Xiaomi has been teasing the idea for a few months now, and it’s finally here: the CC9 Pro, the company’s first smartphone with a 108-megapixel camera.
Before you get too excited, this isn’t the mind-blowing wraparound-screen Mi Mix Alpha that the company showed off earlier this year, which Xiaomi promises will also feature the 108-megapixel sensor. (That phone is presumably still set for a limited release in December, though.)
The CC9 Pro is a more conventionally designed phone by comparison, although it still managed to pack in five rear cameras: the aforementioned flagship 108-megapixel wide angle lens, a 5-megapixel telephoto with 5x optical zoom (and 10x hybrid zoom), a 12-megapixel telephoto camera designed for portrait mode shots, a 20-megapixel ultra-wide with a 117-degree field of view, and a 2-megapixel macro lens for close-up shots. There’s also a sixth 32-megapixel camera on the front of the phone, which is housed in a teardrop-style notch.
The 108-megapixel sensor in question is the same Samsung ISOCELL Bright HMX that the company designed together with Xiaomi, which was announced earlier this year. The 1/1.33-inch sensor is unusually large (for a phone, at least). By default, it’ll shoot 27-megapixel shots that combine four pixels together, as is fairly standard on ultra-high megapixel-count smartphones. There is an option to shoot in the full 108-megapixel resolution should you want to.
Wild camera specs aside, the rest of the CC9 Pro sounds like a fairly competent phone, with a 5,260mAh battery, a curved 6.47-inch AMOLED display with an in-display fingerprint sensor, and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 730G processor. It even has a 3.5mm headphone jack. On the software side, it’ll run Xiaomi’s MIUI 11 skin on top of last year’s Android 9 Pie.
The Xiaomi Mi CC9 Pro will cost 2,799 yuan (around $400) for the base model, with 6GB RAM with 128GB storage, or 3,099 yuan (roughly $443) for an upgraded model with 126GB of storage and 8GB RAM. In typical Xiaomi style, there’s also a CC9 Pro Premium Edition variant that will cost 3,499 yuan (around $500) with 8GB RAM and 256GB storage and an upgraded “8P lens system” for the main 108-megapixel camera.
The CC9 Pro goes on sale in China tomorrow, but there’s no word yet about a larger international release.
