There is a curse among the best Xiaomi phones, which is that many of them are not sold globally, as the company has chosen to launch them only in its home country. Such is the case with the brand’s latest series, which includes a flashy-looking Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra competitor.
This is the Xiaomi 12S series, which consists of a Standard, Pro, and Ultra model – as you can imagine, it’s the Ultra we’re thinking of as a contender for Samsung’s best camera phone. These are the first phones built from Xiaomi’s partnership with camera brand Leica, so you know they’ll be great for photography.
The Xiaomi 12S Ultra comes with “only” three rear cameras, but what it lacks in snappers (compared to Samsung) it makes up for in megapixels. There’s a main camera with a 1-inch 50MP ultra-wide sensor with a 48MP camera – both with aspherical lenses – and a 48MP telephoto camera with a 120mm focal length.
The camera is also packed with a new stabilization technology called HyperOIS and a new AI image processing technology.
On top of that, the phone has a 6.73-inch 2K 120Hz display, a Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 chipset, a 4,860mAh battery, 67W wired charging, 50W wireless charging, and a design — well, you can see above. The back screen of Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra seems to be gone.
Analysis: A quiet year for Xiaomi
Xiaomi has confirmed that the 12S Ultra is not launched in most other regions of the world, like its two brothers – in fact, it has been quite quiet for the brand (not including sub-brands like Redmi and Pocophone).
We saw the Xiaomi 12 and 12 Pro at the beginning of the year, but there was no Ultra version or even a lightweight alternative. We still hope to see the Xiaomi 12T later in the year but we don’t have confirmation on that yet.
It’s a shame Xiaomi isn’t releasing its 12S phones worldwide, with the Ultra, in particular, looking impressive, but the chipset is still lacking after Covid, and it’s also possible that Ultra devices with great sound can be hard to manufacture. quantities.
We hope to see similar technology in future phones from the company though, including phones launched outside of China – if that’s the case, we could see more phones from Xiaomi make it to our list of best smartphones.
