I want to like this new Android phone, but there’s a big pro…

Xiaomi 13T Pro

MSRP $856.00

“The Xiaomi 13T Pro is a good smartphone, let down by its inability to stand out and deliver on the promise of its Leica camera.”

Pros

• very fast battery charging

• IP68 water and dust resistance

• Powerful processor for gaming

• Customizable Software

Shortcoming

• Poor wide-angle camera

• weak selfie camera

• Software may be unreliable

The Xiaomi 13T Pro has a bit of a problem, and the manufacturer can’t do much about it. It’s not a bad phone at all, but it faces a number of excellent phones released last year.

It doesn’t help that its specifications aren’t always top-notch or in some cases a downgrade from the previous model. And although there’s a very famous camera maker’s name stuck on the back, it struggles to make the most of that association. We end up with a phone that looks out of place among the many incredible smartphones available with us. here’s why.

A cool and unusual smartphone design

The Xiaomi 13T Pro sports a glass back, a pleasingly textured metal frame, and Gorilla Glass 5 on a 6.67-inch, 144Hz AMOLED screen. It comes in the basic black color seen in our photos, in a meadow green color made of glass, or in an alpine blue color with a vegan leather back. Get it in glass, and it weighs 206 grams and is 8.49mm thick, so it’s quite thick next to the new lighter iPhone 15 Pro. The flat glass and edges are made more comfortable by the slightly thinner glass rear, but it’s still a slightly rough, slippery phone to hold.

There are the bold designs, and then there is the camera module of the Xiaomi 13T Pro. Its deliberately sharp and strong lines make a clear statement, and it juts out so much from the smooth, hyperreflective rear panel that you feel it’s actually hiding something very special – especially as the Leica branding is also so obvious. . It sports a 50-megapixel main camera with optical image stabilization (OIS), a 50MP telephoto camera, and a 12MP wide-angle camera, while on the front, there’s a 20MP selfie camera.

Inside the box with the Xiaomi 13T Pro is a flexible, transparent case that obviously adds protection, but also increases the weight and perimeter of the phone – which is a result of its 20:9 aspect ratio screen.

It has an IP68 water resistance rating, which adds to confidence, and there are no complaints about the build quality either. It is a high-quality smartphone in every way that you would expect from the company.

MediaTek’s new chip really helps

Inside the Xiaomi 13T Pro has one significant change compared to the Xiaomi 13 Pro, Xiaomi 12T Pro and Xiaomi 12 Pro. This is because the company has used the MediaTek Dimensity 9200+ processor, which replaces the Qualcomm Snapdragon chips used in previous models in Xiaomi’s “Numbers” range. The screen has taken a resolution hit compared to the 13 Pro, dropping to 2712 x 1220 pixels, although it has a stronger list of great features. It includes 2880Hz PWM dimming, 2600 nits maximum brightness, Dolby Vision certification, and 480Hz touch sampling rate.

The screen shows Android 13 with Xiaomi’s MIUI 14 interface. There are plenty of preinstalled apps on my review phone, including TikTok, WPS Office, AliExpress, Opera, and Spotify, along with all of Xiaomi’s tools like a Notes app, a weather app, a calculator, a compass, and more. More. I’ve been using the Xiaomi 13T Pro as my main phone for a few days now, and I feel that MIUI is somewhat interfering with suggestions to try this or that app. At least it’s customizable, so I can change the look. Notifications are its weak point, as they don’t appear reliably on the lock screen.

However, performance is excellent, and MIUI runs smoothly, even if some animations are a little rough by default. But the real joy of Xiaomi’s software is that I can change it from “Easy” to “Balanced” or “Fast” if it bothers me too much. It’s profound changes like this that make MIUI attractive to so many people. However, there is good news on the software update front, as Xiaomi has promised four major Android updates and five years of security patches with the Xiaomi 13T Pro.

I Asphalt 9: Legends, and it was fluid, smooth and fast. Plus, the dual speakers are loud, making it a fun gaming phone. Credit for the system’s speed goes to the Dimensity 9200+, which is rare in phones released outside China, and as the Xiaomi phone proves, it’s a shame that’s the case.

Xiaomi 13T Pro’s camera lags behind

I’ve already mentioned how the camera module makes a strong impression, but can the MediaTek Dimensity 9200+ make the most of the camera hardware? First of all, what does Leica bring to the phone? It adds its own “Photographic Styles”, which act like filters to change the look of your photos. It also supplies lenses for cameras to give your final images the desirable Laika look. Leica’s partnership with Xiaomi echoes the one it shares with Huawei, and it has already given us some very good cameras, with the Xiaomi 13 Pro immediately coming to mind. The 13T Pro needs to, at the very least, match that phone’s impressive camera capabilities.

