The Xiaomi 14 Civi is the company’s first Civi-series smartphone in India, and is priced starting Rs 42,999.
Enter Xiaomi 14 Civi.
“The Xiaomi 14 Civi picks up from where the Note leaves.
The Xiaomi 14 Civi’s camera is closer to the Xiaomi 14 than the Redmi Note,” Sharma adds.
The Xiaomi India CMO reluctantly revealed the company’s plans to refresh a lineup that “hasn’t been updated in a while”.
“I don’t think it’s fair what we have done,” says Xiaomi India’s chief marketing officer Anuj Sharma, as he twists open a candy and pops it in his mouth. “I think we have brought a gun to a knife fight with this one,” Sharma said with a wide smirk, referencing the new Xiaomi 14 Civi, which the company unveiled in the India market on Wednesday. The Xiaomi 14 Civi is the company’s first Civi-series smartphone in India, and is priced starting Rs 42,999. It is also the most affordable Xiaomi smartphone in India with the Leica-branded cameras.
We have been using the Xiaomi 14 Civi for about a week, and with its 3,000nit display, Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 chipset, triple camera setup with Leica tuning, and premium design, we find it interesting that the company managed to price the device under Rs 50,000. The base variant of the phone, with all the bank offers and exchange offer, can be purchased at Rs 39,999. But why is that pricing interesting? Here is the thing. There are a lot of smartphone options in the sub-Rs 40,000 segment. Then again, the more premium segment has a lot of options. But the Rs 40,000 to Rs 50,000 segment has been a void in the smartphone market. In 2024, only one phone was launched in this segment and that’s the OnePlus 12R. Enter Xiaomi 14 Civi.
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But it is not just that the smartphone makers were just avoiding the particular price segment. It seems, from what the Xiaomi India CMO tells us, making a smartphone in this category is no easy task.
“Offering all these premium features at this price point is hard to do,” says Anuj Sharma. “When you try to load a device with premium features, the prices and component costs suddenly shoot up. Even with the Xiaomi 14 Civi, if we were any other brand, we would have launched this smartphone for somewhere between Rs 55,000 to Rs 60,000. But we have a Xiaomi way to follow, so we can’t do that. We also don’t want to do that because we want to open up a whole new market segment at a price that becomes irresistible.”
At this point in this conversation, Sharma picks up the Xiaomi 14 Civi and says, “Getting that balance is also very important, which I think has been missing for a while”.
“The Xiaomi 14 Civi picks up from where the Note leaves. The Redmi Note 13 Pro+ is at around Rs 31,000. Now the Xiaomi 14 Civi takes everything to the next level from here, including design, performance, storage, RAM, and if we talk about cameras, that’s just a very big leap. The Xiaomi 14 Civi’s camera is closer to the Xiaomi 14 than the Redmi Note,” Sharma adds.
But why Civi? For the uninitiated, the Civi series was launched in China in 2021 and was very design-centric. As it comes to India, Xiaomi is trying to change that. Here, the focus is on design, but a lot of attention has also been paid to the phone’s display, camera, and battery performance. That’s what Sharma tells us, and as we test the 14 Civi, this is becoming more and more evident.
“This year the Civi team in China revamped their strategy and created a more balanced device with focus on performance, camera and battery, besides just design, and that’s when we thought this is a perfect device for the Indian market, and it fits well in the Xiaomi 14 series. And since it was created by the Civi team, we continue to call it that,” explains Sharma.
While we are waiting to test the Xiaomi 14 Civi (you can read our quick review of the phone here) a little more, we are also wondering what’s next for Xiaomi smartphones. We asked Anuj Sharma about this. He says, “We are just getting started on the camera part of the smartphones. Now, the advantage of the new hardware and camera is also going to be that when the AI features start rolling in, we are prepared for it. That could change the way you use your smartphone.”
Sharma also revealed that the company is working on new AI features that will enable Xiaomi’s Human x Car x Home vision, but these are expected to be rolled out “sometime in the future”. He says the AI features will also reveal the true purpose of HyperOS.
Our final question to Sharma was another nudge to tell us about Xiaomi's future plans. The Xiaomi India CMO reluctantly revealed the company’s plans to refresh a lineup that “hasn’t been updated in a while”. Sharma didn’t reveal any more details and quickly became tight-lipped on the subject. But we are thinking, an air purifier?
