Xiaomi 14 Civi hands-on review

Software

The Xiaomi 14 Civi runs on HyperOS, which is the company's updated layer on top of Android 14. For this device, Xiaomi has promised three years of major Android updates and four years of security updates.

HyperOS is Xiaomi's replacement for its previous MIUI. The company claims major revision under the hood but on the exterior HyperOS comes across more like a more refined version of MIUI, with a few extra customizability features. We have already covered the OS in our review, so make sure to check that for more details.

More broadly speaking, HyperOS feels extremely familiar to anyone who has used MIUI before. On one hand, this would be appreciated by anyone who isn't adventurous and just wants something they are already familiar with. On the other hand, this major OS update feels like someone downloaded a new theme on MIUI, which had already started to look long in the tooth. More importantly, this version does nothing to break away from the heavy and obvious iOS influence and, if anything, leans into it harder.

Speaking more specifically about the Xiaomi 14 Civi, our review unit was relatively light on bloatware for an Indian unit. We counted six third-party apps, all of which could be removed, and the rest were either Xiaomi or Google apps. You can also uninstall many of the Google and some of the Xiaomi apps, although others can only be hidden or disabled.

Unfortunately, Xiaomi still insists on installing bloatware through its GetApps app store, which keeps asking you to install an entire raft of third-party bloatware apps almost every time you open it. Aside from being recommended apps on the regular, Xiaomi's first-party apps continue to have ads in them in egregious places and you have to manually go into the settings of each one to disable them along with any other recommendations.

Look at this example in particular; did Xiaomi really need to display ads in place of the album art when playing some locally saved music? No. But did it choose to do so anyway? Absolutely.

The presence of all of these factors continues to be a black mark against Xiaomi's overall software experience. It's not too much to ask to not have your premium smartphone not inundate you with third-party apps and ads at every opportunity and then make it your problem to figure out how to get rid of them. This has been a critique of the company's software for almost as long as it has been around and one it has shown zero interest in addressing.

Performance

The Xiaomi 14 Civi runs on the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 chipset. Our review unit had 12GB of LPDDR5X memory and 512GB of UFS 4.0 storage, all of which are impressive stats for a phone in this price class.

The phone had very good performance in everyday usage with smooth scrolling and responsive UI. There were minor stutters at times, which prevented a perfect grade, but these seem like software optimization issues, which could be addressed in a patch.

The phone also performs well in gaming. While it cannot maintain a stable 60FPS in modern titles such as Wuthering Waves and Zenless Zone Zero, you can lock to 30FPS for a stable frame rate or drop down settings for a consistent 60. The phone does get a bit warm to the touch but maintains a comfortable skin temperature unless you are in a hot environment.

In our thermal throttling test, the Xiaomi 14 Civi performed well. In the CPU torture test, the phone maintained 79% of its peak performance after an hour-long run. Similarly, in the 3DMark Wild Life GPU stress test, the phone maintained almost 82% of its peak performance after 20 loops.

This suggests that despite the phone's relatively compact dimensions compared to some of its competitors, the device is perfectly capable of dispersing the heat from the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 chip. In fact, it was vastly better than the Realme GT 6, which features the same chipset in a larger body and still struggled in the GPU stress test.

CPU Throttling test • 3D Mark Wild Life stress test