Xiaomi’s latest high-end flagship smartphone lineup—Xiaomi 12S debuts，but China-only!

Xiaomi launched its latest flagship Android smartphone in the form of Xiaomi 12S Ultra, but said it has no plans to launch the phone globally. Xiaomi usually launches an international version of its flagship smartphones for Europe and other parts of Asia, but that won’t be the case this time.

For international customers, rather than standard versions, they are more interested in Xiaomi’s flagship smartphones. It’s a pity though, you will be available to other Xiaomi products with co-branding from Leica in a near future. So let’s kick off to see how the 12S Ultra performs in our test.

✨Design and Handling
Xiaomi’s high-end model are comprised of “MIX” and “Ultra”, these two suffixes. The former one comes with a new era of full screen and under-screen camera technology, while the Ultra one is targeted for excellent image quality.

The first Xiaomi’s Ultra flagship is Xiaomi 10 Ultra. Merely two years later, Xiaomi’s Ultra flagship comes back with a package of powerful functions and software setup: ultra-high 100 megapixels, 1-inch, 50.3-megapixel Sony IMX989 main sensor, LEICA co- engineered cameras, Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1, 8/12GB RAM, 256/512GB storage, 6.73-inch QHD+ AMOLED display, 67W charging, IP68 water-resistant…

Starting form the camera setup, you won’t be unfamiliar with its design, which shares the nearly same design idea with vivo from a traditional Chinese ideology that “The earth is square, and the sky is round.”

Outside the round camera model, “LEICA” logo is highlighted, translating Xiaomi’s partnership with the long-established camera brand. The entire three cameras benefit from its unique coating technology to mitigate lens glare and improve image consistency across each lens.

As for the arrangement, the 48-megapixel ultra-wide camera sits right in the middle of the circular area in order to avoid fingers of photographers included in the image when it’s handheld in actual shooting. Right below it is the 120mm 8-megapixel periscopic camera. Both two is equipped with Sony’s IMX586 sensor.

But the real point of attraction here is with the main camera. Xiaomi is using Sony’s IMX989 50.3MP camera sensor which is a huge 1-inch sensor and one of the biggest camera sensors for mobile devices ever produced. Of course, it’s not the first either, as we’ve seen 1-inch sensors in a few previous devices. For example, Sony itself uses a 1-inch sensor in its Xperia Pro-I but with some cropping. The big benefit to the full adoption of such a large physical sensor is better bokeh and light capture.

It should be noted that the big 1-inch sensor has its shortcomings. The most apparent one of them is increased thickness of the round camera setup, 2mm thicker than that of the 11 Ultra by depth. Thus that leads to worn and dirty issues.

While, Xiaomi has clearly recognized that point and replaced original ceramic back plate with the “vegan” leather one, resulting in its weight loss of about 10g. And there's a 23K gold rim here as well.

✨Theoretical Test

001 Sharpness
We have used ISO 12233 charts with all the three cameras and now show you 100% crops at the center and corners to measure sharpness.

As you can see above, the main 50.3-megapixel camera boasts the best sharpness, sharp in both center and edges, with abundant details. As for the other two, they are sharp in the center but a little soft on edges.

002 Latitude
As in the “Pro” mode, RAW and JPG formats are available, so we have tested them respectively with the main camera.

According to Xiaomi, the Xiaomi 12S Ultra can support 10-bit Raw capture. As can be seen above, RAW files performs better than JPG ones when it comes to dynamic range and latitude. Raw files can be pushed back from 2 over to 4 under stops. At 3 stops over, highlights are partly missed.

Xiaomi is somewhat lagged behind in terms of RAW capture capability as its many competitors have packed 12bit RAW option. There is still a long way for Xiaomi to upgrade. In addition, RAW files will be compressed into 3.5-10M, eliminating concerns about the storage.

003 Sensitivity
Sony’s 1-inch IMX989 50.3MP camera sensor is claimed to facilitate a 72% improvement in light gathering.

Adjusting within a sensitivity range of ISO 50 to 12800, we shoot the image and analyze details and dark parts to see how the image quality changes as the sensitivity increases gradually.

It’s clear that the 12 Pro presents a relatively pure picture in terms of details and dark parts under ISO 800.

At ISO 1600, the dark parts are partially smeared with visible noises; at ISO3200, a lot of noise emerge. It doesn’t make sense to pull up ISO value further.

004 Lens distortion
The 12S Ultra comes with three focal length options (23mm, 13mm and 120mm full frame equivalent).

From the image above, there is no need to worry about the distortion when using the main camera.

As for the ultrawide camera, there is a "aberration correction" function available. It can be turned on via its own app to correct the aberration and turned off to present the exaggerated barrel distortion. If it’s used reasonably, you can get very impactful images.

Pincushion distortion is mostly seen on the telephoto lens, as with the 120mm periscopic lens.

✨Verdict
Pricing for the Xiaomi 12S family starts at CNY 4,000 for the 12S, CNY 4,700 for the Pro. The 12S Ultra is priced from CNY 5,999 (8GB RAM, 256GB storage) to CNY 6,999 (12GB RAM, 512GB storage).

Maybe the biggest attraction point for foreign users is that the 12S lineup is exclusive to China. All but, it’s still worth to expect other Xiaomi’s flagship successors as Xiaomi said it will cement its cooperation with LEICA to provide better image performance.