Xiaomi might be copying Apple’s naming scheme for its new phone line, but the Xiaomi 17 phone series is carving its own path with a unique large rear display for its new Pro models. The Chinese phone-maker on Thursday announced the Xiaomi 17, Xiaomi 17 Pro and Xiaomi 17 Pro Max, with the latter two sporting a “Dynamic Back Display” for widgets, notifications and — apparently — light gaming.
The phone line’s announcement comes just as chipmaker Qualcomm has been unveiling its new Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, which powers the new Xiaomi phones and phones like the upcoming OnePlus 15.
The base Xiaomi 17 won’t include a rear display, but it does get a big 7,000mAh battery.
Similar to the iPhone 17 series, the Xiaomi 17 and 17 Pro phones have a 6.3-inch display, while the Pro Max has a 6.9-inch one. The base phone Xiaomi 17 supports 100-watt wired charging and 50-watt wireless charging and has a 7,000-mAh battery (which is huge, and double the capacity of most phones sold in the US). It has a 50-megapixel main camera, a 50-megapixel floating telephoto camera and a 50-megapixel ultrawide camera. The Xiaomi 17’s display can hit a peak brightness of 3,500 nits, and its price starts at 4,499 Chinese Yuan (roughly $630) for a variant with 12GB of memory and 256GB of storage.
The Xiaomi 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max have the aforementioned rear display, which spans the width of the phone, wrapping around the cameras. And speaking of cameras, the 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max have 50-megapixel wide-angle and ultrawide cameras, but their telephoto lenses are different. They both have 50-megapixel 5x telephoto cameras, but the Pro Max has a larger image sensor with a faster aperture.
The standard Pro will come with a 6,300-mAh battery — still quite sizable even if it’s smaller than the base phone — while the Pro Max gets an even bigger 7,500-mAh battery. Both phones will have the same charging speeds as the base Xiaomi 17, all of which are much faster than we see on most phones sold in the US. The closest we’ve seen is the 80-watt speeds on the OnePlus 13.
The rear display could be used with a case for a gaming mode of sorts.
While Xiaomi’s announcement didn’t go into detail about how the 2.7-inch rear display could be used, one of the provided photos shows off a gaming mode where a case with buttons for playing Angry Birds (a game typically known for dragging birds with a slingshot, but that’s the provided example). According to a translated specs list on Xiaomi’s website, the display has a 120Hz refresh rate and 3,500-nit peak brightness.
The Xiaomi 17 Pro will start at 4,999 Chinese Yuan (roughly $700) for its model with 12GB of memory and 256GB of storage, while the Xiaomi 17 Pro Max starts at 5,999 Chinese Yuan (roughly $840) for a model with 12GB of memory and 512GB of storage. The phones will go on sale starting Saturday.
