The first evaluation of Xiaomi 13: long wait, full of small screen flagship!

12/17/2022

[[Preface: Small screen flagship fans, finally ushering in a good era]]

Looking at the smartphone market in recent years, "small screen flagship" has undoubtedly been an awkward topic. On the one hand, although users continue to claim that they want to have small but high configuration flagship models; On the other hand, the "small screen flagship" in the market is almost unpopular, so the final result is that fewer and fewer manufacturers are willing to insist on making such products.

Why is that? In fact, it is a technical problem in essence. Because when the body is small, there will be great constraints on the SoC heat dissipation, battery capacity, and even the design of the image hardware. Although consumers like small and light models, few people would be willing to sacrifice their daily experience and performance in exchange.

Fortunately, mobile phone manufacturers do not fail to understand this truth, so when the time comes to the end of 2022, we finally have a lightweight small screen flagship model that is likely to achieve the "flagship" level in performance, heat, endurance, image and other aspects, and can really bring excellent daily experience. This is our evaluation object Xiaomi 13.

[[[Appearance design: 6.36 inch narrow side straight screen, new materials achieve high image quality]]

Since we talked about the "small screen flagship" at the beginning, when we talked about the appearance design of Xiaomi 13, we naturally stopped following the usual practice of talking about the back of the machine. You might as well look at the front of Xiaomi 13 and take a look at this screen.

According to the official information, Xiaomi13 is equipped with a 6.36 inch screen with the highest 120Hz refresh rate and 2400 * 1080 resolution. It is clear that 6.36 inches can indeed be called "small" in today's era when mainstream products are frequently equipped with 6.7-6.8 inch screens. But I don't know if you have noticed the special features of the Xiaomi 13 screen.

Yes, Xiaomi13 has adopted a screen frame design that is obviously very narrow and nearly the same width on all four sides. According to the relevant parameters, the narrowest part of the screen frame is only 1.61mm, which also makes the proportion of the screen up to 93.3%.

After careful observation, it can be found that although Xiaomi 13 is undoubtedly equipped with a "straight screen", it is not completely "straight", but uses a 2.5D arc design at the frame position. In this way, on the one hand, the tactility of the side return gesture is improved, and on the other hand, the border looks narrower visually.

This is not the end. Xiaomi 13's screen is not simple in terms of "materials". It is reported that this screen uses Samsung's latest E6 substrate, with a peak brightness of up to 1900nit, while the full screen brightness can reach 1200nit, which is very clear and transparent even in the sun.

At the same time, this screen also supports four high dynamic range standards: HLG, HDR10, HDR10+, and Dolby Vision. This means that it is not only fully compatible with the highest picture quality of all current mainstream video platforms, but also provides convenience for video creators to shoot and edit HDR content directly on their mobile phones.

Of course, in addition to the above indicators, Xiaomi Digital Series models have some "excellent traditions" in display in the past, and Xiaomi 13 certainly has not fallen behind. Such features as front and rear dual light perception, environmental color temperature sensing, full brightness DC dimming, SGS eye protection certification, etc. are also inherited on this small screen.

[[[Appearance design: high light frame+3D glass, high profile feel is also good]]

After looking at the screen, let's move our attention to other parts of the Xiaomi 13 fuselage to see its overall appearance this time.

First of all, as you can see, Xiaomi 13 uses a very high-profile, polished bright straight edge middle frame shape. Of course, this is also a popular trend in the last year or two, but the details of the frame of Xiaomi 13 really show that they have spent extra effort, rather than simply following the trend.

For example, the straight side middle frame of Xiaomi 13 is ground on both sides of the front and back, and then matched with the curved back cover and 2.5D glass on the front of the fuselage, so that there is no problem of "hand scratching" when holding it.

For another example, on the top of its body, you can see that the radio, noise reduction mic holes, infrared transmitter holes, and the antenna's split band are arranged into a very neat symmetrical shape. Obviously, this design with obvious "aesthetic pursuit" also enhances the sense of quality of Xiaomi 13.

The curved glass back cover of Xiaomi 13 is not so "amazing" compared with the fuselage middle frame, which has greatly improved its delicacy. The black square rear three camera module is also relatively low-key visually, which further highlights the presence of the aluminum middle frame and the glass back cover.

Please note why we repeatedly emphasize the material of the middle frame and back cover of Xiaomi 13? On the one hand, this is because they "look" obviously have a feeling of overstepping. The aluminum middle frame has been polished to a stainless steel feeling. At first glance, the glass back cover of the "Wild Green" version we have is also somewhat ceramic.

