Barely a week after announcing their Xiaomi 12S series, the Chinese giant is back at it again this time with a new member of the Xiaomi 12 lineup, the Xiaomi 12 Lite. While it does join the ‘flagship’ Xiaomi 12 series, the Xiaomi 12 Lite sits below the others in the product stack as an upper midrange smartphone with some solid hardware.
Featuring what Xiaomi is calling a ‘featherweight, slim design’ for fashion-forward people, the Xiaomi 12 Lite measures just 7.29mm thin and weighs 173g. It has a 6.55-inch, FHD+ AMOLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate and a 240Hz touch sampling rate, and is capable of a peak brightness of 950nits. The display also features support for HDR10++ and Dolby Vision with a contrast ratio of 5,000,000:1. The back of the Xiaomi 12 Lite meanwhile has a matte colour gradient, with flat edges across the sides. It’ll be available in Lite Green, Lite Pink and Black colourways.
Under the hood, the Xiaomi 12 Lite has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 778G with up to 8GB of LPDDR4X RAM and up to 256GB of UFS 2.2 storage. It comes with MIUI 13 out of the box based on Android 12. Keeping the lights on meanwhile is a 4,300mAh battery with 67W fast charging that Xiaomi says can fully charge the Xiaomi 12 Lite in just 41 minutes. You’ll also be pleased to know that the charging brick also comes with the box.
In the camera department meanwhile the Xiaomi 12 Lite will feature a triple camera setup, with a main 108MP, f/1.88 camera using the Samsung HM2 sensor. This gets flanked by an 8MP, f/2.2 ultrawide angle camera along with a 2MP, f/2.4 macro camera. The front of the device meanwhile has a 32MP, f/2.45 camera for your selfie needs. Other features of note include stereo speakers with Dolby Atmos and an in-display fingerprint sensor. It also has support for 5G, NFC, Bluetooth 5.2 and WiFi 6 as well.
Overall, the Xiaomi 12 Lite does seem to bring some choice upgrades over their last ‘Lite’ smartphone, the Xiaomi 11 Lite 5G NE. The latter was launched in Malaysia last September, and has some similar key specs such as a Snapdragon 778G and a 6.55-inch, FHD+ AMOLED display. However, the older device only has a 90Hz refresh rate and its triple rear camera setup comes with just a 64MP main camera. The battery is also a smidge smaller at 4,250mAh with slower fast charging at 33W compared to the Xiaomi 12 Lite.
As for pricing and availability, there’s no word just yet from Xiaomi Malaysia as to whether the Xiaomi 12 Lite will be coming to our shores, but we do know its pricing in other regions. The Xiaomi 12 Lite will be going for USD399 (~RM1,766.37) for the base model with 6GB of RAMM and 128GB of storage, USD449 (~RM1,987.72) for the model with 8GB of RAM and USD499 (~RM2,209.07) for the top spec configuration with 8GB of RAMM and 256GB of storage.
