XIAOMI LAUNCHES 12T AND 12T PRO IN SOUTH AFRICA
Chinese tech giant Xiaomi has launched its flagship Xiaomi 12T series smartphones in South Africa.
Xiaomi’s T-series is essentially the company’s equivalent of Samsung’s Fan Edition (FE) Galaxy smartphones.
It borrows some key components and design elements from the brand’s top-of-the-line models and eliminates other costly parts to reduce the price.
The Xiaomi 12T series comes in two models — the standard Xiaomi 12T and Xiaomi 12T Pro.
The smartphones share most of the same hardware, including 6.67-inch 2,712 x 1,220 OLED displays with 120Hz refresh rates.
That falls between the 6.28-inch 2,500 x 1,800 display on the Xiaomi 12 and the 6.73-inch 3,000 x 1,440 screen on the Xiaomi 12 Pro.
The 12T Pro comes with the faster processor of the two flagships — Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 — an upgrade over the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 in the non-T Xiaomi 12 flagships.
The standard 12T features a MediaTek Dimensity 8100-Ultra chip, which is still on the faster side for flagship chips.
The Pro also boasts a more advanced rear wide camera, with a 200MP sensor instead of the 108MP unit found on the base 12T.
The Samsung Isocell HP1 sensor in the Pro model is capable of 2x in-sensor zoom, or up to 16-in-1 pixel binning for better performance in low-lit scenes.
That has helped it achieve a score of 129 on the DxOMark camera smartphone rankings, putting it 21st in the world at the time of publication.
It beat flagships like Apple’s iPhone 12 Pro, Google’s Pixel 6, and Samsung’s Galaxy S22+ and Galaxy Z Fold 4.
The 12T and 12T Pro’s rear cameras both sport 8MP ultrawide and 2MP macro sensors.
The hole-punch selfie camera is identical on both phones — offering a 20MP sensor with 1080p HDR video shooting up to 60 frames per second.
Both 12T models beat Xiaomi’s flagships in battery capacity, with 5,000mAh packs capable of supporting the same impressive 120W charging speed.
That compares to the 4,500mAh on the Xiaomi 12 and 4,600mAh for the Xiaomi 12 Pro.
However, neither supports the wireless or reverse wireless charging available on the top-end models.
Promotional offers on Xiaomi 12T are already available
The Xiaomi 12T is now available from the Xiaomi Store and selected retailers, with a recommended retail price of R13,999 for the standard model with 256GB storage and R16,999 for the Pro variant with the same capacity.
However, the smartphone was already on sale in several stores at the time of publication, with a price of R11,199 for the standard model and R13,599 for the Pro iteration on the Mobile in Africa store.
However, the latter was already out of stock at the time of publication.
On Takealot, both models were available on sale at R13,499 and R16,499, respectively.
