I suspect there is a secret co-branding competition among Chinese handset makers. I am not talking about collabs with games or brands. I am talking about collabs with tangible benefits like improved imaging—like Xiaomi with Leica, Vivo with Zeiss, Oppo with Hasselblad, and more recently, Realme with Ricoh. The latest to join this tech-collab hype train is Xiaomi’s budget brand, Redmi. However, instead of teaming up with another imaging company, it has gunned for audio prowess. Yes, audio prowess—in a smartphone—and not in the headphone jack, because it has none.
A collab with an audio specialist isn’t new, but one that has a sizeable speaker right smack on the rectangular camera module? That has to be a first. In the recently announced Redmi K90 Pro Series, the Redmi K90 Pro Max [CH] features an iPhone 17 Pro-ish camera module that has a Sound by Bose speaker embedded in it. Mind you, though, that’s not just any speaker—it’s a 2.1 speaker setup. It touts symmetrical dual speakers and an oversized independent subwoofer, promising to deliver a stable sound image, deeper lows, and a wider soundstage.
Why do you need such impactful sound on a phone? Well, because Redmi can. This thing sounds less like a phone speaker setup and more like a mini sound lab. The audio’s professionally tuned by Bose—because why trust your ears when you can borrow theirs? It even lets you pick between Classic and Balanced sound styles, which is like asking if you want your music “retro smooth” or “studio clean.” Under the hood, two ultra-linear 1115F symmetrical speakers work inside a closed-circuit acoustic chamber (translation: a tiny sealed cave of clarity) to deliver warm mids and delicate highs all the way up to 22 kHz.
Then there’s the 1620 “subwoofer,” a dual-driver bass brute that’s 2.16 times larger in sound area and adds 7 dB more low-end thump than before. All told, it’s got 15 levels of tuning precision, customized sound modes for everything from doomscrolling to dance tracks, and the tonal range to make both whisper-quiet details and earth-shaking beats sound just right. In short, your ears are in for a lab-grade workout.
While not correlated, it has an equally high-end camera setup, featuring a 50 MP flagship dynamic main camera with a 1/1.31-inch large sensor and OIS, a 50 MP flagship super wide-angle (102°), and a 50 MP 5x periscope telephoto camera. The main snapper benefits from the Light Hunter 950 sensor, which boasts 13.5 stops of native dynamic range. Meanwhile, the super wide-angle camera features an OV50M sensor. The 50 MP telephoto is outfitted with a JN5 sensor and supports 30 cm super close-up shots, along with 5x optical and 10x lossless zoom.
Over at the front, it has a 32 MP high-res portrait camera on the 6.9-inch “Super Pixel Eye Protection Screen.” This screen is an OLED display boasting 2,608 x 1,200 resolution, a variable refresh rate up to 120 Hz, and up to 480 Hz touch sampling rate. Peak brightness is 3,500 nits, while the lowest is 1 nit. It, of course, has DC dimming. The display rounds up with Xiaomi Longjing (literally “Dragon Crystal”) glass.
Other spec sheet details are pretty much what you’d expect from 2025’s flagships. It includes a 3 nm process Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip, a D2 standalone AI display chip, LPDDR5x memory, UFS 4.1 storage, a 3D ice-sealed circulating cooling pump with a large 6,700 mm² cooling surface—Xiaomi’s largest yet—IR, NFC, dual nano-SIM, the usual suspects of positioning and sensors, the latest connectivity (BT 5.4, Wi-Fi 7, and more), and a 7,560 mAh battery managed by the Xiaomi Hyper P3 charging chip and Xiaomi Hyper G2 battery gauge chip. The device supports 100 W wired flash charge, 50 W wireless flash charge, and 22.5 W wired/wireless reverse charging.
The quick-charging protocols supported are wide and varied, too. There’s QC and PD through its USB Type-C interface, and it comes supplied with a 100 W energy-efficient GaN charger. Oh, there’s a Lamborghini edition if anyone’s interested. The Redmi K90 Pro Max has been launched in three colors plus one Lamborghini version, and in four configurations (12+256, 12+512, 16+512, and 16+1 TB), with a starting price of 3,999 yuan [CH] (~561 USD).
Images: Xiaomi [CH].
