Xiaomi 14 CIVI: Impressive Initial Impressions That Wow!

Xiaomi, a few months back launched the Xiaomi 14 CIVI aka Xiaomi CIVI 4 Pro in India. it was launched as a part of the Xiaomi 14 series in India. Xiaomi 14 series is the latest flagship series of smartphones from Xiaomi, exhibiting an exceptional camera system and a flagship user experience.

For those who don’t keep track of mainland China launches, Xiaomi is a Chinese electronics company based in Beijing, China. Xiaomi is popular for the budget Redmi series of phones which it launched in India. They did not launch their flagships here in India, but later they started to do so. Xiaomi 14 series is the flagship offering from the company consisting of Xiaoim 14, 14 Pro, and 14 Ultra.

These phones come with Leica-branded cameras. Leica is a renowned German camera manufacturer known for its excellent cameras, colour science, and craftsmanship. The Xiaomi X Leica partnership started with the Xiaomi 12 series and has now been made into the Xiaomi 14 series. In China, Xiaomi also has a sub-flagship series of phones, the Xiaomi CIVI, recently they launched the Xiaomi CIVI 4 and Xiaomi CIVI 4 Pro, with Leica branded cameras, thus giving access to the excellence of their flagships at a lower price. Xiaomi CIVI 4 Pro launched in India and globally as Xiaomi 14 CIVI, under the Xiaomi 14 Series.

The phone is a premium flagship-grade smartphone with a set of excellent cameras. It is powered by the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3, a 2024 flagship chipset. Here are the rest of the specifications:

Unboxing:

The Xiaomi 14 CIVI in India comes in a box. The box contains the following:

• Xiaomi 14 CIVI (Phone) (it has a screen protector pre-applied)
• USB Type A to C Cable
• A 67W Xiaomi Fast Charger
• A translucent hard case

So it is a complete unboxing experience.

Design:

The Xiaomi 14 CIVI has an impressive design. For starters, It is a slim, fairly compact and lightweight phone which is comfortable to hold and can be used with 1 hand. It feels premium in hand. It has a glass back and a metal frame.

The shadow black model shown here has a matte glass back, with a texture and it is good at avoiding smudges and fingerprints.

The back of the phone houses the triple camera setup and it is a circular camera module, like a bump. it does not cause any issues though.

The metal frame feels quite premium and the phone feels comfortable and sleek in hand, it is quite thin.

The front of the phone is the 6.55-inch, micro-quad curved display which is curved from all 4 sides, even the back has slight curves and looks gorgeous.

The bezels are very minimal and the colours are good. It is curved so looks sleek from the sides. The phone feels sturdy and durable.

Display:

The Xiaomi 14 CIVI features a 6.55-inch AMOLED display with a resolution of 2750 x 1236 pixels and a refresh rate of 120Hz. While the display is described as “quad-curved,” this curvature applies only to the Corning Gorilla Glass Victus 2 on top, not the underlying panel itself, which remains flat. The curved glass creates the illusion of a seamlessly curved display that blends into the frame on all four edges. However, a discernible edge still exists where the metal frame protrudes slightly from the sides.

Regarding brightness, Xiaomi claims a peak brightness of 3000 nits. Remember that such high brightness levels are typically achieved briefly or over a small portion of the display. Xiaomi does not specify the sustained maximum brightness or the manual adjustment range via the brightness slider. Nevertheless, the phone’s display remains highly legible even in bright outdoor conditions.

The 120HZ refresh rate works well, there is support for high refresh rates in games like BGMI and PUBG. The display looks good. The colours are pretty accurate.

Finally, the display has a built-in fingerprint sensor. The sensor is placed quite low on the display and not in the most convenient location. That said, it works well and is fairly quick.

Battery and Charging:

The Xiaomi 14 Civi has a 4700mAh battery, which is on the small side of a phone in this class. The phone supports 67W fast charging and a charger of similar rating is provided in the box.

In terms of charging speed, the Xiaomi 14 Civi posted some impressive numbers, with a full charge coming in at just 44 minutes. The phone does get fairly warm, however, and picking up the phone mid-charge isn’t especially pleasant. it got significantly hotter in the initial charging cycles.

