The day has come. The upward trend in the prices of many smartphones inevitably pointed to this goal. Which? One where the Xiaomi are more expensive than the iPhone.
For years we’ve seen comparisons started by using the price of an Apple product as a throwing weapon to structure the weight of criticism on its PVP. He “Check out what you can do with this Xiaomi that’s about half the price of your iPhone.”. This criticism no longer has any reason to exist. The Chinese giant is far from the image of a company that puts popular prices ahead of the rest. The honest prices are now Prices to dry. Of course, there’s a lot more to do than just make a cold-blooded comparison.
When an iPhone 14 Pro is cheaper than a Xiaomi
Let’s start with some cold dates: the Xiaomi 13 part of the 999 euros, in its base version with Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor, 8 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage. The Xiaomi 13 Pro starts at 1,399 euros, in its edition with only 12+256 GB. Same as the booed iPhone 13 Pro Max with the same amount of storage costs or what it would cost me to buy one iPhone 14 Pro, a AirTag and a leash for him Apple Watch Series 8.
However, the professional test reports about the Xiaomi 13 Pro once again show the same reality: the bloatware it stifles software and limits autonomy. And when it comes to video recording, they still stagnate. So much so that it worries, there The brutal power of the latest Qualcomm SoC is wasted. However, Apple continues to refine its iOS 16 and the current version 16.4 has achieved that sweet moment that always comes in iOS when the first bugs and battery drains give way to social messages and handy improvements in shortcuts and notifications.
Lights, cameras… and shadows
Part of this price is justified by the gigantic Leica module, which guarantees three 50MP sensors and dimensions of 162.8 x 74.6 x 8.38mm. By the way, the same as the Xiaomi 12S Ultra. But The result is far from being an SLR camera attached to a mobile phone: Killing flies with cannon shots, as our colleague Ricardo Aguilar used to say, rather. The cell phone actually weighs well over 200 grams and loses usability with one hand if it relies on a diagonal of this size. However, the results are neither surprising nor revolutionary compared to the latest OnePlus or the Google Pixel 7.
And Apple knows where the key lies: in the processing. formats Apple ProRAW – the system optimized with 10-bit resolution to get more information about the dynamic range that allows shooting at 10 or 48 MP – and Apple ProRes —the advanced post-production format—, in addition to Cinema modeYou take good note of it. Apple relies on the DGN vitaminized with its Photonic Engine, the digital negative: Virtue lies in naturalness. If you want better photos, you can have them, only at the expense of avoiding those automatic pedestrian modes.
Another common debate is that of memory: does the new iPhone 15 need more memory? Some voices claim yes; The rumors also point in this direction. However, Apple has shown that its system performs differently, that its A16 Bionic chips share the same philosophy regarding its photolithography with the M1 and M2 SoCs: extreme miniaturization, energy efficiency, gradual performance. 8GB on an M1 doesn’t have the same performance as 8GB on an Intel Core for one simple reason: latency. And to this we must add how each usage habit is analyzed by this neural engine whose intelligence grows exponentially from generation to generation.
Treats and other “gifts”
The other big question, the elephant in the room, is what about that charger, that transparent case and all those extra additions that Xiaomi offers at no extra cost, like Youtube Music Tests or that 6 months of Google One free with up to 2 TB of storage space? Gone are the days when every iPhone came with headphones and a power adapter.
First of all, to say that my drawer full of tangled chargers doesn’t exactly speak well for this policy, at least from an ecological point of view. Starting with the iPhone 12, Apple launched a new policy based on this data: by eliminating the charger, it avoids releasing 2 million tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. That’s the equivalent of removing about 450,000 cars from traffic.
Regarding the second, it is important to emphasize that these are policies and agreements with third parties. And if Xiaomi is the third Android brand most distributed and sold in the world, Google is handy to bring subscribers to its services with this type of gifts with an expiry date. Apple has similar alternatives: 3 months Fitness+, 3 months Apple Music or Apple TV+ and iCloud offers. A robust ecosystem that also rewards and encourages cross-platform use.
However, I don’t think it’s fair to weigh the value of a technological product according to the services that come with it. And if we look at the essentials, it’s hard for me to see something in Xiaomi that my iPhone 14 Pro doesn’t have, there’s no longer any valid justification: the benefits of Android are overshadowed, and trinkets like customization won’t matter if iOS 16 really moves in that direction. Xiaomi always wanted to be a little Apple. In terms of price, it has already chased him. There is still a lot to write about the rest.
In Applesphere | I’ve been unfaithful to my iPhone 13 Pro Max with a Xiaomi 12 for a month: this is my experience
Source : www.applesfera.com