Tag: xiaomi
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I tried the Xiaomi 13 Ultra’s insane camera — here are my first impressions
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Xiaomi 13 phones debut globally with Leica-branded cameras
Both models feature 120Hz AMOLED displays, with the vanilla Xiaomi 13 settling for a flat 6.4-inch screen with a Full HD+ resolution and 1,900 nits peak brightness. Meanwhile, the Pro version gets a curved 6.7-inch LTPO panel with a 1,440p native resolution. The handsets also boast support for HDR10+ and Dolby Vision.
The Xiaomi 13 Pro is going global
The Xiaomi 13 and 13 Pro are making their global debut today, starting with a launch event at Mobile World Congress. The 13 series phones were announced in China late last year, each with Leica co-branded cameras and top-shelf Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipsets. Based on previous releases, they won’t be coming to the US, but will be available in the UK, Europe, and other parts of Asia.
Given that we’ve known the phones’ specs since December, there’s nothing surprising there, but here’s the recap: they’re both upper midrange phones, but the 13 Pro stands out with a 1-inch-type sensor borrowed from the Xiaomi 12S Ultra and 120W wired fast charging.
The Xiaomi 13 Pro with Leica cameras is coming to Europe
It’s been a long time coming, but Xiaomi is finally bringing its Leica-endorsed smartphones to the international market. Following their China launch back in December, the Xiaomi 13 and 13 Pro are going global at MWC, with Germany, France, Spain and Italy being some of their first markets in the west. As you’d expect, both Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 flagships now come with Google services pre-installed, but they are otherwise identical to their China counterparts.
The Xiaomi 13 and 13 Pro share similar-looking Leica camera islands on the back, but only the 13 Pro offers the much-hyped Type 1-inch sensor (Sony’s IMX989; 1.6um pixel size) — arguably the industry’s most powerful camera sensor at the moment — for its 50-megapixel f/1.9 OIS (optical image stabilization) main shooter. You also get a 50-megapixel 3.2x telephoto camera (75mm equivalent) with OIS and a 50-megapixel f/2.2 ultra-wide camera (14mm equivalent).
As for the lesser Xiaomi 13, it comes with a 50-megapixel f/1.8 OIS main camera with a smaller sensor (IMX800; 1um pixel size), a 10-megapixel 3.2x zoom OIS zoom camera and a 12-megapixel ultra-wide (15mm equivalent) camera.
Both models share the same 32-megapixel f/2.0 punch-hole selfie cam on the other side. On a similar note, both phones offer two modes of capture — Leica Authentic and Leica Vibrant — along with Google’s Magic Eraser tool.
The Xiaomi 13 series also comes in two designs. The 13 Pro comes with a curved 6.73-inch 3,200 x 1,400 AMOLED screen with vegan leather or ceramic back versions. On the other hand, the 13 packs a flat 6.36-inch 2,400 x 1,080 AMOLED display, which is surrounded by iPhone-like aluminum sides and complemented by either glass or leather back options. Both screens support a refresh rate of up to 120Hz for a slick scrolling experience.
Other noteworthy features include the 13 Pro’s 120W charging (from zero to 100 percent in just 19 minutes for its 4,820mAh battery), the 13’s 67W charging (38 minutes to fully charge its 4,500mAh cell), and 50W wireless charging, Dolby Atmos dual speakers and IP68 ruggedness for both Android devices. The 13 Pro starts from 1,299 euros (around $1,370), whereas the 13 starts from 999 euros (around $1,060).
As a surprise for MWC, Xiaomi also announced the 13 Lite, which appears to be a variant of the selfie-centric Civi 2 sold in China. And no, there’s no Leica involvement here. This model starts from 499 euros (around $530) and boasts dual front cameras (32-megapixel + 8-megapixel depth sensor) plus dual “Selfie Glow” LEDs for supposedly better selfies. It’s powered by a Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 processor, and it also packs a 50-megapixel main camera (IMX766), a 20-megapixel ultra-wide camera, a 2-megapixel macro camera, a 4,500mAh battery with 67W charging, and a 6.55-inch Full HD+ 120Hz display. This is all tucked into a 171g-heavy, 7.23mm-thick body, which obviously goes well with its “Lite” branding.
Xiaomi 13 Pro review: Finally, a Xiaomi flagship with a great camera
Xiaomi is the world’s third-largest smartphone maker, but it’s sometimes doesn’t feel like it, especially if you live in the U.S. There, Samsung is the de facto Android phone, with an occasional Motorola or a Google Pixel thrown in.
