The Redmi 12C is one of the Xiaomi attempts in bringing in the absolute affordable range of smartphone towards the mass market with certain modern usability in mind and of course with the current software mixed with some of the internals which one could really make used of.
We will just run though on that the Redmi 12C could offer and why is it priced that way, we will go through the specification, use case, benchmarks, and of course the camera.
Who is this for ?
Its simple to think that this is meant for a few category as the main target. Student, gig economy drivers, a person that needs a second phone, someone that needs it for basic but smart communications are needed such as WhatsApp or a phone that separate a private use phone and a SME business phone, or a phone for ECommerce use, these are a few scenario that we can actually picture the ways of the Redmi 12C can be used or utilized in our daily lives.
The Design : Keeping it simple and rugged in its way
In order to keep the costs low, the whole body of the Redmi 12C is all in polycarbonate finish, of course due to its material this also means that there is no glass being used, or anything fragile over the body except for the screen. A few drops the phone down facing the back will definitely hold up, or maybe just a few dent marks here and there, but it was design in mind that you probably do not even need a casing to pair with. There is some ‘lined’ stripe design all over the parts of the phones body and this also makes it quite comfortably help and I can say it is very grippy on the hands, making it easy to operate and scroll around with the phone.
The Redmi 12C is well weighted at 192 Grams, which is a normal weight of a smartphone to say, but the overall form factor is just keeping things simple with a quite dated micro USB port, down firing speaker, headphone jack, and a rear mounted fingerprint scanner which is a great to have for security in mind but slightly placed above near the island of camera that you might need some time to get used to the reach as the location is not in the middle, but rather near left top side.
Display & Audio
It comes to no surprise when the phone is just equipped with 6.71 inch 720P LCD screen, and brightness can peak up to a maximum of 500nits only. Well, for the most part it is enough for daily use and judging from the budget price, I find it more than the worth you are getting, since it is suitable for normal streaming and viewing angle is just considerable at optimal when looking straight to it. Don’t expect high vibrance, but still considered as viewable and OK for most of the situation. If you are just using it for viewing documents, a couple of scrolling through webpages and social media, replying some of your messages, this is more than sufficient, even with 60 frames actually.
Over to the audio, the Redmi 12C only have a single firing speaker, but it is loud enough if you are in a confined area, like a small room, if you are in a open area, it is still audible and you should be able to listen your quick voice messages. Music and movies can still be enjoyed so long you know what you are expecting from a single speaker and if that is not enough, there is still a headphone jack or just use any bluetooth audio solutions.
Camera : Only for the quick and casual
Coming from the budget phone perspective, the Redmi 12C came with a 50MP wide lens with PDAF and a 0.08MP depth sensor. And it does not sound stellar for the camera setup but it was really meant for a quick snap and send, with that kind of specification the post processing results is quite fast loaded as a viewable image albeit with minor AI enhancement that makes the post images better and surely enough, it is decent to do as a quick social media upload. Zooming is still viewable with some details, too much will break the images render it completely losing colors and contrast. The same can be said over the 5MP front camera that does not have wide angle support, but 5MP is a bare minimum for most selfies.
On to the video recording, 1080P at 30FPS is the maximum that the phone can do and the quality is just good enough for fast upload and keeping your hands steady is the best during the recording course. As long the surrounding is bright, most of the colors outcome is good while during low light, noises and lower contrast may exhibit during recording.
Performance, Benchmark, Experience
The Redmi 12C came with a 12nm MediaTek Helio G85 octa core processor with 4GB of DDR4 RAM and 128GB of storage. Storage can be expanded to an additional 1TB while the same time it is impressive that the Redmi 12C also supports virtual RAM expansion up to an additional 3GB for your additional app swapping over the memory. For basic apps such as WhatsApp, Facebook, Email clients and web browsing, it just works and minor stutter may still happen occasionally, however it does not hinder things at all.
This phone is not meant for gaming or your high definition streaming, but due to the nature of the phone display is powered by a HD display, you still be able to view comfortably and play some MOBA or casual titles at an acceptable framerate, and yeah, you can forget about games like Genshin Impact which may bog down your frames.
Since this is running on MIUI 13 and Android 12, this is still a perfect combination of the UI and OS to keep the phone optimal yet it does offer several basic features such as RAM expansion, themes, digital wellness, reading mode, color selection and customised notification support.
I will still leave the benchmark results here, my summary is for a 12nm processor, it still holds a lower tier phone with good points under its own category
Verdict & Conclusion
Overall the Redmi 12C is a phone that can be summarized as an example of an absolute essentials smartphone and it is all about what you needed to get your daily chores done first, then multimedia and entertainment next for the rest of your day. With a sizable battery equipped with 5000MaH capacity, it will probably last you roughly 2 days full and leave you almost worry free for your business task needs, especially small medium ecommerce transactions, replies and so on, or giving it to your relatives, even using it as a secondary phone is all worth it.
Starting at the price from RM499, it is a no brainer that you can just probably get this one for your kids, family or your own, and indeed its a good starter phone for those who wanna get it to smartphone communication features, Xiaomi’s reputation of security updates still stands and you will be expecting to get patches and performance updates at least for the next 2 years, making it a phone that is safe when comes to sensitive transactions.
CLICK HERE to find out about the Redmi 12C, and it is now available widely via online stores and Xiaomi authorised dealers.