Xiaomi 13 Pro review: should you buy this over the Samsung Galaxy S23?
The Xiaomi 13 Pro — the Chinese smartphone maker’s first flagship phone that’s launching in India in 2023 — went on sale for the first time in India on Friday. This year’s high-end smartphone carries a hefty price tag when compared to its predecessor, the Xiaomi 12 Pro. However, it also comes with a slew of notable hardware upgrades. The Xiaomi 13 Pro is the company’s first handset with Leica-tuned cameras to debut in India. It also features Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC under the hood.
In this week’s episode of the Gadgets 360 podcast Orbital, guest host and Reviews Editor Roydon Cerejo speaks to reviewer Pranav Hegde, who spent over two weeks with the Xiaomi 13 Pro. Hegde also traveled to Barcelona for the recently concluded Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2023, where Xiaomi launched its latest flagship smartphone. We discuss the latest Xiaomi 13 Pro smartphone, from its camera specs to how the latest-gen hardware performs with Xiaomi’s MIUI software.
The Xiaomi 13 Pro is the first flagship phone to debut in India with Leica’s 75mm floating telephoto lens. The handset features a triple camera setup at the back with the primary camera being a 50-megapixel 1-inch Sony IMX989 primary sensor. Currently, there are no other smartphones with a 1-inch camera sensor in India. The device also features a 50-megapixel floating telephoto sensor and a 50-megapixel wide-angle sensor. We discuss the camera performance of all the three cameras in the latest episode.
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You also get other flagship-grade specs on the Xiaomi 13 Pro, such as Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC, along with 12GB of LPDDR5X RAM. The handset features a 6.73-inch 2K OLED display with a refresh rate of up to 120Hz and a touch sampling rate of 240Hz, meaning it’s on par with other high-end smartphones launched earlier this year.
A smartphone’s hardware specs are only as good as the software it runs on, and thankfully, Xiaomi’s latest high-end handset comes equipped with a sleek version of MIUI 14, sans any bloatware. You can also expect updates through Android 16, plus two years of security patches.
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This phone doesn’t come with an official IP68 rating for dust and water resistance, unlike the Xiaomi 13 Pro model that was launched globally. On the other hand, the company has stated that the handset meets IP68 standards. Unlike the OnePlus 11 5G, the Xiaomi 13 Pro does support wireless charging and reverse wireless charging. This means you can either wirelessly charge the phone at 50W using Xiaomi’s own standard, or slowly using the more widely supported Qi standard.
You can listen to all of this in detail in our episode by clicking the play button on the Spotify player above.
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