However, it is not at that level yet. I’ve been using the phone before release, so there may be software updates coming in the future to improve it, but the camera didn’t immediately impress like the Xiaomi 13 Pro.

Where are the problems? There’s trouble focusing when you get close, but not that close, while the wide-angle camera disappoints with low quality and little consistency with the main camera. Selfies are also very poor, with washed out colors and severe skin smoothness at the default setting, plus poor edge detection accuracy when using the selfie camera’s portrait mode.

As is becoming a trend this year, the main camera is perfectly acceptable most of the time, and even the 2x zoom takes good photos. But when you dig into the wide-angle camera or other modes, such as the highly smoothed-out Night mode, it’s not that inspiring – and I think that’s more of a problem when a camera has the Leica name attached to it. Is.

Incredible fast charging makes life easier

Everything you could want is available on the connectivity side, including NFC for mobile payments, Bluetooth 5.4, Wi-Fi 7, and 5G with dual-SIM support. However, according to Xiaomi, this varies depending on the market, so check if one of these features is necessary for you before purchasing. The phone comes with up to 1TB of storage space, with the base variant offering 256GB.

A 5,000mAh battery powers the phone, and it is recharged using the supplied 120-watt HyperCharge fast charger. Xiaomi says it only takes 19 minutes to fully recharge, and in our tests, that may be a little optimistic – it took about 23 minutes to go from 1% to 100%. However, I tested it using an adapter to convert a European-spec wall plug to a UK one, which may account for the discrepancy.

Plus, it’s still incredibly fast to charge and one of the fastest we’ve tested so far. This almost compensates for the Xiaomi 13T Pro not having wireless charging, which is an unfortunate feature omission in a modern smartphone. In my time with the phone so far, the battery appears to be capable of lasting a maximum of two days on a single charge, with about three hours of screen time each day.

Xiaomi 13T Pro price and availability

The Xiaomi 13T Pro is available in the UK from September 26, with a US release not expected. The cheapest model has 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage space and costs 649 British pounds, or about $795. There are two other models, a 12GB/512GB version for 699 pounds (about $857) ​​and a top-end 16GB/1TB model for 799 pounds (about $980). In addition to being able to purchase the Xiaomi 13T Pro through the mi.com website, it will be sold through the Three UK and Vodafone Ireland networks and through retailers including Amazon and Very.

What about Xiaomi 13T?

The Xiaomi 13T Pro has a cheaper sibling called the Xiaomi 13T, which looks very similar, but has slightly different specifications. It features a 6.67-inch, 144Hz AMOLED screen, a MediaTek Dimensity 8200-Ultra processor, a 5,000mAh battery with 67W fast charging, an IP68 water and dust resistance rating, and 5G connectivity. The camera is tuned by Leica, and is composed of a 50MP main camera, a 12MP wide-angle camera, and a 50MP telephoto camera. It comes in the same black, meadow green, or alpine blue vegan leather (seen in the image above) finish and only one 8GB/256GB configuration. Its price is 549 pounds i.e. about $672 and it is available from September 26.

Xiaomi 13T Pro has the same problem as all other phones

The Xiaomi 13T Pro is a strange mix of features and design from the Xiaomi 12T Pro, Xiaomi 12 Pro, and Xiaomi 13 Pro. It has the same charging technology and the same “family” design and style as all three of these devices. The screen is basically the same as the 12T Pro, just with a slightly higher refresh rate and PWM dimming, but it has a significantly less impressive camera than its older sibling.

I don’t think the switch to MediaTek’s Dimensity chip is a problem, as the overall performance of the phone is excellent, but I’m not sure enough work has been done in terms of tuning the camera to work with it. It also doesn’t have any standout camera features, the 12T Pro came with a 200MP camera when it was launched this time last year. Instead, the camera is identical to the 12 Pro, only with a lower-resolution wide-angle camera.

If you already have one of these phones, there’s no obvious reason to upgrade, and if you have the 12 Pro or 12T Pro, you should look at the fantastic Xiaomi 13 Pro as your next phone. For everyone else the price means there’s a huge amount of choice available, and it’s hard not to recommend taking a very close look at the Samsung Galaxy S23, Google Pixel 8 Pro, iPhone 15, or OnePlus 11 instead. Or, if you want to save money, the Google Pixel 7a or Nothing Phone 2 are also solid options.

This is the biggest problem of Xiaomi 13T Pro. It’s not bad, the design is unique, and it has plenty of performance on demand, but the feature list and camera look mediocre compared to many of the excellent, similarly priced phones released last year.