Redmi 12 5G Introduction:
Β Xiaomi has come with the latest Redmi 12 5G after providing its users a solid reason to stay loyal in form of some relatively cheap models. Bonus: The Redmi 12, which could easily be confused with the above in terms of naming but is a slightly different phone. At that tier higher lies the Redmi 12 5G and obviously it's something more than just a phone packing even faster baseband tech.
In general, the two Redmi 12s have no difference. Size is 6.79 inch's with a refresh rate of 90 Hz and the biggest for any mainline Redmi phone Both have pretty much the same design albeit with a newer look glass back. Both devices come with a 5000mAh battery and an introduction of the 50MP main camera.
Both of the phones are quite similar with one and most important difference being that Redmi 12 support a (5G chip )Snapdragon 4 Gen 2 SoC, whereas he base model i.e., gets G88. Which is absent from this phone also. The Snapdragon chips give a name for its smartphone by means enabling probably faster network. Gallery: Xiaomi expands to Spain well beyond just Mi Note premium smartphones(note that link may still show news version erroneously). Interestingly, the base Redmi 12 also comes with an ultrawide camera alongside the main 50MP - a feature that isn't present on this more expensive model.
Redmi 12 5G Unboxing:
The Redmi 12 5G itself is delivered with a charger that charges at up to 22.5W and charging cable, although the latter has been braided on paper but still features only one USB-A connector of all things. It also comes with a transparent soft silicone case.
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Redmi 12 5G Design:
The Redmi 12 5G has a sleek and subdued design that no one would expect from this segment of the market. The 6.79-inch display is leading the charge up front, which this happens to be one of the largest displays we have seen on a Redmi series device. It does have reasonably large bezels around the display but they are not obnoxious. The ridge around the side is raised, though; you'll feel it against your thumb every time you swipe in from along the edge.
The phone's frame is plastic, but it does have a matte paint that looks like aluminum. Power button and volume rocker on right side The large power button also gets a fingerprint sensor and it works as expected given the space constraints.
A single loudspeaker and a microphone reside on the bottom of the phone, along with USB-C. In the top of the phone is an IR blaster and a headphone jack. SIM tray on the left side
The back is a glass cover that not only feels great, but gives the phone gorgeous reflections with no warps like what you see on plastics. It should also be less susceptible to scratching than the glossy plastics, which are very soft.
The device has three colors, a shiny black color, an iridescent silver and the pastel blue you see here.
Up top we do have metadata that confirm the camera optics in a setup not so very foreign but with absolutely no surrounding border edges making everything look super duper clean and modern. The lenses have some really cool metallic rings on them.
The build quality of the Redmi 12 5G is strong and holds up well. That said, the Corning Gorilla Glass on both sides definitely helps make this product feel premium but so too does that IP53 splash resistance rating. However, the phone feels a bit too heavy and that becomes annoying because of its size.
Redmi 12 5G Display:
Xiaomi has equipped the Redmi 12 with a large, 6.79-inch-sized IPS LCD panel that runs on FHD+ (2460 x 1080) resolution and packs LTE support alongside other features around networking. 8 bits of color and a refresh rate up to 90Hz are the display outputs.
The display isn't particularly wide-gamut, so even in its default Vivid or the optional Saturated mode colors aren't much punchier than they are in Standard/sRGB. While the white point starts to look more on-point for Vivid and Standard it's almost always a little too cool in-off axis, better here though than if you go with one of those two modes.
For an IPS panel, the contrast and black-level performance is solid. Its viewing angles aren't great since even though color shift is minimal, the panel dims significant when viewed off-axis.
Refresh rate on the display is adjustable to 30Hz, 48Hz and 60H as well but you can push that up to 90 Hz allowing for smooth visuals. The Default mode is designed to dynamically change between 60Hz and 90Hz as content demands, users can also force the refresh rate manually via settings or a hidden debug menu. However, manually setting the screen to 90Hz still won't stop it dropping where applicable and in no apps we tested was there a practical difference between selecting this mode or leaving the screen at Default.
Even at Default the screen refreshes mostly in 90Hz, falling down to 48Hz when idle. With video, this display drops to 30Hz for any content running less than that frame rate and then rises up to 60Hz for anything above. We never saw it refresh at 48Hz for standard 24fps or even higher framerate, and so on...
It has a smooth-moving dynamic picture, and the LCD panel is relatively quick enough to prevent long distracting trials behind moving objects.
The Redmi 12 5G does a step less bad too, with the lone blemish there being peak brightness. Even so, 550 nits should be bright enough for when you're outdoors in direct sunlight and it can slowly get harder to see things in certain situations.
Altogether, though the screen of Redmi 12 5G is not perfect but it can be accepted and good in price range
Redmi 12 5G Camera:
At the back, you get a 50MP f1. Main: 8MP sensor Front-facing camera Empty Entries. Up front sits a single fixed focus 8MP f2. 0 camera.
Having said that, the app is pretty simple. When you choose a filters to apply different modes Options will display at the bottom, they can either only swipe through. Zoom options are also lower down, with a zoom button that gives you more control but is slower to navigate because you have to slide through them using a wheel. Further options are found at the top but, like every other menu in iOS, they needn't require you to stretch your thumb; a swipe down across any place of the viewfinder will pull it open.
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All of this is done in the camera app, and one oddity we noticed was that HDR isn't turned on by default -- even when you enable HDR Auto mode (which options being to have it off or automatically trigger). After some atrocities, we gave the phone a chance with HDR Auto turned on across all our samples before it began to wear us out. We're skeptical that the majority of users are going to bother, rendering this feature simply non-functional for them.
