Xiaomi 13S May Not Launch This Year, Confirms Company CEO Lei Jun

Xiaomi 13S — the rumoured flagship successor to the Xiaomi 12S — will not be launched by the company anytime soon, confirmed the company’s founder and CEO Lei Jun. The Xiaomi 12S was launched last year in July as a half-year upgrade to the Xiaomi 12 series. A few months back, the company launched the Xiaomi 13 series in China, and now the company is all set for its global debut at MWC 2023 in Barcelona. The Chinese variant of the phone is powered by a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC and features Leica-branded rear cameras. It comprises two models — the vanilla Xiaomi 13 and a high-end Xiaomi 13 Pro.

Xiaomi’s founder and CEO Lei Jun took to Chinese micro-blogging site Weibo to confirm that the company is not planning to make any half-generation upgrade to the Xiaomi 13 series for now. This means that there will be a long wait to know if the company will launch its Xiaomi 13S. At present, CEO Jun has scrapped all rumours regarding the development of the Xiaomi 13S.

The announcement came ahead of the Xiaomi 13 series’ global launch at MWC 2023 in Barcelona, slated to begin from February 27. The series has already been launched in the Chinese market in December 2022.

The Xiaomi 13 series in China has two models — the base Xiaomi 13) variant and a high-end Xiaomi 13 Pro variant. While the features and specifications of the Xiaomi 13 series in China are already known, the global variant has also appeared on a European retail site, revealing the prices, specifications, and colour options of both smartphones.

Though the listing was removed later from the website, it suggested that the Xiaomi 13 will be priced at EUR 999.90 (roughly Rs. 88,300) for 8GB RAM and 256GB storage variant, while the Xiaomi 13 Pro will cost EUR 1,299.90 (roughly Rs. 1,14,700). Both the smartphones are said to be available in black and white colour variants.

The Xiaomi 13 and Xiaomi 13 Pro are speculated to carry similar features for their global debut as their Chinese variants. The vanilla variant in the series runs MIUI 14 and has a 6.73-inch 2K OLED display with a refresh rate of 120Hz. It is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC coupled with up to 12GB of LPDDR5X RAM.