Just a few days after launching a smartphone series named the 15T, Chinese tech giant Xiaomi has already introduced a newer series, the 17 series.
The new line consists of three phones: a standard 17, a 17 Pro, and a 17 Pro Max. I’ve been testing the largest one, the Pro Max, and it brings some jaw-dropping specs. So yes, even if the Xiaomi 17 Pro Max has a very unoriginal name, the phone itself is quite unique in several areas.
(It’s worth mentioning here that the smaller 17 Pro is nearly identical to the Pro Max in every area except with a smaller form factor, battery, and a slightly different telephoto camera configuration. I’ll cover that phone at a later time)
Dual-screens
The 17 Pro Max brings a dual-screen design with a secondary screen located on the back of the phone next to the camera module. Unlike Xiaomi’s previous attempt (back in 2021’s Mi 11 Ultra), the rear display this time is a much bigger (2.8-inch, 976 x 596) OLED panel, allowing it to run widgets, show contextual information, and act as a camera viewfinder.
This means the user can take selfies using the rear-facing camera system, which on virtually every phone is superior to the front-facing camera.
The display can also show various widgets, including obvious ones like calendar, clock or timer. I enjoy having a step counter on the backscreen at all times to remind me to move if I am having a particularly sedentary day.
Third-party app support for the backscreen will mostly be limited to China for now, as apps like Didi, Taobao, etc. So for example, the backscreen could show the progress of your incoming Didi ride, or show your airline ticket boarding pass and gate information.
Xiaomi says Spotify is currently the only “international” app that supports the backscreen right now. Considering the Xiaomi 17 series is launching only for the China market for now (it will likely come to the global market in February), I don’t think we should expect to see much support for the second screen from non-China apps for at least the next few months.
Then there’s the other display — the main one: a 6.9-inch OLED panel that Xiaomi says gets up to 3500 nits of brightness while consuming 26% less battery than previous panels of similar size and resolutions. The bezels are also razor thin, as thin as the iPhone 17 Pro Max’s to my eyes, and an absolutely gorgeous panel that pops.
First with Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5
The Xiaomi 17 series are the first phones to ship with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, the newest bleeding-edge silicon from Qualcomm that will power all the big-name Android flagship phones in 2026. This 3nm chip has been a very capable performer from my limited time testing so far, although benchmark numbers still lag behind Apple’s A19 Pro. Still, it is almost certainly going to be the most powerful chip in any Android device over the next 12 months or so.
Industry’s first L-shape battery
The two Pro phones use a newly designed L-shape battery that allows a larger capacity cell to be placed inside a conventional phone body. As a result, the 17 Pro Max, despite being no larger than any modern-day flagship, packs a 7,500 mAh battery. For reference, the iPhone 17 Pro Max, which has very similar dimensions as the Xiaomi counterpart, has a 4,823 mAh battery. The huge battery can be charged at 100W speeds with the included charger.
What happened to the Xiaomi 16?
Phone fans may notice Xiaomi jumped directly from the 15 series to 17. What gives? Well, Xiaomi says it’s to “catch up” with the iPhone’s model number, so that each year, Xiaomi can launch a direct competitor at around the same time. And when you consider Xiaomi even added a “Pro Max” model that previously didn’t exist in Xiaomi’s library of devices, and it’s very clear Xiaomi is not only not shying away from, but embracing, the western notion that Xiaomi is trying to pattern itself after Apple.
I’m not a fan of following Apple to this degree, to be honest, but still, the Xiaomi 17 Pro phones are no gimmicks: they bring some of the very best hardware in mobile phones right now, and I genuinely find the second screen very useful as a camera viewfinder.