Xiaomi Mi 11 SE or Redmi K40 Mini could be on the cards thanks to iPhone 12 Mini admiration

There’s no doubt Apple will have attracted an army of admirers with the iPhone 12 Mini, and while its “mini” credentials are actually open to debate (the new Apple smartphone has a 5.4-inch display compared with the non-mini iPhone 8 Plus with a 5.5-inch screen), it shows that the Cupertino company is aware of the call for smaller phones. Unsurprisingly, Xiaomi/Redmi could be following suit, as the firm often does when Apple has a seemingly clever idea.

A post on Weibo from Xiaomi executive and Redmi general manager Lu Weibing gives a hint that Redmi at least is looking further into exploring the possibility of producing a mini smartphone. Machine translation offers up these words from the Redmi boss: “Redmi wants to make a mini, but battery capacity/battery life can be very much sacrificed.” Weibing often drops hints about future Xiaomi/Redmi projects in his social media feed, so a mini Redmi flagship could be in the works.

A Redmi K40 and K40 Pro are already expected, so what if a Redmi K40 Mini is added to the lineup? It seems difficult to see such a device as anything less than a likely smash hit in terms of sales. Xiaomi could also return to offering SE variants of its flagship devices like it did with the Mi 8 SE and Mi 9 SE. The more compact selection skipped the Mi 10 range, but a Xiaomi Mi 11 SE with many of the best features of the likely Snapdragon 875-powered Mi 11 in a handier size would be a winner…if the Chinese OEM can solve the battery life issue that is.