Xiaomi 14 Brings Flagship Hardware And Leica Cameras To The Party

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

For a company that has stayed true to its value-for-money offering, moving up the ladder has been harder than imagined, but it is ready to show the products deserve attention. The Xiaomi 14 model is part of that objective and we decided to test the device and its Leica-able cameras to see if the price tag of Rs 69,999 which can go lower with the right offers.

Flagship Traits In Compact Body

It has become hard to find a powerful phone that is also compact in size but Xiaomi has removed those concerns with the Xiaomi 14 model. It has a compact stature which fits easily into your palms and doesn’t feel unwieldy no matter the size of your hands. The edges are flat and not curvy which is also another big positive for us and shies away from the need for a premium phone to be large and curvy.

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

Cameras Get You Excited

We decided to move up the camera aspect of the Xiaomi 14 because it deserves more attention. The Leica co-engineered setup features a triple rear-camera unit that offers a 50MP wide primary sensor, along with a 50MP telephoto 75mm sensor and a 50MP ultrawide 14mm sensor. The combined work from Xiaomi and Leica allows you to click pictures that not only look natural but are heavy on details.

The versatility of the lenses allows you to get more out of them and having all these packed into a compact size means you can shoot for hours without feeling the strain.

We loved taking monochrome (black-and-white) photos with the Xiaomi 14 and were reminded of the experience that we first got with the Xiaomi 13 Pro model that came out last year. The Leica filters bring another layer of natural tone which adds crisp freshness to the images. The 75mm portrait lens is equally powerful and we had a lot of fun shooting people and subjects in this mode.

OS Feels New-Ish

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

The other point worth making is that Xiaomi 14 has bloatware, pre-loaded apps, and some of them cannot be deleted. These issues have plagued MIUI for years but once again, we noticed the same.

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

Workhorse Hardware Ticks Off

Xiaomi 14 is a compact, flagship phone and it has all the bells and whistles that a premium device commands in 2024. It features a 6.36-inch LTPO OLED panel with 120Hz adaptive refresh screen, HDR10+ and Dolby Vision. The display is sharp, colours are crisp we had very little to complain about.

You have the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset paired with up to 12GB RAM in the country, but 512GB storage means you will be sorted for a while. Performance is top-notch and even the thermal management is quite effective which means you don’t really feel the chipset facing extra strain.

Having this package allows the Xiaomi 14 to deliver a day-long battery life, and once you are out of juice, the paired 90W charging support gets you back up running in less than 20 minutes.