They debuted the Redmi 14R in China today, and it may look like the clone of the Redmi 14C from a while back, but they don’t play in the same wheelhouse. The original had a very lousy Helio G81 chip but Redmi 14R 5G is a big step up with a Snapdragon 4 Gen 2 instead. The performance jump is very glaring.
The performance of the Redmi 14R might even border the mid-range class, even if they didn’t intend it. This inadvertently happens sometimes when companies try to diversify 4G phones into 5G and they don’t find a cheaper alternate SoC.
What we have otherwise is the same 6.88" 720p LCD on top. They didn’t even change the design or colors. There's a peak refresh rate of 120Hz and its UI will feel faster and smoother because of it. Not only does it have a 600 nits HBM, but there's also a TUV certificate here for Low Blue Light and anti-flicker.
From Redmi 14C to 14R 5G, there isn’t much price change even if the phone is faster, but don’t be surprised when we tell you there are areas where they saved manufacturing costs. They cut back the primary cam from 50 MP to 13 MP and the selfie cam is down from 13 MP to 5 MP on the Xiaomi's 5G new mobile.
18W charging will be fast enough so you don’t have to plug in Redmi 14R for more than 2 hours, but don’t expect a charger inside the box. There’s a 5160 mAh battery here, and they did put a fingerprint ID on the side for people’s privacy. USD 155 (~PKR 43,000) is the official starter cost of the Redmi 14C, but only for 4/128GB memory.