This Phone is a Great Flagship Killer, Ergonomics be Damned

This Phone is a Great Flagship Killer, Ergonomics be Damned

Xiaomi 14T Pro Review Philippines: Xiaomi’s latest affordable flagship is a potent alternative to all the expensive offerings of its peers in the Philippines despite having the ergonomics of a phone released during the pandemic. The removal of the charger from the packaging is annoying, but ultimately if you’re looking for a phone that has flagship-level performance and cameras, you won’t be disappointed with the Xiaomi 14T Pro.

Pros

  • Same cameras as Xiaomi’s flagship 14 series
  • Dimensity 9300+ is as powerful as Qualcomm’s current flagship chip
  • IP68 protection plus fast wired and wireless charging is the icing on the cake

Cons

  • No charger in the box
  • There’s still way too much bloatware in HyperOS
  • Ergonomics of a 4-year-old phone

We weren’t expecting too much from the new Xiaomi 14T Pro to tell you the truth. Xiaomi’s Q4 affordable flagship series usually doesn’t excite jaded tech writers but this year was different. With low-light performance that you usually expect from more expensive flagships paired with a processor that runs circles around the competition. Sure the ergonomics could be better, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that the Xiaomi 14T Pro’s overall value is way better than the other flagships we’ve seen released this year.

Xiaomi 14T Pro Review Philippines: Design

If the Xiaomi 14T Pro has a weakness, it’s probably the phone’s design. It’s not a bad-looking device, as it looks like the POCO F6 Pro was released earlier this year. It uses an aluminum frame and a glass back, which feels premium enough in the hands.

I think what really lets the phone down is its overall ergonomics and the dated design language. The phone wouldn’t look out of place in a smartphone lineup in 2020, and that’s a bad thing, its overall size and thickness make it difficult to wrangle if you have daintier hands.

That being said, the phone has all the hallmarks of a flagship device. The build quality is quite solid, and the Titan Blue colorway that we were lent looks eye-catching without being too ostentatious. There’s IP68 ingress protection too, just like last year’s offering, which should allow the Xiaomi 14T Pro to last a little bit longer in adverse conditions.

Xiaomi has taken a page out of Apple and Samsung’s book of not offering a fast charger in the box for the 14T Pro. That’s a weird turn, especially since they offered one up in the more expensive Xiaomi 14 flagship series. I really, really hope that this isn’t the start of Xiaomi’s new charger-less strategy for their phones, because fans and prospective customers are definitely going to start rioting if it is.

Xiaomi 14T Pro Review Philippines: Display and Sound

The Xiaomi 14T Pro uses a 6.67-inch OLED panel that has a 144Hz refresh rate, 1220 x 2712 resolution, as well as peak brightness of 4000 nits (1600 nits HBM). If that wasn’t enough, you’re also getting Dolby Vision, HDR10+ certification as well as high-frequency PWM dimming and a 480Hz touch sampling rate for better responsiveness when you’re gaming.

Display quality is quite good, and if it wasn’t obvious from the specs already, the 14T Pro’s panel is very bright. You won’t have any issues with glare and sunlight legibility when you’re using this outdoors.

The phone has stereo speakers which get plenty loud – you won’t have a problem with the phone’s soundstage if you decide to play music via the speakers.

Xiaomi 14T Pro Review Philippines: Cameras

Aside from boasting Leica optics, the 14T Pro uses a 50-megapixel Light Fusion 900 sensor, which is the same one used on the flagship Xiaomi 14. Like its predecessor, there are no filler cameras on the 14T Pro: accompanying it is a 12-megapixel ultra-wide camera and a 50-megapixel telephoto camera with 2.5x optical zoom.

Since this is a phone that has Leica branding, you get access to Leica’s color profiles (Leica Vibrant and Authentic), and of course, the all-important Leica watermark.

