Xiaomi’s 12T Pro launches with high-resolution 200-megapixel camera

Xiaomi has officially announced its flagship smartphone lineup for the second half of the year — the Xiaomi 12T and 12T Pro. The latter is notable for being the first Xiaomi phone to make use of Samsung’s 200-megapixel HP1 camera sensor, while the non-Pro version “only” has a 108-megapixel camera.

In mainland Europe, both phones will be available on October 13th, with the 12T starting at $591 and the 12T Pro starting at $739. Meanwhile, in the UK, both phones will be available on October 20th. The 12T will start at $563, while the 12T Pro will start at $789. Xiaomi is offering early bird pricing on both handsets between October 20th and the 24th, which reduces the starting price of the 12T to $450 and the 12T Pro to $676. Both are unlikely to be available in the US given that Xiaomi doesn’t typically sell its phones in the region.

Rather than actually producing 200-megapixel photos by default, the Xiaomi 12T Pro’s camera is designed to bin up to 16 pixels at a time to create more crisp and detailed 12.5-megapixel images than what a lower-resolution sensor might be capable of. (Similarly, the 108-megapixel sensor in the 12T bins nine pixels at a time.) The first handset announced with Samsung’s 200-megapixel HP1 sensor was Motorola’s X30 Pro, which launched in August.

Compared to their main sensors, the other two cameras on the back of both phones are almost comically low resolution. Both have an eight-megapixel ultrawide camera with a 120-degree field of view and a two-megapixel macro lens. Both their selfie cameras offer a more respectable resolution of 20 megapixels.

The other major differentiator between the 12T and the 12T Pro is their processors. The 12T Pro is powered by Qualcomm’s latest flagship Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 processor, while the 12T has a MediaTek Dimensity 8100 Ultra chip. The 12T Pro also comes in a 12GB RAM variant in addition to its 8GB model, while the 12T is only available with 8GB of RAM. Both come with a choice of 128 or 256GB of onboard storage, with no mention of support for microSD cards.

Otherwise, both handsets offer broadly similar specs. Both have 1220p 120Hz 6.67-inch OLED screens with in-display fingerprint sensors (though only the 12T Pro’s spec sheet notes that it supports the Dolby Vision HDR standard), and both have 5,000mAh batteries that can be charged at up to 120W with an included charger that can fully charge either phone in under 20 minutes. Both handsets are available in black, silver, or blue and ship running Xiaomi’s MIUI 13 software atop Android 12.