Just a tiny reminder before we dive into the samples: shutter lag is still pretty bad on this phone. If you are a slow shooter and spend all the time in shooting single photo there wouldn't be any issue, but if you quickly shoot few photos then phone might lag. Of course, there's no burst capture mode.
Good image quality on the Redmi 12 5G camera In a number of areas Monte can often keep colors looking quite good, especially in terms of keeping white saturation very well. Weak dynamic range with blown out highlights possible. Noise in shadows is also present. Good enough level of detail.
They might not be the best few, regardless of those obvious omissions but I found up to 2x is fine on digital zoom. The lack of an ultrawide camera is a bummer indeed, but alas you can't change that.
The 50MP mode is just an upscale of a dozen MP pictures and will not enhance any fine details that the aforementioned 12mp version doesn't already bring.
Redmi 12 5G Performance:
The Redmi 12 5G gets its wings from the Qualcomm Snapdragon 4 Gen2 or SM4450, which apparently integrates with a pair of Kryo Gold (Cortex-A78 derived) clocked at up to 2.Β
Memory choice of 4GB, 6GB, or even up to an increased range of the latter through extending memory to use Benefit from expanding memory at a more extensive limit or until reaching its maximum top-level. But this is a storage-based page file without the speed of LPDDR4X memory fully available. Onboard storage comes in at either 128GB or 256GB of UFS 2.2 flavor, but as this is an ASUS phone a microSD card reader will also be present to expand the memory by up to another full terabyte if needed. If you don't want to give up your second SIM slot, the storage is also expandable using microSD cards.
The Redmi 12 5G is of course no powerhouse. First of all, this will be hardly an issue in real life using your Ui which limits to phone calls and messaging people. Reading the web, listening to music, watching video - all work acceptably on this unit. The phone is only slow when you multitask.
This goes even further with high-end Thunderbolt driven tasks like gaming. Basic games are just about bearable at this resolution but tougher 3D titles tax the GPU too much to hit playable frame rates.
To be frank, a Redmi 12 that is not pro and there are no power user or gamers for the majority of users. It absolutely will, and definitely not the 4GB or 6GB memory versions as that is going to cripple how long you can use this phone for, even if all you do with it is check Instagram. You are better off saving yourself some trouble in the years ahead, especially with OS and app updates that can sometimes turn bloated by going exclusively for the 8GB variant.
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Redmi 12 5G Battery:
Of course, there is also a 5000mAh battery with support for charging it at just 18W. It is bundled with a 22.5W charger in the box as well
The Redmi 12 5G's charging speeds were definitely slow by modern standards then again maybe not to a fault given the price tier. Charging up with the bundled charger took a full hour to reach 50%, and then another 2 hours and 24 minutes total for a complete charge. Most definitely something you would have to plug in overnight.
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Redmi 12 5G Software:
Further, the Redmi 12 5G uses MIUI 14 based on Android13. The Indian unit that we got for the review also has a different version of MIUI, compared to its Chinese counterpart which comes with more features. This is similar to what was there on earlier Xiaomi devices and Samsung handsets made specially for India in their initial launching days. Additionally, the system is stripped down to some extent with certain visual effects missing - such as transparency effect that could have an impact on performance in theory.
The screen of the Redmi 12 has a pixel density of only about 267 ppi, which is not high. MIUI has remained quite the same for a while now, and it seems to be out of breath. Except the iOS inspired design hasn't aged well and either butts heads every time you see a native Android prompt appear on screen.
When you first boot up the phone, it has installed a decent amount of bloatware, The nice thing is that with very few exception much (most) can be removed. That's still a heap more than it needs to be, though: owing to Xiaomi liking its own bespoke knock-off at whatever the Google thing was supposed to do in that category, you now have two diallers (one of which doesn't sync with call history), SMS apps, media gallery apps and file managers. There's also two app stores because - of course there are.
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Redmi 12 5G Speaker:
The Redmi 12 5G features a solo down-firing loudspeaker. Naturally, it sounds a little funky when viewing full-screen landscape content but is perfectly passable for all those more and greater portrait videos you never seem to mind watching.
The speaker are of low quality. It can sound choked or congested at lower volumes, and it has little chance of holding up as the input signal is increased. When played at max, everything sort of melds together and sounds as if all things are being said over top one another. The speaker doesn't get that loud either. For that reason, we suggest headphones at your disposal when you use Published also!
The Redmi 12 5G, however, will bring back the standard 3.5mm headphone jack - those cheap headphones better have a sturdy connector! The feature even has an FM receiver, something becoming increasingly rare in the age of streaming. This is pretty unfortunate because, according to me you are forced for Xiaomi's audio processing all the time and it works only from Sound effects option which seems no way to disable as i didn't find any options except Presets.
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Redmi 12 5G Conclusion:
The Redmi 12 5G Is a Budget-Friendly Phone for Bargain Hunters With Basic Needs It has a nice slim design that gives it a much higher end feel, is big enough for easy viewing on the screen but also not so heavy to hold and use all day with its long lasting battery.
The camera system is passable for the price, able to take decently shot in well-lit areas but it's not going save any photo awards. Yet the software leaves a lot to be desired. The Redmi 12 5G isn't exactly the most powerful out of the bunch, but it's enough for day-to-day usage as long as you're fine with some bloatware while being more affordable than its pricier siblings.
This content was last updated on 02.10.2024.