The main camera has a bright f/1.6 aperture opening, which really lends the phone to taking great photos even in low-light scenarios. Even in shots where other cameras usually struggle, like a gray, heavily overcast sky near the end of the day for example, the Xiaomi 14T Pro is still able to take excellent photos with minimal to no blur.

The phone also has AI tricks up its sleeve as it relates to photography. You can ask the phone to do an AI fill on photos you want expanded via the crop tool, which produces mixed results. There’s also an AI eraser on board so you can simply remove people from photos that you don’t want in there. That’s not a brand-specific feature per se (OPPO and other brands already have this as well) but it’s nice to know that Xiaomi has it as well.

The telephoto also takes great photos, but since its opening isn’t as wide as the main camera your photos will suffer when you’re shooting in less than ideal conditions.

The wide-angle camera is ok – not great, but not terrible either.

Overall the cameras on the Xiaomi 14T Pro are very, very good – this phone punches well above its weight when it comes to imaging.

Xiaomi 14T Pro Review Philippines: Performance, software, battery

The Xiaomi 14T Pro comes armed with MediaTek’s Dimensity 9300+ processor and comes in a variety of storage and RAM options. Our review unit came with 12GB of RAM and 1TB of storage, which is quite generous, especially at the price point that Xiaomi is asking for this particular phone.

As we said earlier, the MediaTek Dimensity 9300+ runs circles around Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor when it comes to benchmarks, with the Xiaomi 14T Pro easily beating the GeekBench scores of the OnePlus 12 and the Samsung S24 Ultra, a phone that’s significantly more expensive.

In daily use, the MediaTek Dimensity 9300+ ran well without any major hiccups, even when gaming in demanding titles with the graphics turned up.

While I didn’t have any problems with the hardware, I’m still annoyed at the fact that Xiaomi’s HyperOS still comes with so much pre-installed bloatware that you have to uninstall yourself. It’s become a meme at this point for me to point out how unacceptable this is for a phone that costs this much. That being said, that’s going to be something I will always bring up until the heat death of the universe (or until Xiaomi does something about it).

The Xiaomi 14T Pro is one of the first phones we’ve tried with a lot of mention of Google’s Gemini AI integration in the marketing materials. Gemini is Google’s brand of generative AI that the company is now rolling out on Android devices. You can ask Gemini a whole host of things, and it’ll give you (mostly) correct information though as with any generative AI, you’d want to verify that information yourself first before using it in any serious application.

With all of that processing power on tap, I was a little concerned about the Xiaomi 14T Pro’s overall power efficiency, given MediaTek’s reputation in this regard. I shouldn’t have worried – on the default balanced power plan the Xiaomi 14T Pro managed to score 15 hours and 3 minutes on a single charge, which is quite impressive considering the performance of the processor and the phone’s 5000mAh battery. Battery life takes a hit if you switch to Performance mode though, but not significantly, and that 12-hour and 30-minute endurance on the more power-hungry application still translates to around a day’s worth of battery life in real life.

The phone has 120W fast charging capabilities and 50W fast wireless charging as well, though again it doesn’t come with a fast charger when you buy it, which frankly blows. And you’d want that 120W charger, as it tops up the phone in just 25 minutes from 0 to 100%.

Xiaomi 14T Pro Review Philippines: Wrap up and Final Thoughts

The Xiaomi 14T Pro is a fantastic affordable flagship that puts most of the recently released devices to shame as far as pure value goes. The top-end model barely breaks the low Php 40,000 mark, which is impressive considering all that you’re getting. Sure that design is a little dated, but overall the phone is still quite good if you’re willing to overlook that, and is definitely one of the better options in the market right now if you’re in the market for a bang-for-the-buck flagship phone.

The Xiaomi 14T Pro is priced at Php 37,999 for the 12GB/256GB model, Php 39,999 for the 12GB/512GB model, and Php 41,999 for the 12GB/1TB model. The phone is now available to buy in Xiaomi stores at Cyberzone, which is found at all SM Supermalls nationwide.

 

 

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