The Xiaomi 12 Pro is also lower in the price compared to the Mi 11 Ultra, as it is probably not a direct replacement of that phone. It is rumored that even more premium device can come in the market under the name of 12 Ultra, with more fast Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1+ Soc. At the moment, I used Xiaomi 12 Pro for a week and found that this phone is really good. However, is it better than OnePlus and IQO’s flagship phones?
Xiaomi 12 Pro Price in India
Xiaomi 12 Pro The 8GB RAM + 256GB storage model comes at Rs 62,999. Its 12GB RAM + 256GB storage model is available for Rs 66,999. I had a 12GB RAM variant for review. The phone comes in three finishes, including cachar blue, noir black and opera mow.
Xiaomi 12 Pro Design
Xiaomi 12 Pro looks quite glossy and premium. The phone’s right and left side, where the front and back glass meet, it is quite thin. Frames and rear corning gorilla glass come with 5 panels of panels, which makes the phone quite smooth. The rear camera is made of module module and looks modern. Some fine lines separate the sensors from the module. The port and cutouts in the metal frame are well carried out, which do not show pointed corners etc.
Xiaomi 12 Pro is a top end smartphone, yet it does not have any IP rating to protect against dust and water. Gadgets 360 confirmed the company that it has been given all the necessary seals compared to the IP rating which is equal to the IP53 rating. Nevertheless, it seems low because at this price, an IP rating is expected in the phone, at least there should be an IP68 rating. Companies have started doing this nowadays to save at the price. If you look at the budget phone like Redmi Note 11S (Review), then IP53 rating is also available in it.
The phone has a 6.73 inch AMOLED display with a protection of Corning’s Gorilla Glass Victus. Fingerprints do not easily fall on it. Speaker grills are given on the top and bottom and an infrared emitter is also installed on the top.
Xiaomi 12 Pro Specifications and Software
Xiaomi 12 Pro has Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 SoC. The internal storage is not expandable. Two nano SIMs can be used in the phone. The phone supports dual 5G standby. For connectivity, Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.2, NFC and multiple satellite navigation system are available in it.
The refresh rate of the display is 120Hz and touch sampling rate is 480Hz. It supports Ltpo 2.0, which leads to 1Hz to save the refresh rate power. The phone has an embedded fingerprint scanner. The resolution of the display is WQHD+ (3200 x 1400 pixels) with a 522PPI pixel density.
The phone comes with a 4,600mAh battery and 120W in the box. Apart from this, it has 50W wireless charging support and 10W reverse wireless charging.
Xiaomi 12 Pro, Android 12 based on Xiaomi MIUI 13. The phone has features like new widgets, permission manager and privacy dashboard. The MIUI 13 has commonly found blotware, which has Xiaomi apps and some third party apps. From Getapps Store, I continued to get notifications to update the apps.
The interface for widgets now looks different and it looks all over the screen. The widget can be added to the home screen by a long press, after which the bottom has three options for wallpapers, widgets and home screen settings. Re-sizing widgets is quite strange because it has a slight slipping of widgets, which increases a step. Like the other manufacturers, the company has given the theme engine that replaces interfaces, widgets, and keyboard color based on the color of the wallpaper.
Xiaomi 12 Pro Performance
Xiaomi 12 Pro performed as expected in the benchmark test. The phone scored 9,82,727 points in AnuTu and a single and multi-core test of Geekbench scored 1,237 and 3,654 points respectively, which is equal to the market competition. The phone performed smoothly with daily usage.
The display looks quite bright in the outdoor and shows the perfect color in the ‘original color’ mode. The setting app also has an ‘adaptive colors’ togle which adjusts the colors of the display based on the ambient light. Content is sharp on the display, which is also Dolby Vision and HDR 10+ Certified. Supported content on Netflix looked good. HDR videos streamted on Amazon Prime Video looked a little Dim. Dolby Vision HDR support is not what we see on many Android phones.
The in-display fingerprint reader is sharp and reliable to unlock the phone. The screen refresh rate of Xiaomi 12 Pro was changing as expected during different content during the Test. It was usually running at 120Hz while scrolling at 60Hz, apps or interfaces while playing games. When I was not doing any activity, it used to be locked on 10Hz. I expected that the refresh rate would fall to 1Hz while using the Kindle app, but it did not happen.
My gaming experience on Xiaomi 12 Pro was quite good. The phone was heated while playing the game for a long time, but the performance did not decrease. I played Call of Duty: Mobile Play which was running smooth on the highest settings. Asphalt 9: Legends were playing almost like a console and running on 60fps by default, but the phone warmed after a while. The touch sampling rate was received after reshuffling the phone’s game space app.
Xiaomi has done a great job of giving immersive sounds with a new quad-speaker setup of 12 Pro. The speakers have been tuned by Harman Kardon and you get a tweeter and a woofer at every end of the phone. The audio quality was amazing because the four speakers were giving balanced sound focusing on the base and mid-range. The phone supports many dolby atmos audio presets and equipment so that you can get the sound of your choice from it.
