Xiaomi 13 Pro Review: Should You Buy It Instead of the Samsung Galaxy S23?

Xiaomi 13 Pro — the Chinese smartphone manufacturer’s first flagship phone to launch in India in 2023 — went on sale in India for the first time on Friday. This year’s high-end smartphone comes with a hefty price tag compared to its predecessor, the Xiaomi 12 Pro. However, it also comes with a range of notable hardware upgrades. The Xiaomi 13 Pro is the first handset from the company with Leica-tuned cameras to debut in India. It is also equipped with Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC under the hood.  

On this week’s episode of the Gadgets 360 podcast Orbital, guest host and Reviews Editor Roydon Cerejo talks to Reviewer Pranav Hegde, who spent more than two weeks with the Xiaomi 13 Pro. Hegde also travelled to Barcelona for the recently concluded Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2023, where Xiaomi launched its latest flagship smartphone. We discuss the latest Xiaomi 13 Pro smartphone, from its camera specifications to how its latest-generation hardware performs with Xiaomi’s MIUI software.

The Xiaomi 13 Pro is the first flagship phone to debut in India with Leica’s 75mm floating telephoto lens. This handset is equipped with a triple rear camera setup headlined by a 50-megapixel 1-inch Sony IMX989 primary sensor. At the moment, there aren’t any other smartphones with a 1-inch camera sensor in India. It also features a 50-megapixel floating telephoto sensor, and a 50-megapixel wide-angle sensor. We discuss the camera performance of all three cameras on the latest episode.

Xiaomi 13 Pro First Impressions: New Heavyweight Flagship

You also get other flagship-grade specifications on the Xiaomi 13 Pro, such as Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC, along with 12GB of LPDDR5X RAM. The handset sports a 6.73-inch 2K OLED display with a refresh rate of up to 120Hz and a touch sampling rate of 240Hz. This means it is on par with other high-end smartphones launched earlier this year.

Hardware specifications on a smartphone are only as good as the software it runs on, and thankfully, Xiaomi’s latest high-end handset is equipped with a lean version of MIUI 14, minus any bloatware. You can also expect to see updates through Android 16, plus two years of security updates. 

Thirty Minutes With Xiaomi India’s Muralikrishnan B — an Orbital Exclusive

This phone doesn’t have an official IP68 rating for dust and water resistance, unlike the Xiaomi 13 Pro model that was launched globally. On the other hand, the company has stated that the handset conforms to IP68 standards. Unlike the OnePlus 11 5G, the Xiaomi 13 Pro offers support for wireless charging and reverse wireless charging. This means you can charge the phone wirelessly at 50W using Xiaomi’s proprietary standard, or slowly with the more widely supported Qi standard.  

You can listen to all of that in detail and more in our episode by hitting the play button on the Spotify player embedded above.

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