You should be able to recognize and pronounce Xiaomi. You should learn it or learn how to speak it if you still need to. The Chinese manufacturer is third in smartphone production, behind only Samsung and Apple.
Pronounced “shaumee,” this company produces both midrange and high-end smartphones that can hold their own against the best on the market. The 12T Pro is more difficult to categorize. A short glance at its specifications could fool you into thinking it’s a premium model.
It’s hard to believe that such a feature-rich phone could be produced at such a low price. There are methods for this, and you should consider this phone if you’re fine with the modifications Xiaomi did.
Display
The 12T Pro’s display is not bad, as might be expected. Games, movies, apps, and websites all look great and scroll thanks smoothly to the 120Hz refresh rate and AMOLED technology, making the screen feel flat. The colors are vivid, the blacks are inky, and the screen is easy on the eyes.
As measured by a DataColor Spyder, the average brightness was 500 nits, and the maximum was 900 nits. Though not the brightest idea, it works wonderfully. It is not a variable refresh rate panel either. Input frequencies of 30, 60, 90, and 120 hertz are all supported (Hz).
The most up-to-date LTPO 2.0 displays may reduce the refresh rate to as low as 1Hz, which helps extend the battery’s life. Even though 1220×2712 isn’t the highest resolution, it’s more than adequate for a clear picture.
Design
The Xiaomi 12T Pro is inferior to the 12S Ultra and Mi 11 Ultra from a year ago. It lacks Wi-Fi 6E and IP certification. No curved screens or wireless charging. Plastic body and lower-resolution cameras are inferior to the 200Mp alternative.
12T Pro’s dull design makes it simple to dislike it. Xiaomi sent me a black model, although it’s the least fascinating. The blue and silver models are more aesthetically pleasing, but their flat screens and boring shapes make them blend in.
The 12T Pro is a heavy mobile device, like many others. It weighs 200 g and measures 163 × 76 × 8.6 mm. With the Mi remote software, it’s one of the few smartphones that can control your TV and set-top boxes. Each wall has speakers.
These speakers increase phone audio. Harmon Kardon-tuned and Dolby Atmos-equipped. Both speakers are similarly loud and can play media. However, their size and placement limit their use. Biometric features include a 20-megapixel (MP) front-facing camera with a facial recognition cutout and a fingerprint scanner. Using a fast and reliable fingerprint scanner is safest.
Camera
How’s that 200-megapixel (MP) camera? It’s pretty much the same as cameras with fewer pixels.
It’s delicious. Expect no miracles. Xiaomi 12T’s 108-megapixel (MP) camera has too many pixels. You don’t need a bigger number, even though it sounds nice.
In the default shooting mode, the 12T Pro “bins” most pixels, merge each block of 16 pixels into one, and saves a 12.5 megapixels (MP) image. This helps conserve space. Each photo at 200 megapixels (MP) uses 50–70 MB.
Also, performance. Each shoot has a break. 50 megapixels (MP), a moderate option, speed up the process. Even if you want to avoid printing large wall posters, having so many pixels is handy. You can crop heavily without getting a blurry mess.
Ultra HD photographs have an icon in Gallery. ProCut opens with crop ideas when you tap it. Choose one or more; each will be saved as a single photo. The main camera usually takes clean, bright photographs. AI mode may make your photos excessively colorful.
HDR is switched on by default, but it didn’t work or wasn’t noticeable. The foreground is excessively dark in the Gallery below, but the sky is well-exposed. No way to tell if focusing worked is also unpleasant. In bright light, it’s impossible to detect if your subject is too close by gazing at the screen, like with the pink dahlia below.
You’ll receive a hazy image. Zooming closer reveals that the photographs have been heavily processed to sharpen them. The main camera’s low-light performance shocked me. Without Night mode, photos were brighter than the scene.
Supporting cameras could be better, as mentioned. The 8Mp wide-angle camera takes good photos, but the 2Mp macro camera seems to be there to make up the numbers. Great 20-megapixel (MP) selfie camera.
Portrait mode takes sharp, stunning images. The 12T Pro can capture 8K30 video. However, 4K60 is preferable for stabilization. The sound and video are both good. Xiaomi features entertaining shooting choices like Clone, which makes you gaze in two places at once, and Movie Effects, including Parallel World, Slow shutter, and a mode that simultaneously records with both the front and back cameras.
Performance
The Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chipset is inside the Xiaomi 12T Pro. Storage capacities of 128 gigabytes (GB) or 256 gigabytes (GB) on UFS 3.1 are supported, along with 8 gigabytes (GB) of RAM.
These are top-shelf components; in some regions, including the UK, a model with 12 gigabytes (GB) of RAM is available. With a vapor chamber that is 65% larger than the one on the 11T Pro, Xiaomi claims it has improved the cooling mechanism.
The 12T Pro still gets substantially hotter when used intensively with demanding apps and games. Although it performed well in our tests, this phone is not intended for use in the gaming industry.
Consider it instead a high-performance tool for routine chores. Using the 12T Pro daily for common tasks like surfing the web, sending and receiving emails, taking and viewing photos, watching Netflix, and playing “casual” games will make you feel like you’re using a top-tier device.
There’s no microSD card slot for expanding storage, but you can fit two nano SIMs—either of which is 5G-compatible—in the SIM tray. Dual 5G is attainable using both traditional and virtual SIM cards.
Battery
Many 12T Pro buyers may be surprised to learn that the device supports 120W cable charging, which is neither novel nor very noteworthy. The fact that Xiaomi includes the required charger in the package is a major benefit.
The battery’s power is restored to over 70% of its original level in just 15 minutes and fully charged in about 25 minutes. This is fantastic news because it compensates for the 12T Pro’s poorer battery life despite its larger 5000mAh battery.
Certainly, it’s not as horrible as it seems. I used the phone for almost a week, and towards the end of that time, the battery was down to 20%, yet it still lasted me the entire day. My colleague Anyron also had problems with the 12T.
When you turn off your screen, the time disappears, leaving you only six or seven hours. Battery life on PCMark was identical at 10 hours and 54 minutes for both the 12T Pro and the 12T, which share the same battery and display but have a different processors.
As always, the actual product may vary. The 12T Pro might last for nearly two days of light use. Although if you play games for four hours or more, it will likely need charging soon. No wireless charging is available since it would drive down profit margins.
