Xiaomi has finally announced its next range of flagship phones with the Xiaomi 13 and Xiaomi 13 Pro.
The original December 1 launch of Xiaomi 13 had been postponed, apparently out of respect for the recently deceased former Chinese president Jiang Zemin. Now Xiaomi has finally revealed everything.
We say he revealed everything, but in reality there was very little left to reveal. The company has been constantly releasing specs and even images of its new phones for the past few weeks, and we’ve also received several leaks.
The Xiaomi 13 and Xiaomi 13 Pro offer no surprises, then, but they are still two of the first flagship phones of 2023.
They don’t look much alike, with the Xiaomi 13 offering a distinctly iPhone 14-like flat-edge design, and the Xiaomi 13 Pro sticking with the traditional curved edges of the Xiaomi 12 Pro. The Xiaomi 13 comes in White, Black, Flora Green and Mountain Blue, while the Xiaomi 13 Pro comes in Ceramic White, Ceramic Black, Flora Green (Ceramic) and Mountain Blue.
The Xiaomi 13 is the more compact phone of the two, with a 6.36-inch FHD+ AMOLED flat screen and ultra-thin 1.61mm bezels. The Xiaomi 13 Pro comes with a larger 6.73-inch QHD+ AMOLED, which is very similar to the Xiaomi 12 Pro but with a higher peak brightness of 1,900 nits. Both screens can reach 120Hz, but only the Pro model uses LTPO for greater efficiency.
Both phones are equipped with Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processors, which will be the flagship chip for much of 2023.
The Xiaomi 13 Pro packs a 4,820mAh battery, while the Xiaomi 13 has a slightly smaller 4,500mAh cell. Xiaomi also claims that the Xiaomi 13 Pro comes with its new Surge charging chip, which allows its battery to last longer.
You can expect 120W wired and 50W wireless charging with the Xiaomi 13 Pro, while the Xiaomi 13 gets 67W wired and 50W wireless.
Xiaomi has equipped the 13 Pro with a triple camera system of 50 megapixels, this time reinforced by Leica professional optics. As revealed during the launch, the Pro’s main camera is backed by a massive 1-inch Sony IMX989 sensor as well as eight aspherical lenses. There’s also a 50-megapixel 3.2x telephoto and a 50-megapixel ultra-wide.
The Xiaomi 13 also has a triple camera system and Leica optics, but with a 50-megapixel Sony IMX800 main sensor with seven aspherical lenses. This is accompanied by a 10-megapixel 3.2x telephoto and a 12-megapixel ultra-wide.
If you want to know all these specs and how the Xiaomi 13 and Xiaomi 13 Pro compare, check out our handy guide.
Prices for the Xiaomi 13 Pro start at ¥4,999 (around £585) for 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, while the Xiaomi 13 starts at ¥3,999 (around £470). However, don’t expect these rough price translations to hold true when the global release arrives.
Both phones go on sale in China tomorrow, December 14, and we expect a separate global launch early next year. The Xiaomi 12 was launched here in April 2022.
What we didn’t see here was the Xiaomi 13 Ultra, which will presumably be announced separately in the new year.