With more and more smartphone manufacturers nowadays investing in camera performance and processing power with newer launches, it’s not exactly surprising to see phones like the new Xiaomi 17 Ultra, which promises a lot of premium features for an equally-premium price. What’s surprising however is how much Xiaomi has managed to stuff into the phone’s slim 8.5mm frame.
The most obvious feature on the 17 Ultra is the massive camera island on the rear panel, which easily outclasses a lot of other competitors from a hardware standpoint thanks to larger high-resolution sensors, as well as the addition of a rotating mechanical zoom ring by way of a special-edition Leica variant. As such, the phone features a 50MP main sensor, a high-resolution 200MP telephoto lens, and a 50MP ultra-wide camera, with support for 8K-resolution video, and exclusive software imaging features from Leica.
It’s something that we rarely see from other smartphone brands, and Xiaomi’s choice to add physical controls to the phone’s camera island helps it stand out from a sea of camera-centric Android phones, especially ones from the likes of Vivo and Oppo, for example.
Another major highlight of the 17 Ultra is its processor, which takes the form of the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. It goes without saying that this year’s flagship chip from Qualcomm is the obvious choice for a lot of high-end smartphones, and the fact that it comes with 16GB of RAM should quell any doubts about performance, from day-to-day usage all the way to gaming.
This doesn’t mean that Xiaomi has skimped out on the rest of the 17 Ultra however. The phone also comes with an impressive-looking 6.9-inch AMOLED display which can get bright at up to 3500 nits of peak brightness, and you also get a 6,800mAh battery, which should be more than enough for all-day use.
It’s not without its caveats however—as it is a Xiaomi phone, the 17 Ultra comes with Hyper OS 3, which means that there’s a considerable amount of pre-installed apps and games within the OS, although a fair number of these can be uninstalled. Still, it’s something to consider especially for folks who might be after a more minimalist Android experience. The phone starts at around $1,000 (when converted), although it’s currently only available in China.
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