The Xiaomi 14 Ultra is the company’s newest flagship smartphone designed with photography in mind. It is an attempt to compete with Huawei Technologies and Apple’s iPhone in the highly competitive high-end market.

The newest model in the Xiaomi 14 series, the Xiaomi 14 Ultra, went on sale on Thursday and costs 6,499 yuan (US$903). This is in contrast to the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Pro, which have initial retail prices of 5,999 and 7,999 yuan, respectively.

Preorders for the phone are now open, and it will go on sale in earnest on February 27 during the Mobile World Congress (MWC), the premier industry gathering that takes place in Barcelona, Spain every year.

Following Huawei’s reemergence in the high-end smartphone market with the late-2023 release of its 5G-capable Mate 60 Pro device, the Xiaomi 14 Ultra enters the market amidst fierce rivalry.

The president of Xiaomi, Lu Weibing, referred to the Xiaomi 14 Ultra as “a new flagship in mobile imaging” since it has improved photographic tools, such as a main camera with a variable aperture and a huge one-inch sensor.

The new phone runs Xiaomi’s exclusive HyperOS operating system and is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 CPU.

This week also saw the release of the Remi Monitor G Pro 27, the Redmi Book Pro 2024 laptop, and the new tablet, the 6s Pro 12.4.

In late 2021, Xiaomi’s co-founder and CEO, Lei Jun, declared that the company’s goal was to surpass Apple and become the largest smartphone manufacturer globally in three years.

Still, Xiaomi has maintained its position as the third-largest smartphone seller in the world for the past 14 quarters, trailing only Apple and Samsung. China’s mobile shipments fell 5% from the previous year to 271 million devices in 2023, the lowest level in over a decade, according to IDC data, while a rebound is anticipated in the upcoming year.

This week, Lei announced on social media that Xiaomi’s smart factory in Beijing had finished construction and was able to produce more than 10 million phones annually.

On Friday, Xiaomi’s stock price in Hong Kong finished 1.34 percent lower at HK$13.22.