On the other hand, compared with stainless steel and ceramics, aluminum and glass have a more prominent advantage, which is "light". Yes, the body thickness of Xiaomi13 is only 7.98mm, and its weight is 189g, which is rare among flagship models. Even on this basis, it can also support IP68 dust and water resistance, which can be said to be full of delicacy.

[[Performance: With the second generation Snapdragon 8, we are back on top of performance and energy efficiency]]

At the beginning of this article, we have mentioned that one of the reasons why the "small screen flagship" in the past was not easy to do and the experience was not satisfactory was that the SoC was not good enough in power consumption and energy efficiency at that time.

So, has Xiaomi 13 successfully solved this problem? The answer is yes. Because this time it is equipped with a new second-generation Snapdragon 8 mobile platform, which brings about all-round evolution in the overall architecture, technology, and even peripheral configuration.

This second generation Snapdragon 8 mobile platform adopts TSMC's 4nm process and has a distinctive "1+2+2+3" CPU architecture. It has a 3.2GHz Cortex-X3 super core, two 2.8GHz Cortex-A715 performance cores, two 2.8GHz Cortex-A710 performance cores, and three Cortex-A510v2 energy efficiency cores.

What does this mean? On the one hand, the second generation Snapdragon 8 has a total of five CPU cores (2 * A710+3 * A510v2) that can be backward compatible with 32-bit applications. When running old games and applications, there will be no "lock small cores" like competitors, which may lead to insufficient performance.

Geekbench 5.4.4

On the other hand, the high frequency super core and more performance cores also make great progress in the performance of the second generation Snapdragon 8, whether in single core or multi-core.

3DMRK 4K Wildlife Extreme test

3DMRK 2K Wildlife Unlimited test

At the same time, the second generation Snapdragon 8 also used the new Adreno 740 GPU. Why should we emphasize that it is "new"? Because the number of ALUs is 50% more than that of the previous generation, and the hardware light chasing accelerator component is also added. On this basis, its main frequency has been greatly reduced, its energy efficiency ratio has been greatly improved, but its performance has successfully reached the top in the current smartphone industry.

In addition, on the storage subsystem, the second generation Snapdragon 8 also supports LPDDR5X-8533 ultra-high frequency memory, and UFS 4.0 flash memory with the speed fully reaching the high-end SSD level of PC. According to the storage test results evaluated by Anthare, it is obvious that Xiaomi 13 is equipped with UFS 4.0 memory as standard, which makes it far faster than the previous flagship model in terms of application installation and loading speed in daily use.

In the end, the 12+512GB Xiaomi13 on hand easily achieved a comprehensive score of more than 1.32 million points in the evaluation of Anthare. It can be seen that each of its sub projects has reached the top level at present. As a "small screen flagship", this performance release level is obviously reassuring.

[[[Charging: double self-developed chips, small size also has large power and fast charging]]

In addition to performance release, battery capacity and fast charging speed are often the focus of many friends for the small screen flagship.

This time, Xiaomi13 has a 4500mAh battery built in, and directly integrated the self-developed surging G1 battery management chip to accurately measure power and delay battery aging.

For the fast charging scheme, Xiaomi13 is equipped with a single cell 67W wired second charging based on the self-developed Pengpai P1 chip, and supports 50W wireless second charging and 10W wireless reverse charging. In addition, it also has time-domain charging optimization technology, that is, when "charging all night", it will deliberately control the charging power to avoid long-term overcharge of the battery.

Under the ambient temperature of 15 ℃, we consumed only 1% of the electricity of Xiaomi 13 through the pressure test of Antu rabbit, and completely cooled it to room temperature. At this time, when the charger is plugged in, the phone will soon show that it has entered the 67W wired second charging mode.

It can be seen that after 10 minutes and 20 minutes of charging, the power displayed on the phone reaches 36% and 63% respectively. From this point of view, the fast charging strategy of Xiaomi13 should be relatively "stable". It does not "charge" the battery to about 80% of the maximum power, as some models do, and then suddenly start to reduce the power for trickle charging. Instead, when about half of the power is charged, the charging power will be slowly reduced to achieve the role of battery maintenance.

In conclusion, the Xiaomi 13 on hand took about 41 minutes to complete the 1% – 100% charging process in an indoor environment of 15 ℃, which is not far from the official 38 minutes. A simple analysis of the charging process shows that Xiaomi13 has charged 36%, 27%, 22% and 15% of the electricity respectively at each 10 minute node, showing a very gentle power curve as a whole. Although this may not be able to meet the needs of some users who pursue "5-minute blood return", it is also an irreproachable design from the perspective of long-term equipment life.