But even though Xiaomi’s brand is more powerful in Asia and Europe, the company still makes great phones. Case in point, its new flagship, the Xiaomi 13 Pro. After a lot of experimenting with different designs and features, it appears that Xiaomi has finally settled in and produced a true flagship killer.
Elegant, slick, and slippery
The Xiaomi 13 Pro won’t sell on looks alone. Xiaomi has been directionless when it comes to smartphone design, changing things radically with each new flagship, and never sticking to a recognizable, consistent design language. The Xiaomi 13 Pro has a massive, square camera bump with barely visible lenses (compare this to the 12 Pro which had a huge main camera lens that dominated the back of the phone) and prominent Leica branding. It has a slick ceramic back, rounded edges, and it feels like a quality-made object.
Credit: Stan Schroeder/Mashable
The unit I got is black all over, and if I’m being generous, I could compare the look and feel to that of a luxurious black limousine. I prefer it to the look of any other recent Xiaomi phone, but from a distance, it can look a bit bland. I’d rather have something more colorful; the global version of the phone also comes in white, which (judging from the promo photos I’ve seen) suits it better.
The rounded display edges and the ceramic back, while really nice to the touch, make the phone extremely slippery, so you’ll definitely need a case for this one. Xiaomi included a very basic, see-through case with the phone, but you’ll probably want something nicer.
Stunning display, lots of power, and great battery life
The display is a 6.73-inch, 120Hz AMOLED with a 3,200 x 1,440 pixel resolution (you’ll have to turn it on manually in the settings; the phone defaults to a lower resolution to save battery life). It’s gorgeous, with accurate colors, deep blacks and plenty of brightness when you need it. I compared it to the iPhone 14 Pro Max using my favorite test for phone displays, The Weeknd’s “Starboy” video, and couldn’t tell which display is better.
While I was at it, I blasted the sound on maximum. The Xiaomi 13 Pro has stereo speakers (down from quad speakers on the 12 Pro) and boasts Dolby Atmos sound with head tracking (similar to Apple’s Spatial Audio). The sound is good but not nearly as loud and punchy as the sound coming from the iPhone 14 Pro Max.
Credit: Stan Schroeder/Mashable
Xiaomi was the first company to announce a phone with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip, the same chip that powers the Samsung’s Galaxy S23 series. Coupled with 12GB of RAM, it makes this phone fast enough that I never wanted more power. Everything was fluid and responsive, no matter how many apps I had open in the background. A game of PUBG flew on the highest possible settings, and a pop-up window offered to further optimize the phone’s performance for gaming, though I didn’t notice much of a difference.
Having reviewed most major Xiaomi flagships that came out in the past couple of years, there was always a little something missing. This time, I’m happy to say that Xiaomi has finally reached the point in which its flagship has basically every important feature you can think of. Some highlights include incredibly fast wired charging that’ll get the phone from 1 to 100% in about 20 minutes, Wi-Fi 7 capability, Bluetooth 5.3 support, and IP68 dust and water resistance.
Battery life was excellent; the phone lasted roughly two days, except when I pushed it to the limit with games. But with charging being this fast, it didn’t even matter, I could always plug it in for a couple of minutes to get enough additional battery juice to last me another day.
A reasonable amount of bloatware
Software is traditionally the part in which phones from Xiaomi (and most other Chinese manufacturers) don’t feel very premium, mostly because they come loaded up with crap that you probably don’t need. Xiaomi has made improvements here, though some non-Google, third-party apps still do come preinstalled. Most of it is pretty common stuff, like Netflix, Spotify, and Booking.com, but I’d still prefer to install the apps I need on my own. Thankfully, all of it can be uninstalled.
The Xiaomi 13 Pro runs on the latest version of Xiaomi’s Android skin, MIUI 14.0.11, with Android 13 underneath. It’s a good and stable combo that doesn’t shy from borrowing some features from iOS. Some of the new features compared to MIUI 13 include new menu icons which are now a little easier to see and the ability to create folders that are about four times as large as regular ones. I liked the changes and I felt at home with the Xiaomi 13 Pro, even though my main phone is an iPhone. The biggest issues I’ve had was finding that one pesky option in a sea of settings, but that’s a common ailment among Android phones.
Credit: Stan Schroeder/Mashable
One thing that did annoy me were the constant notifications bugging me to install an app or do something that I don’t care much about. Worse, some of those notifications are impossible to flick off; instead, the software requires you to interact with them or even turn an option on before the notification bubble is dismissed.
