First Impressions: A Familiar Look with Bold Intentions:-
Xiaomi’s nextG flagship phone, and you know, sometimes one phone company will copy another one, but change it up a little bit. Well, never seen a company change less than Xiaomi has here. They adjusted the numbering on their phones to call them the 17s. They shifted their naming structure to Pro and Pro Max. They announced the phones a month early in September, all while featuring a very familiar-looking camera plateau design. Now, clearly, this is a marketing trick. This is all to make absolute sure that when you think about the iPhone 17 Pros that you also think and maybe even come across Xiaomi. And part of me thinks this is really not a good look that this kind of cheapens a brand that is otherwise clearly capable of making unique tech of their own.
What You Get in the Box:-
So, if you bought a 17 Pro, this is what you’d get a super tall box with a charger, a 100 W charger casually in the box, the USBC cable, and a little insert which has the case, a lightly frosted hard shell. That’s a pretty high tier package. And then this is the Pro Max, which has all the same stuff inside. So, the weird thing about this phone is it looks almost intentionally like a knockoff iPhone, right, with the naming and the design.
An iPhone Clone? Not Quite.:-
And to be fair, even the user interface, like the home screen’s got Apple style icons. You pull down from here, you got Apple’s control center. pretty sure even seen some iOS 26 Liquid Glass inside of here. give him a year before they tell us their CEO is now also called Tim. But the thing is, it doesn’t feel like a knockoff. The display is bright and super high-end. The borders around it are every bit as thin and even as other top phones. Every time you press things and click buttons, the haptics are phenomenal. Very satisfying experience to type and navigate.This Pro over here is a pretty tiny phone, right? It’s got triple cameras on the back. It’s got not one but two displays.
Industry-Leading Battery Life;-
How big of a battery do you think they managed to fit into here? 6,300 mAh. That’s a 25% bigger battery than the iPhone 17 Pro Max and even the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra. And so the Xiaomi 17 Pro Max, 7,500, 50% bigger than those other phones. And it translates, it is giving me stupid levels of endurance. You could buy everything. And because it’s achieved using a silicon carbon battery with the highest concentration of silicon so far, it’s not made the phone any thicker or heavier. n fact, when you pick it up, the first thing you notice is that it’s actually lighter than the iPhone 17 Pro Max.
Performance? Absolutely Top-Tier:-
These phones have 16 gigs of the fastest RAM ever seen on a phone. They got the fastest storage and they’re basically the first phones to have the new Snapdragon Elite Gen 5, which is the chip that will power most Android flagships next year. tried a whole load of tests and benchmarks on it. And while wouldn’t call it a transformational leap, it is firmly ahead of this year’s crop of Androids like Samsung’s S25 Ultra. t can get quite hot on the sides, but not once have noticed that actually affecting sustained performance. So, at least it is effectively getting heat away from the chip. So, it’s pretty clear the phone’s fundamentals are crazy good. But that’s what makes this magic back screen all the more interesting.
The Magic Rear Display: Gimmick or Genius?:-
The Xiaomi 17 Pro and Pro Max are not one-off gimmick phones. They’re not part of a subbrand. They’re not concept devices that are only going to be released as a test. These are Xiaomi’s mainline 2025 2026 flagship phones that they will most likely release in all their regions, which makes them like the one launch that they wouldn’t want to be adding a potentially expensive to produce potentially gimmicky toy to. And so the fact that they decided to go for something so unconventional makes me think one of two things that Xiaomi are either a using this as a very expensive piece of marketing, something to get people ing and go viral on Tik Tok because they know that once someone considers their phone, they will become impressed by all the other things that it does. Or B that they are actually confident that the second screen is the future of the smartphone and that it’s going to stick around for good. So which is it? Well, let’s be very clear about one thing right off the bat. We have seen rear screens before. We never seen them like this because this rear screen has the exact same display characteristics as the front screen. t’s got the same 3000s of brightness, the same 1 to 120 Hz refresh rate, the same touch responsiveness, the same cover glass.
What Can You Actually Do With It?:-
It doesn’t feel tacked on. And the fact that Xiaomi has heroically pre-applied a screen protector to not just the front screen, but also the back screen has meant that have not once worried about putting it down on a surface like this. But as beautiful as it may be, no one’s catching up with the latest Mr. Who’s the Boss videos on the 3 in between the cameras. So, what can you do with this that you would actually want to do with this? And this bar over here can summarize how convinced or unconvinced am by the thing as we go. So, level one, guess, is personalization. Xiaomi were telling me that a big part of the appeal of this phone will be the ability to express yourself like never before, and wasn’t ready for how hard they went with this.
Notifications on the Back? :-
So, you got a whole load of different clock faces. And this is already pretty cool. You got really intricate mechanical ones. You got simple ones that you can recolor yourselves. And then even this one with a step counter built in. So, pretty similar to a smartwatch homepage. And speaking of smart watches, this stretch face feels like it is literally taken straight from Apple’s source code. You got pets that kind of interact as you touch them. Decorate with a spunky little sheep.But these are also really high and surprisingly not that tacky. Like one of them is this really awesome butterfly cart that can actually swim behind, in front of, and even through the current time. And then if you don’t like any of those, you can build your own. You can choose whether you want a clock or just text. You can write whatever text you want and change the color, the font size, the thickness. But then with the background, it’s not just a pre-selected gallery.
