Update - December 23: Xiaomi's revealed even more details since we wrote this story, giving us the lowdown on the 12 Pro's new display.
The Xiaomi 12 is officially just a week away. Well, in China at least.
As announced on the Xiaomi official Weibo page, the Xiaomi 12 series is set to launch at a Beijing event on Dec. 28. That means it'll be one of the first phones out with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, the latest flagship-class chipset that will likely appear in many more premium Android phones throughout 2022. Xiaomi had already announced its plan to use the Gen 1 silicon during Qualcomm's announcement event earlier this month.
The announcements didn't end with just the event's time and date. Xiaomi also gave us our first official glimpse at the 12 and 12 Pro handsets. The design resembles the Xiaomi 11T series, with a central punch-hole camera and a flat display.
In a separate post by Lu Weibing, Xiaomi's Chinese group president, it was also revealed that Xiaomi will launch the 12 series with its MIUI 13 operating system, based on Android 12. This also marks the 12 series as another kind of early adopter, since most Android smartphone makers have yet to adopt the latest version.
We've seen leaks showing the look of back of the phone and those discussing its possible 67W charging, which again, both seem to match those on the Xiaomi 11T. There has been a fair bit of talk about the phone's cameras too. We may see multiple 50MP cameras grace the back of one of the 12 series models, and those cameras may have lenses tuned by camera company Leica.
While we will see the first details announced next week, the rest of the world won't be able to buy the Xiaomi 12 for another few months, perhaps not until March or so. Even then, we still don't expect this phone to ever arrive in the U.S. as Xiaomi doesn't currently have a presence in the country, and the current political climate does not seem welcoming for it either.
