NimishAndAkriti
Xiaomi is an expert at the value for money game, but we think it might have outdone even itself with the Xiaomi 14 Civi (Civi stands for Cinematic Vision!) , which it launched a few hours ago. The phone packs in a lot of impressive specs and features at a starting price of Rs 42,999!
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It looks pretty good too, as you can see. We got the Shadow Black variant with a smooth glass back with matte finish. There is a Matcha Green vegan leather variant too and a light blue option too, but we like black best. It is not dust or water resistant, but has a very solid feel to it and at about 176 grams is not too heavy either. In fact, it is on the smaller side as compared to phones like the OnePlus 12 with a height of 157.2 mm. There is an aluminium frame with straight sides and the overall handfeel is quite good. Very premium!
The back also houses three Leica cameras in a spherical camera unit littered with glitter - a 50 MP main sensor with OIS, a 50 MP telephoto with 2x zoom and a 12 MP ultrawide (no autofocus on this one though). You also get a number of shooting modes, particularly in portrait mode, and Leica filters. To get Leica cameras on a phone at this price is pretty staggering in our opinion - the Xiaomi 14 and 14 Ultra also had them, but they were MUCH more expensive (the 14 was Rs 69,999 and the 14 Ultra Rs 99,999!)
The front of the phone features a very good 6.55 inch AMOLED display with 1.5K+ resolution and 120 Hz refresh rate, as well as brightness of 3000 nits (hefty!). It is slightly curved although it does not go over the sides - Xiaomi calls it a 'floating quad curve display" and it manages to combine the slightly premium feels of curved displays, without overdoing them. There is something special about that display though - check the next bit!
Thos who see the display might notice a slightly larger than usual notch on it. That's because it houses two - yes, two - 32 MP cameras in it (a main camera with AF and an ultrawide). These are not from Leica but still pack in a truckload of features and come with two focal lengths for portraits, teleprompter features, 4K video and a truckload of portrait shooting and filter options. On paper, this has what it takes to give the Vivo V30 Pro's selfie sensors a good run for their money.
There is more to the phone than just good cameras. It runs on the recently released Qualcomm Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 chip, which is flagship level. So this can handle some pretty heavy duty gaming. It also comes with 8 GB/ 256 GB and 12 GB/ 512 GB RAM and storage options, and UFS 4.0 storage and LPDDR5X RAM, so multitasking will not be an issue either. Frankly, this is one heck of a spec sheet for the price.
The phone also comes with stereo speakers, but has a relatively small 4700 mAh battery (kinda odd in this era of 5000 mAh plus batteries - the OnePlus 12R has a 5500 mAh battery) and it charges at 67W which is good enough to take the phone from empty to full in about 45-50 minutes, but is well behind the 100W and 120W "charge in less than half an hour" offerings from the competition. Not a deal breaker, but a step behind the competition.
All in all, the Xiaomi 14 Civi is a pretty impressive bit of design and hardware. We would have been okay with it being priced 25-30 per cent above what it is - for us, those Leica cameras and dual 32 MP front cameras open the doors for some major content creation potential. The display and the design are the icing on a very good phone cake. This is perhaps the best phone you can get for under Rs 45,000....perhaps even Rs 55,000, given those cameras!