The battery easily lasts for a day, giving 7-8 hours of SOT.

Speakers:

The Xiaomi 14 CIVI has stereo speakers which sound good. With that being said, it has good mid and high-frequency performance, which is fine for watching YouTube videos and such. However, there is a distinct lack of low frequency when listening to music in almost the entire volume range except right at the top, where you do get some audible low-end. Unfortunately, by then the overall timbre of the sound has changed drastically and doesn’t sound very good. The speakers do get reasonably loud, however.

The phone lacks a headphone jack but both active as well as passive USB audio dongles work fine.

Software:

The Xiaomi 14 CIVI runs Xiaomi’s Hyper OS 1.0 based on Android 14. it will get 3 years of Android and 4 years of security updates. The Software is quite stable and smooth.

Now, at least in my case, the only bloatware was Opera browser, the rest were Xiaomi and Google apps, and Get Apps does not annoy once disabled so that’s good.

Rest, the software is smooth, with smooth animations, nice blur in UI, lots of features and is quite bug-free.

The animations are pretty smooth, the advanced textures look great, the blur is really good, and it has some AI features too.

The reason I’m not diving into the software is because there is a lot to the flagship Hyper OS that I’ll cover it in another article.

Performance:

The Xiaomi 14 CIVI runs on the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 chipset. Our review unit had 12GB of LPDDR5X memory and 512GB of UFS 4.0 storage, all of which are impressive stats for a phone in this price class.

The phone had very good performance in everyday usage with smooth scrolling and responsive UI. There were minor stutters at times, which prevented a perfect grade, but these seem like software optimization issues, which could be addressed in a patch.

The phone also performs well in gaming. While it cannot maintain a stable 60FPS in modern titles such as Wuthering Waves and Zenless Zone Zero, you can lock to 30FPS for a stable frame rate or drop-down settings for a consistent 60. The phone does get a bit warm to the touch but maintains a comfortable skin temperature unless you are in a hot environment.

ANTUTU Score and Geekbench score and storage test:

Antutu score can go about 1.5M+.

Cameras

The Xiaomi 14 Civi has a Leica-branded triple camera system on the back consisting of a main 50MP f1.63 camera, which uses an OmniVision Light Hunter 800 (OVX8000) sensor, a 50MP f1.98 2x optical camera, which uses Samsung ISOCELL JN1 sensor, and a 12MP f2.2 ultra-wide camera, which uses an OmniVision OV13B sensor. On the front are two identical 32MP sensors, one of which has a wide lens with f2.0 aperture and auto-focus. The other has an ultra-wide lens with f2.4 aperture and fixed focus.

The camera app is on par with the flagship.

Here are the few camera samples I managed to click.

Leica Vibrant, Leica Authentic, Leica Portrait, Leica Master Portrait, I don’t even remember in mode I shot.

Now, I won’t say anything, you look at the photos and judge by yourself.

Conclusion

The Xiaomi 14 CIVI impressed me on multiple fronts. The device feels exceptionally well-made in hand with a supremely comfortable grip. The display shines with its high brightness both indoors and outdoors. And while the colour tuning of the camera may be a bit of an acquired taste, it’s undeniable that it encourages a more artistic and less mundane style of photography with ample rewards should you choose to do so. Other aspects such as performance and charging speeds are also noteworthy in their way.

When it comes to downsides, the software remains a sore point—specifically, the unabashed advertising and the constant insistence on installing even more bloatware than what comes pre-installed. Additionally, the battery life on this device is unremarkable, and some users may be disappointed by the lack of explicit ingress protection ratings.

However, considering the starting price of INR 42,999 (or INR 47,999 for the model we tested), we can overlook some of these shortcomings given how compelling the rest of the package is. It even raises questions about the existence of Xiaomi’s more expensive Xiaomi 14 models, considering the price difference and the lack of justifiable value addition.

All in all, I believe that the Xiaomi 14 CIVI might just be the best all-round package the company currently offers, and it stands out as one of the top choices in its price range.

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