MANILA—Xiaomi’s T-series phones are supposed to be the brand’s midrange to premium midrange entries. But lately, the brand has been packing feature after feature into the T-series, making them almost seem like flagships. 

The 14T, which was released in the country in late September, has Leica branding for its cameras, like the flagship Xiaomi 14, which was launched here earlier this year. I had the chance to review the Xiaomi 14 and came away impressed, so I had high expectations for its cousin, the 14T. 

Right from the unboxing, I already liked what I saw. The design and the build quality looked premium. Its metal chassis and the matte back panel looked classy, especially in the “Titan Gray” colorway of the review unit sent to us. Aside from this, the 14T also comes in Titan Black, Titan Blue, and Lemon Green which uses vegan leather on the back panel. (I’m not sure if the marketing people were just fans of Eren Yeager’s adventures, or if the tech industry’s titanium-branding obsession is getting out of hand.) 

TheXiaomi 14T smartphone

The 14T is also pretty generous with specs. Our review unit came with 12GB of memory and 512 GB of storage, unlike a certain Korean brand that insists on speccing its midrange and even flagship phones with a now-comical 8GB/128GB. A MediaTek Dimensity 8300-Ultra chip provides the processing muscle. While this is definitely not a flagship-class chip, it is still more than adequate for most tasks except for the most demanding mobile games. The 5000mAh battery is also good enough for all-day performance. 

Its screen is sharp and vibrant. The 6.67-inch AMOLED display has a 2,712 x 1,220 resolution and supports a variable refresh rate of up to 144 Hz for smooth scrolling and transitions. It is also rated at 1600 nits which is bright enough to see outdoors. Peak brightness meanwhile can reach up to 4,000 nits for certain parts of the screen in HDR. It also has a fast fingerprint sensor at the bottom. 

TheXiaomi 14T smartphone

The screen is really good. But other users may mistake it as dull because Xiaomi strangely puts wallpapers with muted colors on its phones by default. But if you switch the color scheme to something more vibrant, you’ll see how the screen makes colors pop out. Audio quality is also pretty good. But the highlight of the phone is its Leica-tuned cameras. 

It has a 50-megapixel main shooter with an f/1.7 aperture, a 50 MP, f/1.9 telephoto lens capable of 2x optical zoom, and a 12 MP, f/2.2 ultrawide lens. It also has a 32MP selfie camera. 

Leica branded lenses on the Xiaomi 14T smartphone

Its video capabilities also approach that of flagships with 4K@24/30/60fps, 1080p@30/60/120/240/960fps, with gyro and electronic image stabilization, and HDR10+ which are great for content creation. The selfie camera can also do 4k@30fps. 

The photo capabilities meanwhile are a mixed bag, as you can expect from a midrange phone. The main shooter is really good. It captures great detail and good color accuracy even in low light. 

The telephoto lens is also quite capable, and is especially good for portrait shots, as long as you stick to the 2X zoom. It performs well even at 3X zoom in dimly-lit surroundings, but push the tele lens beyond 3X and you get softness and loss of details. The ultrawide camera meanwhile is great for capturing outdoor shots in good lighting but struggles a bit in situations that are not so well-lit. 

In the age of AI, you can also tweak your photos to erase unwanted elements such as people in the background, powerlines, and other objects. It also has other AI features, thanks to a collaboration with Google, like “Circle to Search”, the Gemini generative AI and intelligent assistant. Xiaomi said other AI features like AI Interpreter, AI Notes, AI Recorder, AI Subtitles, and AI Film will be delivered via OTA updates after the product launch. According to Xiaomi, the AI interpreter initially supports 12 languages: Chinese, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, German, Russian, Japanese, Korean, Hindi, and Indonesian. It said that support for Thai, Malay, Vietnamese, and Filipino will be introduced in subsequent OTA updates. 

But you don’t have to wait for the Filipino AI update to drop to get your hands on this phone. If you need a phone with a great screen, good cameras, and sleek looks, the 14T retails for P25,999 for the 256GB variant while the 512GB variant is at P27,999.