[[Games: Who Says Small Screen Machines Can't Play Games? High Frame Rate and Low Power Consumption]]

With amazing performance and good fast recharge "blood return" speed, it would be a waste if we did not test the game performance of Xiaomi 13.

First of all, it is naturally the 120 frames of the best picture quality of the familiar Glory of the King. To be honest, Glory of the King is not really a "light load" game under such a picture quality setting, but Xiaomi13 has achieved an average frame rate of 121.1 frames, while the average power consumption is only 3595.3mW, which is even more power saving than many "sub flagship" platforms in 2022.

QQ Flying Car Average frame rate 121.2 Average power consumption 3251.2mW

The Ace Soldier Average frame rate 119.1 Average power consumption 3013.0mW

The same situation also occurs in two games, QQ Flying Car and Ace Warrior. With the highest picture quality and frame rate set, Xiaomi13 can stably run the frame rate to 120 frames, while the power consumption is only over 3W. This performance is almost 50% lower than that of the first generation Snapdragon 8 at the end of last year, which really surprises us.

Tianya Moon Knife manual maximum picture quality · frame rate Average frame rate 58.6 Average power consumption 3347.0mW

Diablo Immortal Average frame rate 59.9 Average power consumption 3073.0mW

In order to further "squeeze" the game performance of Xiaomi 13, we tested two high-quality mobile games with complex special effects and numerous characters. However, even in the face of such games, the second generation Snapdragon 8 is still "too lazy to move". Yes, in many cases, even all the CPU cores of Xiaomi13 have not reached the primary frequency above 1GHz. However, the frame rate of the game is close to full frame, and the power consumption is still "too low".

Genshin Impact has the highest picture quality, average frame rate of 59.1, average power consumption of 4680.5mW

In the face of this situation, it is obvious that manually pulling the highest quality "Genshin Impact" is our last "means". In conclusion, Xiaomi 13 did not run "Genshin Impact" out of a frame rate straight line. However, the average frame rate of 59.1, the few times of stuttering, and the average power consumption of 4.68W still prove that even the "flagship of small screen", Xiaomi 13 is fully capable of providing excellent game fluency.

[[Image: a new Leica camera with 3.5x telephoto]]

In 2021, Xiaomi introduced Leica's lens design, color mixing style and imaging algorithm into its flagship digital series models through strategic cooperation, and won unanimous praise from the market, even changing the impression of many consumers on Xiaomi mobile phones.

Faced with such achievements, Xiaomi certainly has no reason to stop working hard. Therefore, it is no surprise that Xiaomi13 has continued and developed various previous imaging technology achievements, and has also brought about further upgrading in basic hardware.

Xiaomi 13 zoom sample sheet 0.5 times focal length

Xiaomi 13 zoom sample 1 time focal length

How has the image of Xiaomi 13 changed? First of all, in terms of hardware, it is equipped with a 12 million pixel super wide angle sub camera, a 50 million pixel wide angle main camera, and a 10 million pixel telephoto sub camera. It is worth noting that its main CMOS scheme has been upgraded from IMX766 to IMX800, which has a larger photosensitive area and wider field of view angle. At the same time, it has also upgraded the 7P aspherical lens and "HyperOIS" super optical anti shake design.

Xiaomi 13 zoom sample 2 times focal length

On this basis, Xiaomi 13 has also upgraded its new zoom strategy. In the case of 2x zoom, its imaging principle is no longer simply to magnify through algorithm, but to automatically enable the 50 million pixel mode of main photography, and then directly capture the 12.5 million pixel content of the central part of the screen. In this way, the 2x zoom of Xiaomi13 is equivalent to the "native lossless" pixel output without interpolation, and the quality is naturally much better than before.

Xiaomi 13 zoom sample 3.5 times focal length

Xiaomi 13 zoom sample 5 times focal length

Xiaomi 13 zoom sample 10 times focal length

When the zoom magnification continues to increase, Xiaomi 13 will use a long focus sub camera with a focal length of 3.2 times for imaging. Yes, you are not mistaken. Its focal length is no longer 5 times, but slightly shortened.

