[Xiaomi 13] velqn:
Guys,

I have been using the Xiaomi 13 now for almost 2 weeks quality time as my mainly driver. Here my feedback in case any questions just hit me and I will try to reply. It`s a rather expensive device so... no questions should be left unanswered if you decide to go with it :)

Where did I buy it

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I bought it off trading shenzhen and it was delivered out of China for ~ 12 days. The price was 823 EUR for the 12/256 version

Which version

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I do believe that the 12//256 is a must if not... then strongly recommend. Why? The 8/128 version seems to have UFS 3.1 and UFS 4.0 is just better. How? UFS 4.0 can achieve read speeds of up to 4200MB/s and sequential write speeds of up to 2800MB/s. In contrast, UFS 3.1 has read and write speeds of up to 2100MB/s and 1200MB/s, respectively. And also 12/256 is a bit more future proof for the next 1-3 years at least

Form Factor

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With the size 6.36" it`s rather one of the few small Android phones and I love it. It fits in most of my pockets and I am using usually the S22 Ultra, so coming to a smaller screen didn’t felt too bad but it felt way more convenient.

Display

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I am a fan of curved screens and this is completely flat which is a bit problematic with gesture use and the included case. But the Samsung E6 AMOLED is really good, very bright (up to 1900 nit peak) and totally usable under direct sunlight. I have compared this to my S22 Ultra and it was not falling behind (S22U has lower peak nit as per specs) but it doesn’t feel like this when comparing.

Battery

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4500 mAh isnt too much sometimes with Android phones but here the results are outstanding I believe due to the Snapdragon 8 GEN 2 performance and efficiency. I get constantly over 6 hrs of SOT with mixed (mobile/wifi) use.

Snapdragon 8 gen 2

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That`s a beast, able to run at 45 C for a longer period of time w/o sacrificing performance. I was able to run 10 times AnTuTu with only losing 4% from the original score in one of the rounds. I was able to play Genshin Impact for 3 hours and 10 minutes running from 80% to 0%.

It’s a powerhouse and maybe the best chip to upgrade to if you are looking to stay with the phone for a longer period.

Speakers

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This year the Harman Kardon tuning is gone, but the speakers are loud, EQ works well, sound is balanced and compared to my S22Ultra I like the Xiaomi sound better, it sound fuller and has more bass

Charging

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Xiaomi advertised 43 mins from 0 to 100% and ... it`s almost like that, I got it from 0 to 100% for 45 minutes so the claim is total valid

IP68

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It has official rating but the only thing that worries me that I did not notice any rubber isolating on the sim tray slot

Camera

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The back camera is outstanding, color consistency between ultra-wide, main/wide and tele is OK, Xiaomi finally improved the audio quality (bitrate) in video recording. You can shoot Dolby Vision video 4K 60 FPS for 6 minutes, the only downside is the front camera HDR processing which is still not ideal and ... the FHD 30 FPS only mode for front camera video which is a bummer.

The only big downside I was able to find is that on 4K you cannot auto switch between the camera lenses when shooting video, you can only do that on the FHD.

The 3.2x Optical Zoom is OK and up to 10x it`s bearable but it`s worse than S22 Ultra zoom capabilities.

Chinees MIUI

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The ones I got comes with Google Basic Services, so you just switch a toggle and you have playstore you have google, so it`s good. It does though come with a lot of Chinese app that some might want to remove. It does also have native call recording.

Well that`s about this summed up, let me know if you have any questions or share your experience with the device.