In March this year, Xiaomi launched the Mi 11 Lite and Mi 11 Lite 5G smartphones globally, where the former had Snapdragon 732G whereas the latter got the Snapdragon 780G. Now, Xiaomi has launched another phone similar to the Mi 11 Lite 5G named the Xiaomi 11 Lite 5G NE. The only major difference between this new phone and the older one is that the new one gets the Qualcomm Snapdragon 778G 5G SOC. So, it seems like Xiaomi had to launch this phone due to the global chip shortage.
Design-wise, you’re looking at the same phone here as the Mi 11 Lite 5G. There is an ultra-slim form factor as the phone is just 6.81mm thick. Moreover, the device is also quite lightweight at 158g. There is a triple camera module on the back, a single hole punch on the front, no 3.5mm headphone jack, and a side-facing fingerprint scanner. The phone also gets a stereo speaker setup. And as far as the build quality is concerned, you get a frosted glass back and Corning Gorilla Glass 5 on the front.
The display on the front is a 6.55-inch AMOLED with a Full-HD+ resolution, a 90Hz refresh rate, HDR10+ support, 10-bit color depth, Gorilla Glass 5 protection, and a 240Hz touch-sampling-rate. Under the hood, there is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 778G 5G SOC which sits just below the Snapdragon 780G in terms of performance. This chip is paired with either 6GB or 8GB of LPDDR4X RAM and 128GB or 256GB of UFS 2.1 storage that is expandable as well.
The triple camera module on the back includes a primary 64 Megapixel sensor with an f/1.79 aperture lens, a secondary 8 Megapixel ultrawide camera, and a third 5-megapixel tele-macro sensor. 4K video recording is supported, but it is limited to 30fps. On the front, you get a 20-megapixel selfie camera.
Finally, Xiaomi 11 Lite 5G NE has a 4,250mAh battery and supports 33W fast charging. The 33W adapter comes in the box. Android 11 based MIUI 12.5 runs out of the box.
Coming to the pricing, the phone comes in four colors named Truffle Black, Bubblegum Blue, Peach Pink, and Snowflake White.
In terms of the price, the base variant with 6GB RAM and 128GB storage is priced at €369. The 8GB + 128GB variant is priced at €399. Comparing the price to that of Mi 11 Lite 5G, the starting price remains the same for both, so this does confirm the fact that this new phone was launched with a different chip due to the chip shortage.