A much improved zoom
The power is there, and the features are all there. Outside of price, this means that this phone’s camera quality will likely determine whether the 13 Pro is a true competitor for Samsung’s mighty Galaxy S23 Pro and Ultra phones, as well as Google’s Pixel 7 which don’t boast a very high megapixel count, but win on Google’s image processing power.
Credit: Stan Schroeder/Mashable
Despite the different look of the camera system compared to last year’s model, the Xiaomi 13 Pro has similar camera specs. The rear camera still has three 50-megapixel sensors: one for the wide, ultra-wide, and telephoto cameras. It’s a sound system, at least on paper, but the camera performance of Xiaomi phones was a bit uneven in recent years.
With the Xiaomi 13 Pro, it seems that the company (together with its camera partner, Leica), has finally found a good balance. The phone produces very good photos in all scenarios, even at night.
I was most impressed with the telephoto camera, which I used to take some incredibly sharp shots in the dusk. I’ve compared the Xiaomi directly to the iPhone 14 Pro Max, and it blew it away when it came to zooming in in low light.
Credit: Stan Schroeder/Mashable
In daylight, the iPhone’s telephoto camera took slightly sharper photos, but I preferred the far more natural look of the photos I took with the Xiaomi. Xiaomi’s software defaults to 1x, 2x, and 3.2x zoom; if you pinch out to get even more zoom, you’ll get 10x and 70x options. I was surprised to see that even 10x photos look pretty good, though anything above that was mostly useless as the photos got very artificial-looking.
Credit: Stan Schroeder/Mashable
All of this is in stark contrast to last year’s Xiaomi 12 Pro, which had an underwhelming telephoto camera. Digging through the phones’ specs reveals the reason: Despite the identical 50 megapixel count, the telephoto camera has been upgraded from a 48mm to a 75mm lens, and it now offers 3.2x optical zoom (compared to 2x optical zoom on the 12 Pro).
Xiaomi’s main camera was mostly great, producing very bright and detailed photos in low light. Sometimes the low light photos leaned yellow, and sometimes the processing went too far, making the photos unnaturally bright, and leaving odd artifacts around light sources (see image below), but overall the photos were never bad.
Credit: Stan Schroeder/Mashable
Credit: Stan Schroeder/Mashable
Unsurprisingly, Xiaomi took excellent photos in daylight. The Leica-tuned camera software offers two basic shooting modes, “Leica Vibrant” and “Leica Authentic.” I mostly stuck with the latter, but the difference is subtle, with “Vibrant” producing slightly brighter photos with more vibrant colors.
Credit: Stan Schroeder/Mashable
Xiaomi 13 Pro’s ultra-wide camera is a step down in quality, and should be used only when the main camera just doesn’t go wide enough.
Credit: Stan Schroeder/Mashable
If you go beyond Xiaomi’s basic camera features and tap on the “More” button in the camera software, you’ll get a ton more options, including exotic ones like Supermoon. Swiping far left in the bottom menu will open up Pro mode, which enables you to control nearly every aspect of the camera, including white balance, ISO sensitivity, and shutter speed. Overall, there’s a ton of settings to go through, and I reckon only the most persistent users will try them all out.
Finally, the selfie camera is a 32-megapixel shooter that comes with a ton of options, including a multitude of filters and beautifying options; don’t go overboard or you’ll end up looking like a cartoon character. On default settings, the photos come out very detailed but soft and slightly washed out, which is pretty easy to fix in the settings.
Credit: Stan Schroeder/Mashable
Overall, it appears that Xiaomi has finally managed to put together a smartphone camera that takes great photos in most scenarios. It may not win every battle against other top phones, but it’ll always be competitive.
The best Xiaomi phone in a while
Credit: Stan Schroeder/Mashable
I like this phone more than I liked any Xiaomi phone that came out in the past couple of years. Its design may not be the most exciting, but it’s pretty sleek nevertheless (be sure to check out both colors to see which one you fancy), with a gorgeous display and a fancy ceramic back. It matches Samsung’s recently released Galaxy S23 Plus on power and features, and has a very capable camera system. It charges extremely fast, and its battery lasts up to two days.
At writing time, I had no info on a crucial piece of the puzzle: pricing. Feature-wise, the Xiaomi 13 Pro is a mix between the Galaxy S23+ and the Galaxy S23 Ultra, which start at $999.99 and $1,199.99, respectively. If the Xiaomi 13 Pro is reasonably priced (for example, the Xiaomi 12 Pro started at $999), it will be a very strong competitor to any Android flagship out there.