Xiaomi brings flagship hardware and Leica cameras to the 14th party

Xiaomi is back big time with the new Xiaomi 14 series as the company looks to make a fresh start in the premium segment in India. The brand’s new approach includes making people aware of its partnership with Huawei, what it brings to the table and how the brand is ready to challenge premium rivals like Xiaomi Samsung and Apple.

For a company that thrives on offering value for its money, moving up the ladder is harder than imagined, but it’s ready to show that the products are worth the attention. The Xiaomi 14 model is part of that aim and we decided to test the device and its Leica-enabled cameras to see if its price tag of Rs 69,999 could be brought down with the right offers.

Key Features in compact body

It has been tough to find a powerful phone that is also compact in size but Xiaomi has addressed those concerns with the Xiaomi 14 model. It has a compact size that fits easily in your palms and does not feel cumbersome regardless of the size of your hands. The edges are flat and not curved which is another big positive for us and takes away the need for a premium phone to be big and shapely.

The Xiaomi 14 comes in several color options, but the matte black variant we have to review is the ideal choice, especially if you don’t want the phone to be a mirror for you. It’s good to see Xiaomi take this design and size approach and allow people to enjoy a proper, powerful flagship in a compact package.

cameras excite you

We decided to focus on the camera aspect of the Xiaomi 14 as it deserves more attention. The Ducati co-engineered setup features a triple rear-camera unit that offers a 50MP wide primary sensor, a 50MP telephoto 75mm sensor, and a 50MP ultrawide 14mm sensor. The joint work of Xiaomi and Leica allows you to click photos that not only look natural but are heavy on details.

The versatility of the lenses allows you to get the most from them and packing all of this into a compact size means you can shoot for hours without feeling stressed.

We liked taking monochrome (black-and-white) photos with the Xiaomi 14 and it reminded us of the experience we had with the Xiaomi 13 Pro model that was first revealed last year. Leica filters bring another layer of natural tones that add crisp freshness to images. The 75mm portrait lens is equally powerful and we had a lot of fun shooting people and subjects in this mode.

OS looks new

Xiaomi has talked at length about HyperOS and its focus on building an ecosystem around the platform, including a car. But when we got a chance to play with the new OS, we realized that the interface is a lot like MIUI which isn’t a bad thing, but we liked that the software feels more fluid, even though it’s still early days. That’s how the OS evolves.

Another thing to note is that Xiaomi 14 has bloatware, pre-loaded apps and some of them cannot be removed. These issues have plagued MIUI for years but once again, we saw the same.

We are hoping that things will improve as HyperOS is further improved. Xiaomi says you will get 4 OS updates + 5 years of security updates, which is a refreshing sign but only if the updates are released quickly.

workhorse hardware ticks

The Xiaomi 14 is a compact, flagship phone and has all the features a premium device would have in 2024. It features a 6.36-inch LTPO OLED panel with 120Hz adaptive refresh screen, HDR10+, and Dolby Vision. The display is sharp, colors are clear, we have very little to complain about.

You have a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset with 12GB of RAM in the country, but 512GB of storage means you’ll get some rest for a while. The performance is top notch and even the thermal management is quite effective which means you won’t really feel the extra strain on the chipset.