Xiaomi subsidiary Redmi has just announced its new Note 12 lineup headed by the Note 12 Discovery Edition, a midrange smartphone that supports its 210W HyperCharge fast charging standard. That’s enough wattage to fully charge the phone’s 4,300mAh battery in just nine minutes. Put the handset on to charge and hop into the shower, and the phone’s battery will likely be completely replenished before you’ve had a chance to towel yourself off.
In recent years, there’s been fierce competition to offer faster and faster charging speeds for mobile phones. Xiaomi offered 120W fast charging on its 11T Pro handset last year, before competitor Oppo announced its own 150W SuperVOOC standard. Arguably we’ve quickly reached a point of diminishing returns with these fast charging standards (the OnePlus 10T’s 4,800mAh battery could already go from one to 100 percent in 19 minutes at 150W), but I’ll never say no to progress so long as it doesn’t impact overall battery life.
210W fast charging isn’t the only impressive spec that the Note 12 Discovery Edition includes. Alongside the step-down Note 12 Pro Plus model, the phone also has 200-megapixel resolution rear camera sensor. You can either choose to take full-resolution 200-megapixel photographs, or else opt for 12.5 or 50-megapixel shots for quicker photography and better low-light performance. It’s joined by an 8-megapixel ultrawide, a 2-megapixel macro, and a 16-megapixel selfie camera.
Redmi is announcing four phones as part of the Note 12 lineup. At the top is the Note 12 Discovery Edition. Stepping down to the Note 12 Pro Plus loses the 210W fast charging, but gets you a bigger 5,000mAh battery. Step down again to the Note 12 Pro drops the charging speed once more to 67W, and swaps the 200mp main camera for a 50mp sensor. Finally, the entry-level model in the lineup, the Note 12, offers just 33W of fast charging, and is powered by a Snapdragon 4 Gen 1 rather than the MediaTek Dimensity 1080 found in the other three models.
But regardless of which model you’re looking at, all of them have a 6.67-inch 120Hz 1080p OLED display, a 3.5mm headphone jack, a side fingerprint sensor, and run Xiaomi’s MIUI 13 software atop of Android 12.
For now, there’s no word on a global release, and history suggests the Redmi Note 12 is unlikely to ever reach the US in an official capacity. But the lineup will go on sale in China on October 30th, starting at just RMB 1,199 (around $165) for the Redmi Note 12 5G with 4GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. Meanwhile the 210W fast charging, 200-megapixel photo taking Note 12 Discovery Edition will cost RMB 2,399 (around $330).
