We’ve seen a few brands launch 108MP smartphones in the past 12 months or so, such as the Xiaomi Mi Note 10 and Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra. But all these phones had launch prices of over $500, extending to well over $1,000 for the latter phone.
Now, frequent leaker Digital Chat Station has noted on Weibo that the first 108MP Redmi phone is in the works and coming soon. The leaker adds that it’s part of three new upcoming Redmi Note 9 series devices expected in mid-November rather than a Redmi Note 10 series phone. Check out a machine-translated version of the post below.
More specifically, the tipster claims that the 108MP Redmi phone will pack a Samsung Isocell HM2 sensor. This is a new 108MP sensor from the company and features 0.7 micron pixels and a 1/1.52 inch sensor size — slightly smaller in both categories than the firm’s previous 108MP sensors. The HM2 still sports nona-binning technology, combining data from nine adjacent pixels into one for brighter, cleaner results at 12MP.
This isn’t the first time Digital Chat Station elaborated on a 108MP Xiaomi device though, as they previously noted last month that a device dubbed “J17” could have both a 108MP camera and a telephoto macro camera. The “J17” lines up with a Xiaomi device with model number M2007J17C/M2007J17G that was previously spotted on certification websites and could offer 33W charging.
It would nevertheless be interesting if Xiaomi chose to skip the Redmi Note 10 name for these upcoming phones, as the brand usually launches one Redmi Note family in the first half of the year and delivers a follow-up in the second half of the year. We previously saw this in 2019 (Note 7 and Note 8) and 2018 (Note 5 and Note 6 Pro).
The Redmi Note 9 Pro Max is currently the top-end device in the Redmi Note 9 family, starting at ~$222 in the likes of India. So if the new phone has similar pricing, we could be looking at the cheapest 108MP phone by quite some margin. Hopefully the phone has enough power to deliver brisk camera processing at 108MP.
