4 phones that will help Xiaomi overtake Samsung as the No. 1 phone maker

Xiaomi, one of China’s largest tech companies, has quietly been innovating like there’s no tomorrow and recently surpassed Apple to become the No. 2 phone maker in the world, just behind Samsung.

After Huawei’s tumultuous past few years, Xiaomi has positioned itself to become China’s tech poster child. While you can’t walk into a carrier and buy a Xiaomi phone in the U.S., many of them are sold unlocked on Amazon, Walmart, and AliExpress. The tricky part is that not all phones are compatible with U.S. wireless carriers, and the ones that are might not support the wireless bands used by T-Mobile or AT&T, which limits 5G phones to an LTE connection. Still, Xiaomi phones are hard to ignore when you get flagship specs for well under $500. The latest Redmi 10 phones are proof.

Redmi 10

Budget phones — Xiaomi’s branding for its different lines of phones can be confusing, but all you need to know is that the Redmi branding applies to its budget phones. The latest is the Xiaomi Redmi 10, which came out last week and runs Android 10.

The Redmi 10 is the follow-up to last year’s Redmi 9 and comes with an octa-core MediaTek Helio G88, 4GB or 6GB of RAM, and 64GB or 128GB of storage. The recently-released SoC is not as powerful as MediaTek’s higher-end Dimensity chipsets, but it provides enough oomph to power the 90Hz LCD display, making it the first Redmi to offer a high refresh rate.

The 1GHz Mali-G52 MC2 GPU is a year-old solid mid-range option that should run most games, though don’t be surprised if 3D games are sluggish. It’s also a decent chip for emulation. Other specs, such as the quad-camera setup with a main 50-megapixel wide lens, large 5,000mAh battery, and 18W charging, round out the Redmi 10. And the best part? It’s available for about $190 on AliExpress.

Redmi 10 Prime

But even with the Redmi 10 out the gate, Xiaomi doesn’t take a break from launching phones. Mere days after launching the Redmi 10, the company is already teasing the Redmi 10 Prime, which is expected to launch next week. According to Notebook Check, the India-only Redmi 10 Prime shouldn’t differ too much from the standard Redmi 10, similar to how the Redmi 9 Prime was a rebrand of the vanilla Redmi 9. Regardless, it seems that every day Xiaomi has another phone ready to hit store shelves, with a leak for its latest flagship making the rounds recently.

Xiaomi 11T and 11T Pro

The flagship is leaking — If you’re looking for more than a sub-$200 phone with a mid-range SoC and a 90Hz refresh rate, Xiaomi’s flagship phone should be available soon. As a sign that it’s ready to expand globally even more, the company is dropping the Mi branding in favor of just Xiaomi.

The Xiaomi 11T and 11T Pro phones have not been officially unveiled — not for a couple of more weeks at least — so we don’t know everything about the phone yet. However, a few leaks have shared insights on pricing for both the standard and pro models. The standard model will reportedly cost around $900 for the high-end 8GB RAM + 256GB storage configuration. The leak suggests it’ll be powered by MediaTek’s Dimensity 1200 chip.

Meanwhile, the Xiaomi 11T Pro will reportedly cost up to $1,079. With a much higher price tag than Xiaomi’s budget offerings, leaks suggest the phone will have OLED displays with 120Hz refresh rate and possibly Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 888 chip.

More specs are likely to leak as the reveal gets closer. It shouldn’t be long. The Xiaomi 11T and 11T Pro are expected to be officially announced at Xiaomi’s product launch event on September 15.