It’s been raining flagships since early 2024, and the Xiaomi 14 arrives with some Leica-ble traits: top-tier performance in a compact form factor, a ‘co-engineered with Leica’ tag that raises the bar, and the burden of expectations.
It starts off on the right foot, with its 6.36-inch-screen form factor hitting the sweet spot between the S24/iPhone 15 and their Plus variants without feeling cramped for daily use. Ergo, even the odd combination of the curved back and flat aluminium edges on the 14 is comfortable to hold and use in one hand, although you will notice the 193 g weight.
Bear in mind that the Jade Green variant is slippery and attracts smudges easily, while the Matte Black is... matte and thus grippier. And for the moments when you fumble, there’s Corning Gorilla Glass Victus around the front and IP68 dust and water resistance for durability.
Of course, the focal point of the design is the massive, almost comically large camera module, which houses the 50 MP trio of cameras: a f/1.6 primary shooter with OIS, an f2.0 75 mm floating lens telephoto with 3.2x optical zoom, and a f2.2 115-degree ultra-wide.
Interestingly, the housing also contains an infrared blaster that you can use to remotely control appliances. As with Xiaomi Leica smartphones of the past, you start by choosing a shooting style – Authentic and Vibrant – and the portrait mode master lens system is as versatile as ever.
Taking the Xiaomi 14 for weekend shoots across a range of shooting conditions, the smartphone delivers strongly, with the main shooter turning out detailed daytime photos with excellent dynamic range and accurate colours and impressive levels of shadow detail and well-reined-in highlights in low-light shots.
Shooting in black and white, the main shooter adds a tonne of character to the images and comes highly recommended. The 3.2x telephoto does a good job punching into the scene (both with portraits and macros) and maintains colour parity with the main shooter. The ultrawide camera turns out decent low-light images but somewhat muted shots during the day.
But here’s the thing I noticed about shooting with the Xiaomi 14: much like any capable camera, you’ll need to dive into the settings and modes to get the most out of the smartphone, and when you do, you’ll walk away rewarded with truly exceptional shots.
Where you don’t have to try hard is on performance. The Xiaomi 14 is kitted out as any flagship should, with top-tier silicon by Qualcomm by way of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 along with 12 GB of LPDDR5X memory and 512 GB of fast UFS 4.0 storage.
The phone fares incredibly well even with high-end gaming, and the LTPO 120 Hz screen is adequately bright for everyday use (up to 3,000 nits in HDR mode with support for HDR10+ and Dolby Vision). The phone is one of the first few to ship with Xioami’s new and overhauled HyperOS running on Android 14, and while the visual upgrade is subtle, there are a lot of performance-oriented improvements under the hood.
It’s not all rosy — some facets are still iOS-inspired — but the bigger issue is the amount of pre-installed bloatware, which, while it can be uninstalled, is not a good look for a device that plays in the flagship league. Moving onto the battery, the 4,610 mAh lasts a full day of heavy use and charges at 90 W with the included charger to full in about 35 minutes. There’s 50 W wireless charging as well as 10 W reverse wireless charging, both of which are plenty fast.
There’s something rather unique about the Xiaomi 14, whether it’s the in-hand feel with zero compromise on specs or charging speeds or the exceptional Leica-partnered optics. It goes up against the OnePlus 12 and the Galaxy S24 and is the phone I’d pick if I were looking for a strong camera and flagship-everything-else in a compact package. This is the strongest proof that bigger isn’t always better and that some good — nay, the best — things do come in small packages.
Rating: 9/10
Price: INR 69,999 (12/512GB)
