Xiaomi Civi unveiled with Snapdragon 778G, 6.55" 120Hz OLED display and 55W fast charging

2021-09-29

Xiaomi is changing up its naming scheme this year – first it dropped the “Mi”, now it is rebranding the CC line. Meet the Xiaomi Civi, the latest mid-ranger from the company. There’s only one for now, the company hasn’t said anything about a Pro or an “e” model yet.

And this one isn’t quite as camera-obsessed as the Mi CC9 Pro – there’s no 100+ megapixel sensor or a 5x tele camera on this one. The Civi does place a lot of emphasis on design, however.

It is powered by the Snapdragon 778G, one of the more exciting chipsets to launch recently. Fabbed on TSMC’s 6 nm process, it is an alternative to the 780G (Samsung 5 nm) and features four big Cortex-A78 based cores as well as a high-end Adreno 642L GPU and a X53 5G modem (3.3 Gbps, also Wi-Fi 6E is supported for 3.6 Gbps). Nine layers of graphene keep the chip running cool. Also, the Adreno supports Variable Rate Shading, which can boost performance with minimal image quality loss.

The Xiaomi Civi is powered by the Snapdragon 778G

That 642L GPU is fast enough to run games at 90 fps (e.g. Honor of Kings), however, the display supports 120 Hz refresh rate too (with 240 Hz touch sampling rate). It’s quite a display, a 6.55” curved OLED panel with the thinnest “chin” on a Xiaomi phone. The distance between the bottom row of pixels and the metal frame is just 2.55 mm (1/10 inch).

This 1080p+ OLED display supports both HDR10+ and Dolby Vision and comes with excellent calibration – deltaE is around 0.36. The display can hit a peak brightness of 950 nits.

The Civi has a 6.55" 1080p+ OLED display with 120 Hz refresh rate, HDR10+ and Dolby Vision

Moving on to the camera, the main module is based around a 64 MP sensor (1/2.0”). It has 0.7 µm pixels natively, which can grow to 1.4 µm with binning, and it sits behind an f/1.8 lens. There’s no optical stabilization.

The next camera has a 120º ultra wide-angle lens (f/2.2) and an 8 MP sensor. Last on the back is a 2 MP macro camera. For selfies, the Xiaomi Civi comes equipped with a 32 MP shooter with an autofocus lens.

64+8+2 MP camera on the back • 32 MP camera on the front

The phone runs on a 4,500 mAh battery, which Xiaomi says will be enough of just over 24 hours of use. Afterwards, it can be fully charged in 45 minutes thanks to the 55W wired charging support.

4,500 mAh battery • 55W fast charging (0-100% in 45 minutes) • 6.98 mm, 166g body

The phone packs stereo speakers with Dolby Atmos support and a Hi-Res audio certification. There’s only the USB-C port for wired headphones, however.

Stereo speakers with Dolby Atmos support

Xiaomi is quite proud of the design on the Civi and how thin and light it is – it it measures a hair under 7 mm thick and tips the scales at 166g. It should be comfortable to hold too, with a 71.5 mm width and a soft-touch matte finish on the back glass.

Xiaomi Civi colorways

The pre-sales of the Xiaomi Civi in China start today and it will be available through a variety of online and offline channels from September 30 (Thursday). The base 8/128 GB configuration costs CNY 2,600 ($400/€345/₹30,000). You can double the storage to 256 GB for CNY 300 more, the fully-loaded 12/256 GB model costs CNY 3,200.