In fact, this has also improved our use experience. Although the 5x telephoto can "see far", it means that the daily 1-5x interval will need to rely on the main camera for algorithm amplification, and the image quality will be lost. In contrast, Xiaomi 13 has improved the 2x zoom logic of the main camera, and designed the telephoto sub camera as a more commonly used focus segment. Although the limit zoom magnification has been sacrificed to some extent, the "index" has been used to significantly improve the zoom image quality in most cases in actual daily use. Obviously, this is a very important improvement.

Sample of Xiaomi 13: 1 x zoom of wine bottle

Xiaomi 13 sample: 3.5x zoom of wine bottle

Millet 13 sample: 1 x zoom

Xiaomi 13 sample: 3.5 times zoom

And from our live shot samples, Xiaomi13 has a very good focusing performance both in the main camera and in the long focus end. That is to say, the "telephoto macro" experience that everyone once loved is back again. I have to say that this really makes the daily shooting of Xiaomi 13 much more fun.

Millet 13 sample: nucleic acid (portrait mode)

Xiaomi 13 sample: Greedy (portrait mode)

At the same time, we also noticed that the portrait mode of Xiaomi 13 also uses the telephoto sub camera with 3.5 times focal length for shooting by default. Unlike most of the portrait mode schemes on the market based on the main camera (possibly with algorithm amplification), using telephoto to shoot portrait has the advantage of long viewing distance, which is not easy to bring psychological pressure to the subject, especially in the process of "street sweeping", it can greatly improve the success rate of photography. It is also worth noting that, although this is only a sub shot of 10 million pixels, Xiaomi 13 obviously has a good human image recognition and background virtualization algorithm for it, so that the problem of "small bottom" is not felt from the sample.

[[Image: Self developed image brain blessing, capture and color are satisfactory]]

In addition to the fully upgraded hardware, Xiaomi 13 has also made significant changes in software algorithms this time. The "Xiaomi Image Brain" equipped with it strengthens the computing photography capability in RAW domain, realizes high-speed capture based on parallel computing, and also enhances the tracking and focusing speed of the "Everything Focusing" algorithm based on heterogeneous computing.

Xiaomi 13 sample: Leica is vivid

Sample of Xiaomi 13: Leica Classic

As a result, the algorithm enhanced by Xiaomi 13 is first embodied in the "Leica dual image quality" mode. Although they are still familiar German style with "dark corner" characteristics, their higher computing power has all upgraded them to the processing mode based on P3 wide color gamut, which can record 25% more color information.

Sample of Xiaomi 13: porch (super wide angle)

Sample of Xiaomi 13: porch (wide angle)

Sample of Xiaomi 13: porch (telephoto)

Secondly, the upgrading of the underlying algorithm also enables Xiaomi13 to achieve excellent backlight HDR effect no matter which camera is used. It can be seen from the sample that even on the two sub photos, there is no significant overexposure.

Sample of Xiaomi 13: Balloon

Xiaomi 13 sample: shot

Xiaomi 13 sample: drink water

Xiaomi 13 sample: axis shifting

Of course, the most impressive thing that can reflect the progress of Xiaomi13's image algorithm is its super capture ability. Unlike most models, which need to turn on the "motion mode" and other designs when capturing, Xiaomi13 can easily click the shutter in the default mode without any settings in advance, and can simply achieve a clear instant freeze frame. I have to say that this is very interesting, and indeed very knowledgeable.

Xiaomi 13 sample: water bottle

100% magnification

Of course, high-speed capture is essentially the result of the joint action of "high-quality lens", "stable anti shake design", "CMOS with high-speed readout capability", and "new enhanced algorithm". Of course, this process can also be applied to scenes such as 50 million pixels full open for main photography and focusing on retaining extremely small details. After all, "shoot fast" not only means that the capture performance is strong, but also means that the impact of jitter during static shooting will be smaller, and the details will be easier to shoot clearly.

【【 Image: Although it is not a "night vision device", we think it is more delicious 】】

Finally, let's enter into the investigation of Xiaomi 13's night scene shooting ability.

Xiaomi 13 Night View Sample: Super Wide Angle

Xiaomi 13 Night View Sample: Wide Angle

Xiaomi 13 Night View Sample: Chang Jiao

If you like the kind of friend who "turns night into day", Xiaomi 13 may not satisfy you. As you can see, its night scene algorithm is very effective for each camera, and it can be seen that it has very strong noise reduction (noise elimination) ability. However, in terms of exposure strategy, Xiaomi 13 obviously won't significantly increase the brightness of the picture, but has chosen to retain the light and dark contrast of the night scene and present a "night atmosphere" on the basis of keeping the picture "clean" enough.