Xiaomi 13 Pro review: should you buy this phone instead of the Samsung Galaxy S23?

Xiaomi 13 Pro – the Chinese smartphone maker’s first flagship phone to launch in India in 2023 – went on sale in India for the first time on Friday. This year’s high-end smartphone comes at a hefty price tag compared to its predecessor, the Xiaomi 12 Pro. However, it also comes with a range 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.

On this week’s episode of the Gadgets 360 Orbital podcast, guest host and editor Roydon Cerejo talks 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 its latest generation hardware performs with Xiaomi’s MIUI software.

The Xiaomi 13 Pro is the first flagship phone to debut in India with Leica’s floating 75mm telephoto lens. This handset features a triple rear camera setup with a 50-megapixel 1-inch Sony IMX989 main sensor. At the moment, there are no other smartphones with 1 inch camera sensor in India. It also has a floating 50-megapixel telephoto sensor and a 50-megapixel wide-angle sensor. We discuss the camera performance of all three cameras on the latest episode.

First impressions of the Xiaomi 13 Pro: new heavyweight flagship

You also get other flagship specs on the Xiaomi 13 Pro, such as Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC, along with 12GB of LPDDR5X RAM. The handset sports a 6.73-inch 2K OLED display with a refresh rate of up to 120Hz and a touch sampling rate of 240Hz. This means it is on par with other high-end smartphones launched. earlier this year.

The hardware specs of a smartphone are only as good as the software it runs on, and luckily Xiaomi’s latest high-end handset comes with a stripped-down version of MIUI 14, minus any bloatware. You can also expect to see updates through Android 16, along with two years of security updates.

Thirty minutes with Xiaomi India’s Muralikrishnan B – an orbital exclusive

This phone does not have an official IP68 rating for dust and water resistance, unlike the Xiaomi 13 Pro model which was launched worldwide. On the other hand, the company said that the handset meets IP68 standards. Unlike the OnePlus 11 5G, the Xiaomi 13 Pro supports wireless charging and reverse wireless charging. This means you can charge the phone wirelessly at 50W using Xiaomi’s proprietary standard, or slowly with the more widely supported Qi standard.

You can listen to all of this in detail and more in our episode by hitting the play button on the embedded Spotify player above.

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