What a strange world we live in where a 6.36-inch smartphone is marketed, sold, and accepted as “compact.” I know there’s no official rule book for what qualifies as big and what qualifies as small, it’s pure human instinct, and preferences evolve over time. But, if you would have given me the Xiaomi 14 a few years back, and said, it’s a “compact flagship”, I’d say, “nice try.”
Compact phones, flagship or otherwise, aren’t getting the kind of love and attention as they did before. Those who really want them are few and far between and so, it makes little sense for brands to continue to make them from a business point of view. Asus stopped recently but an even bigger example is Apple and its iPhone “mini”. Again, it’s the same company that used to make 3.5-inch iPhones back in the day. The mini was almost 5.5-inch. The Xiaomi 14 is “much” bigger in comparison. Even the Samsung Galaxy S24 is smaller (6.2-inch).
The compromises you make to make a phone smaller are hard to overlook. They’ve become so obvious, we — reviewers and even some buyers — know them by heart. Even before unboxing, we presume that it will probably have abysmal battery life, tinny speakers, and subpar cameras. Not to mention, the limited screen real estate, is also a valid consideration.
The Xiaomi 14 doesn’t suffer from any of these shortcomings because, well, it’s not a small phone. I won’t go so far as to call it a feat of engineering (I am keeping those big words reserved for the Xiaomi 14 Ultra, so fingers crossed), but Xiaomi clearly put a lot of love into it and also experience. This is obviously not its first time — the Xiaomi 13 was a similarly sized flagship, the Xiaomi 12 was even smaller. But you can say it’s the first time it has been able to build up the confidence to launch a product like this, outside of China.
Being a Xiaomi phone, the Xiaomi 14 undercuts its closest rival, Samsung’s Galaxy S24, by a big margin. A version with 12GB of RAM and 512GB storage costs Rs 69,999. The S24 costs Rs 10,000 more, and gets you only 8GB of RAM and 256GB storage at the base level. The margin would have been even higher if Xiaomi had —also — brought the 8GB/256GB variant to India. It would surely have made headlines, some of them could have translated into sales, who knows. The Xiaomi 14 is made in India, wonder what’s stopping them. But I digress.
This is a review of the phone and if you’re wondering when it will start, let me tell you that, it began and ended in the headline itself. The Xiaomi 14 is not a small phone, physically, spiritually, in all the ways. While it’s not as ambitious as a pro or an ultra, given its more mainstream pricing, it is an even bigger deal. The Xiaomi 13 Pro was apparently well received and with the Xiaomi 14, the idea is to reach more people. How well it does, will decide where Xiaomi goes from here (though it has given itself a few years to setup base before taking a call, as evidenced from this interview).
Now, the hardware. There’s one area where Xiaomi has broken all stereotypes associated with Physics in that it has managed to somehow put a camera setup unlike any other inside a chassis only slightly thicker than the S24’s. The housing takes up a big chunk of the back and sticks out quite a bit in a sense that it feels more camera than an actual phone, but cmon, you can only challenge Physics so much. You need to draw the line somewhere. The real feat of engineering was fitting Leica Summilux lenses inside this setup. Xiaomi also made a custom sensor with Leica — the 50-megapixel 1/1.3-inch Light Fusion- 900 — especially for this phone and brought their floating lens system to tackle aberrations while enabling up to 3.2x optical zoom despite the space constraints.
All that effort has paid off because the Xiaomi 14 does take some “breathtaking” photos including “awe-inspiring” portraits. The phone gives you authentic and vibrant undertones to work with and you can change them on the fly. I stuck with vibrant for the most part of this review, just to see how far the colours can pop but even at their extreme, the photos did not look artificial. The processing is chef’s kiss. Regardless of what mode you pick, you’re likely to enjoy the results. Leica photos always have a life of their own, and a story tell, particularly when you’re doing street photography, and to get such results on a phone is, for the lack of a better word, mind blowing. The phone’s master system helps you simulate some lenses adding more versatility with the occasional messed-up blur here and there. But it’s software induced, so quite expected.
Software on the Xiaomi 14 works the way we’ve come to expect from any Xiaomi flagship phone. It is among the first few phones to run the new HyperOS out of the box and it just flies. The visual changes, to the Lock Screen, are cool and aesthetically pleasing.
Just the way content looks on its excellent flat LTPO AMOLED which can theoretically peak 3,000 nits and supports Dolby Vision playback. Bezels are slim and symmetrical, the punch hole unobtrusive. Xiaomi has also added a Dynamic Island like animation that fires up around it with some notifications. It’s whimsical but fun.
Speaking of which, using the Xiaomi 14 as a daily driver has been no less fun than a roller coaster ride. The combination of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip and some meticulous behind the scenes optimisation, make for an exhilarating experience. The phone can get hot when pushed but doesn’t throttle as much as last year’s Xiaomi 13 Pro or the Xiaomi 12 Pro before it. Battery life is good because Xiaomi didn’t skimp on capacity. The phone has a capacious 4,610mAh battery which can last a full day, on moderate use, given you don’t play too many games on it. Fast wired charging up to 90W is supported as well as 50W wireless.
Xiaomi didn’t skimp on speakers or haptics or connectivity either. The Xiaomi 14 excels in each of these core areas, delivering on the core promise of a flagship phone — that’s not just about the cameras.
Xiaomi 14 — should you buy it?
The Xiaomi 14 is not the best phone that Xiaomi makes today. But in many ways, it occupies a status even above and beyond the Xiaomi 14 Ultra. The Xiaomi 14 is the best Xiaomi phone for most people, what the S24 is for Samsung. Very rarely, you come across a Xiaomi phone that has it all, does it all, with such grace.
It is not a small phone but a huge leap of faith for Xiaomi, a company whose flagship antics you might have overlooked in the past. But it is time, you should start taking it more seriously.
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