Update: Following Xiaomi’s announcement that the Xioami 12 would be coming to SA, we finally know which one is coming and how much it will cost. South African’s get the model featuring 8GB RAM and 256GB ROM. That’s great, 128GB fills up rather quickly. What isn’t great is the rather large price increase over the international price. This was to be expected though and it still works out cheaper than importing it yourself. The Xiaomi 12 has a local RRP of R18,000 and is available right now.
Original story: Chinese smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi is finally bringing one of its top-end devices to South Africa next week. The Xiaomi 12 from the company’s latest flagship range will launch in South Africa next week, 8 July 2022.
Hopefully aged like wine
The Xiaomi 12 was initially launched at the tail end of last year. It was one of the first mobile devices to feature Qualcomm’s then new Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset, narrowly beaten by Motorola and the Moto Edge X30. That was almost a year ago and there’s already been an upgraded Snapdragon chipset announced, the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1.
Still, it’s always good to have a few more options in the smartphone space. Perhaps this will push Samsung and Apple to give customers than a device that’s more than just slightly better than the last one.
That Snapdragon chipset has allowed for improvements in several areas. From the spec sheet, it looks like Xiaomi has positioned the Xiaomi 12 to take advantage of as many of them as it can. But you’d expect that from the underdog, wouldn’t you?
Competition for the high-end
In typical Xiaomi fashion, it’s given special attention to the camera array. We’re getting a 50MP main cam, a 13MP ultrawide, and a 5MP telephoto. The chipset allows up to 8K HDR video recording at 24fps, 4K HDR10+ at 30 and 60fps, and two super slowmo options. The slowest of these shoots video at 720p at 1920fps.
Up front, expect a 6.28in AMOLED display with a 1,080 x 2,400 resolution. Watching media on this thing should be a treat, seeing it has Dolby Vision and HDR10+ support.
Unfortunately, this one doesn’t feature the company’s insane 120W fast charging. But you’ll still find a respectable 67W charge speed for the 4,500mAh battery.
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We’ll have to wait until next week’s launch for specific info like local pricing and which RAM and memory configurations we’ll be getting. At the very least, we’re getting 8GB of RAM and 128GB of non-expandable storage. We hope we get the 8GB/256GB option instead.
Overseas, this device is aimed at the $600-$650 price range. Directly converted, that’s between R10,000 – R11,000 roughly. That makes for a pretty compelling deal, on paper at least. We’ll get our hands on one to confirm.