Other Features:-
This lets you turn any image into a realistically animated video customdesigned for this rear screen in any one of these styles. Have fed this thing all sorts of absolutely terrible photos of things, but each time it comes back with something that is shockingly usable. From favorite little plant that turned into a plushy to a selfie that turned me into an anime villain. This is such an excessively extra piece of software. But think that’s exactly what this needs cuz it’s such an excessively extra piece of hardware that you need to justify it. So, so far impressed, but far from convinced cuz whatever you set on this display, it’s going to spend 99% of its time dim like this. And then it’s only when you tap it that you wake it up. Thankfully, it does do more than this cuz then you can swipe down and you got a music player, which honestly think looks stunning. And can see the use case of it. You got some friends over, you’re playing music, you want to control it, but you don’t actually want to be on your phone. You can pin things. They have made it pretty convenient cuz you can even just circle things and the phone will extract the text from that thing and create this permanent note. Trying to think of all the things you could do with this. guess you could pin a QR code that you want people to scan or you just started a business using it as free advertising as like a tiny little billboard. It feels like every company now has added some sort of second space to their phone software to give you small updates like dynamic island on the iPhone or the now bar on Samsung. And clearly Xiaomi are trying to make the second screen their version of this. So they want this to work with all the meal delivery apps and the flight tracker apps. But right now that’s all quite limited cuz it’s not launched globally yet. So the only thing have now for app integration is if you set a timer in your clock then the back of your phone can carry that timer on with this liquid actually depleting along with your time. t’s actually kind of stressing me out. There is also a notifications aspect, too, which guess a very similar concept to nothing phones where when you’re out to dinner, you can stick your phone down so that you’re present, but knowing that if someone calls you or texts you that you can still see it and actually, look at that. Oh, it automatically answers on speaker.But it’s still just a slightly worse way of answering the call on the front of your phone cuz there’s no mic at the back here.
Camera Quality: Front Cameras, Prepare to Be Obliterated:-
So, this part of the phone’s functionality not really sold on, especially considering that Xiaomi actually has their own version of Dynamic sland for secondary things like this. But the camera experience, which does also involve this rear screen the cameras on this phone, wouldn’t call them a breakthrough in themselves, but they’re really good. The photos it takes are actually pretty much always as detailed as the iPhone 17 Pro Maxes, if not sometimes more, with also incredible dynamic range. Though, it does do something very strange with skin tone that even if disable every beauty setting, cannot get rid of. But suspicion is that’s because this model currently being China only means that they tuned it to Chinese preferences.
The ultrawide camera is this tiny little reject at the bottom. And it’s kind of like you’d expect, not particularly good in low light, but it keeps up during the day. And the zoom is really powerful. A little heavy-handed on the A image enhancement when you zoom in a lot. But nonetheless, it’s hard to argue the results aren’t impressive. Here’s the thing, though. When you got a set of cameras that are already really good compared to other 2025 phones as rear cameras, then that is going to completely obliterate other phones when you compare it to their front cameras. How three-dimensional and depthy the Xiaomi shot looks here compared to the iPhone’s brand new revised front camera. And the way that the second screen is implemented here is awesome. Because if using the camera on front screen and want to turn it around, all have to do is to turn it around and swipe. And then when the camera is active on this rear screen, the front screen switches to now needing a swipe, which straight away almost completely eliminates the accidental presses problem. But the other thing that’s really impressive about this is when you’re using this back screen, you basically retain complete camera functionality. So can take normal photos, which look crazy good. So 2x, can go to 5x for if you want to capture an absolutely harrowing amount of detail in your face. actually so sorry for showing this to you. You can use the ultrawide camera, which is actually a tiny bit wider than the widest setting on the new iPhone’s front camera. Plus also, you got portrait mode.
Surprise Feature: Gaming on the Back Screen:-
And it’s all finished off with this photo collage mode, which is so thoughtfully designed. You take a few photos back to back and it puts them together into a Polaroid. Very much like a photo booth that then lets you hit one button over here to actually print. Just so takenback by the amount of effort that’s gone into custom graphics and animations for this one tiny feature on this one tiny second screen. Now, this isn’t flawless. Wouldn’t say that this is a completely intuitive gesture that you’re going to want to do 15 times a day. And if you think about it, modernday flip phones can do the same thing with their Bria cameras on the front, but straight away the moment you take them out your pocket. But then none of them have cameras this good. The camera experience here is such a big perk that it straight away on its own takes me to quite close to the fence. And then the strangest cherry on top ever. You can even game on this second screen. Xiaomi have actually gone as far as to create a completely bespoke case that is a working controller for the phone that is wirelessly powered by the phone to be able to game on this sub 3in display. So, the case clips onto the back of here. When you hold this power button, it turns on and the back screen recognizes it immediately. And then it’s got this entirely bespoke gaming interface. Why does it look so good? So, let’s just load up Angry Birds. And even the controls feel really good for buttons that have like a 2 mm travel distance. They even built bespoke tutorials designed around the buttons Xiaomi’s using here. It’s such a strange little gaming experience. It’s this tiny little screen, but the game looks and runs fantastic.
Final Thoughts: Bold, Weird, and Brilliant:-
So in awe while also knowing that will never ever actually play like this. So, on balance, nearly convinced by this back screen, but not quite. think the camera stuff is majorly useful. Think the music control and the sheer level of personalization is so cool, but most of the rest of the stuff does feel like filler, and this gaming case .