The Xiaomi 12S Ultra has a huge 1 ”Sony IMX989 sensor – which must be quite expensive, right? Well … apparently, no. Research on counterpoint it has a breakdown and bill of material (BoM) analysis for the phone and that sensor isn’t the most expensive kit in the phone. Far from it, actually.
The base unit with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage costs around $ 516 to manufacture, but retails for CNY 6,000 (that’s just under $ 900). Keep in mind that that $ 516 includes the cost of components, assembly, testing, intellectual property rights, and the contents of the retail package. Separate from this are the costs associated with advertising, warranty services, and so on.
Qualcomm, Samsung and Sony are the component suppliers who get the biggest slices of the BoM pie. Qualcomm is the source not only of the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chipset, but also of power management components, RF transceiver and front-end components, connectivity ICs and audio codecs.
Samsung supplies the 6.73-inch AMOLED LTPO E5 panel and 8GB LPDDR5 RAM (the amount used for this fault). Sony, of course, brings image sensors for the rear camera – the aforementioned 1 ”IMX989, but also a pair of IMX586 sensors for ultra wide and telephoto modules (the selfie camera sensor is an OmniVision OV32C).
Xiaomi’s performance in the CNY 6,000 segment has had ups and downs. The company’s market share in that segment had been declining since the beginning of this year, but has rebounded thanks to the Xiaomi Fans Festival. According to CounterpointXiaomi has shipped 2 million units of its previous camera flagship, the Mi 11 Ultra. Now the baton has passed to the 12S Ultra.
Check out our detailed review of the Xiaomi 12S Ultra to see how those image sensors, display and chipset perform. You can also watch our video review – note that we have a separate video that focuses on the camera only.
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