The speakers of the phone are very good, but the placement of the speaker grill over the phone was quite strange. It is in the bottom left corner of the frame that creates a problem while playing the game, as the speaker covers by hand when catching the phone horizontal and the sound is pressed. Bottom grill also falls on the diagnosis on the diagnosis. So even if you hold the phone horizontally, a grill is blocked in any way.
The battery life of Xiaomi 12 Pro proved to be quite good. However, it did not give very good backup in HD video loop test. It lasted 12 hours and 18 minutes in it. The phone with my regular usage lasted easily for one and a half days, including one hour of gaming and little camera and video streaming. The 120W charger fully charged 12 Pro in just 27 minutes using the boost mode. On charging in this mode, the phone gets hot, and it also shows a notification on the screen to alert you that this will happen and it is normal.
Xiaomi 12 Pro cameras
The Xiaomi 12 Pro has three rear-faceing cameras and all have a 50 megapixel resolution. The primary camera has OIS, the ultra-wide-angle camera has an 115-degree field of view, and the telephoto camera comes with a 2x optical zoom (48 mm). Front-faceing 32-megapixel camera has been given for selfie. The primary camera is equipped with Sony’s new 1/1.28-inch IMX707 sensor. It is much larger than the Sony IMX766 (1/1.56-inch) sensor, which we have seen in many Android flagships of 2022.
If you have recently used a phone of Xiaomi, then the camera app is easily understood. The phone can record HDR videos up to 4K 30fps with your main and telephoto camera. At the same time, HDR10+ videos can only be recorded from the main and selfie camera. The primary camera can shoot videos up to 8k 24fps.
The Xiaomi 12 Pro also has some “Pro” features which are quite useful. It can record the video by closing the screen for power saving. It also has a live in-age monitor feature that you can use to listen to the records being recorded. Pro VIDEO Mode allows you to shoot a video in Log Format (flat color profile) so that it can be colored in post-production. Focus can be useful for peaking and exposure verification professionals.
The photo taken in daylight from the primary camera had a lot of details and good dynamic range. The telephoto camera was taking a close shot with the details of the most subjects, the photo was sharp and detailed in the auto or portrait mode. Edge detection in portrait mode was also very good. If you are able to place the correct placement of the subject, then the big sensor of the primary camera gives you a soft, natural background blur, which is available only from DSLR. Skin tone could have been better, which looks quite red.
Ultra wide camera landskep shoots well and details are also very good. However, this primary camera is not as good. Software correction works good to correct barrel distortion but things look like drawn towards age. The difference in the photo of the main camera and ultravide camera can be easily detected.
Like IQO 9 Pro (Review), Xiaomi 12 Pro does not have autofocus in ultra wide camera, which means it cannot act like a macro camera. With the help of primary and telephoto camera, I took some good clause-up shots.
Auto mode in low-light takes a little longer for the exposure as seen in Xiaomi 11T Pro. However, it took good shots in low-light with primary camera. Ultravide and telephoto camera also gave proper results. The noise in night mode reduced slightly and the photo came clear.
In addition to colors, the primary camera in low-light also worked amazing in details and dynamic range. In addition to reducing noise, it could not do that good work for ultravide. Low-light had difficulty focusing on the telephoto camera. The photo was quite blur and soft.
The selfie camera did a good job in the day-light. However, the background in portrait mode became more bright at high light places. The photo quality was average in low-light.
Talking about the video, the camera performed well in all types of resolution. Stabilization is good, autofocus is also good and also maintains the exposure during paning. However, I felt something yellowish in the video footage and the explore felt a little more. HDR mode was correcting exposure at high light places and causing darkness in the shade place. Overall, the output did not look much real.
HDR 10 Plus video came much better. Color rich looked and the dynamic range was also better. But they will not look so good on the display without HDR10+. Motion Tracking, Eye Tracking and Motion Capture Focus acted as expected. While shooting the video in outdoor, the phone gets very hot, but the camera app never allowed the recording to be interrupted. In low light, the phone captures good quality videos, which have low noise and good dynamic range.
Verdict
The company has focused on performance and quality with Xiaomi 12 Pro. In terms of rear camera, the phone still has some scope for some improvement, which I think the software will be cured with updates. Additionally, its image quality and video quality are quite good which makes the phone a strong contender in the premium smartphone segment. The phone gives quite good value at an initial price of Rs 62,999. It only lacks IP ratings.
Those who do not want Android OS with heavy skin Moto Edge 30 Pro Can see which comes at a lower price (Rs 49,999). IQoo 9 Pro There is also a good option that has a unique design and a good gimbal camera system. Other than this, OnePlus 10 Pro (Review) which has a good camera system, has a large battery but charging slow. If you do not need wireless charging then you Realme GT 2 Pro (Review) can see which comes for Rs 49,999. It has a core hardware like Xiaomi 12 Pro and also has a special type of micro lens.