to my calibrated PC monitor, in fact all 3 pictures look very good when compared to my color accurate monitor. Previous to calibration the skin tones were off, all ladies had a noticeable yellowish tinge to their faces and all colors were too saturated. This was also very noticeable in yellows which were exaggerated on the dress the blonde is wearing and in the yellow head scarf and necklace on the black women. Now everything looks very accurate and well controlled.

Prior to calibration I ran a Netflix movie "Space Sweepers". I selected this because it's a space movie and will likely show any defects or detail loss in the Blacks, plenty of dark screens/scenes. During the opening credits there was a distinct and rather annoying pixelation. This is odd because it should just be a static color background, it should display only one shade of black or near black with the text so seeing pixelation is a strange result. While watching the actual movie though I couldn't see any noticeable artifacts or distortions or pixelation.

Post calibration the movie, including the opening credits played fine. I'm guessing this is mostly the result of the Gamma slider adjustment.

All in all I'm very pleased with the results and the time I spent correcting the calibration of this phones panel, all content looks much more accurate. Photos I took now look correct when viewed on my phone (yay), colors look spot on. This is particularly noticeable in pictures with trees and grass which previously looked wrong, trees looking too green and grass looking way too bright. Now those same pics look rich in color and pretty much the same as if I stand outside and look at the same scene I took the picture of.

HDR - WTF. When viewing HDR content the phone detects and switches to a HDR Mode, disregarding all my custom calibration settings.

Since I only have a HD Netflix account I can only comment on what I've viewed on YouTube... which can be kind of sketchy. Some HDR content looks stunning. Amazing color range and texture details that are in a different class when compared to my Mi 6 IPS panel, in a completely different league. Some HDR content though can really hi-lite the issues with this panel. Color banding and loss of detail in black/near black. There should be no color banding at all on a 10bit panel and I believe this can all be traced back to the awful Gamma results I discussed earler. I will bring this to the attention of Xiaomi but I'm not sure it can be fixed. It could very well be baked in to the specific panel hardware and an update, even if Xiaomi was inclined to issue one, might not be able to fix the problem.

To anyone that tries these adjustments please let me know if it improved your experience with this panel.