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Samsung unveiled its new flagship smartphone for 2026 just a few days ago. Xiaomi followed suit with the Xiaomi 17 Ultra. The smartphone features an aluminum frame and a flat glass back with a high-quality finish. Behind is the unmissable camera, developed in collaboration with the German camera specialists Leica. We’ll talk more about this later. The large camera module has already proved useful when held, as you can easily grasp it with one finger underneath.
Xiaomi 17 Ultra Display
Xiaomi’s display already lives up to its Ultra name. The built-in panel is one of the best on the market, and it impressed with its 6.9-inch measurement and extremely high brightness level. This makes the smartphone easy to read even in bright sunlight.
The automatic brightness control worked excellently. The display always had the “right” brightness based on the surroundings. Colors and viewing angles are also excellent, as you would expect from an OLED display in 2026.
Ultra Specs in an Ultra Smartphone
The technical features are summarized here: The Xiaomi 17 Ultra offers the best of the best. The built-in Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 is the fastest processor ever in an Android smartphone and, armed with 16 gigabytes of RAM, offers more than enough power for demanding tasks. Nothing is lacking here. An ultrasonic fingerprint sensor unlocks the smartphone in a fraction of a second, even with wet fingers. Stereo speakers ensure really good sound quality.
The battery was also generously sized at 6,000 mAh, boasting above-average battery life of 24 hours and 22 minutes in our benchmark. Once the battery is empty, it can be charged with up to 90 watts. Using a universal charger, the complete charging process takes around 65 minutes. It is significantly faster with Xiaomi’s own power supply unit. It is not included with the smartphone, unfortunately, and must be purchased separately.
Software Is Its Achilles Heel?
The Xiaomi 17 Ultra came with the latest Android 16 and its own HyperOS 3 interface. The interface was visually appealing and offered many additional functions and animations that made it easy to use. The numerous personalization options were particularly fun. However, one detail put a spanner in the works: advertising. If you set one of the really stylishly designed lock screens, advertising appears suddenly. Certain system apps also greet you with banner ads occasionally. For an absolute premium smartphone costing well over $1,000, this is unacceptable. Xiaomi urgently needs to make amends in this department. The smartphone also comes with plenty of pre-installed third-party apps (aka bloatware). Thankfully, these can be uninstalled with just a few clicks.
According to rumors, Xiaomi wanted to significantly clean up the system with HyperOS 4, so hope remains that the operating system and apps will no longer show advertisements, especially for a device in this price range. What about the keyword? Xiaomi guarantees 6 Android version upgrades and 7 years of security updates.
Xiaomi 17 Ultra Camera Reviewed
Its predecessor, the Xiaomi 14 Ultra, was already equipped with extremely good cameras and won our camera blind test in 2024. I had correspondingly high expectations of the Xiaomi 17 Ultra. I was not disappointed! Taking photos with Xiaomi’s new top smartphone was pure fun. Xiaomi equipped the smartphone with three cameras: a main camera with 50 megapixels, a telephoto camera with actual 3.2x-4.3x optical zoom megapixels, a 200 megapixel resolution, and a 50 megapixel ultra-wide-angle camera.
The cameras were developed in collaboration with the German camera specialist Leica. This collaboration extended to both hardware and software. Some of the camera lenses come from Leica, which was also involved in the software image processing. When taking photos, you can choose between two looks: Leica Vibrant for a colorful, vibrant look, or Leica Authentic for a more neutral, realistic look in photos.
In the test, the Xiaomi 17 Ultra took first-class photos, whether during the day or at night. When taking pictures of buildings, it was really fun to play with light and shadow, and portraits looked better than with any other smartphone. When taking photos, it doesn’t matter which of the three lenses you choose, as they all offer high resolution and take razor-sharp photos. Thanks to the higher resolution of the telephoto camera, zoom photos with up to 8.6x zoom are also possible via sensor crop. Digitally, you can even zoom up to 120x. However, the limits of the technology become apparent much earlier. However, this was completely normal. The smartphone uses AI to try to upscale the photos afterwards. The results are heavily dependent on the respective subject.
The gallery was not found!Xiaomi 17 Ultra Review: My Conclusion
The Xiaomi 17 Ultra is already my camera smartphone of the year. No other smartphone gave me more fun to push the camera to its limits and get creative when taking photos. Portraits and photos with people in particular looked simply amazing and regularly inspired the people photographed. I will miss the camera the most when I return the smartphone in a few days.
The rest of the smartphone also lived up to its Ultra moniker. The smartphone delivered outstanding performance, even for complex apps and games, and the rest of the features were not lacking. Xiaomi only needed to make improvements to the software, especially in terms of advertising in the operating system. There was also room for improvement in terms of speed and the update schedule.
The asking price of €1,500 (it is not available in theUS) is fair for the features on offer and on par with the competition. Consider howEspecially as even the basic version comes with a generous 512 gigabytes of storage space. If you want more, you have to top up by €300 for the 1-terabyte version.
Pros
- Excellent cameras
- First-class performance
- Excellent display
- Solid battery life
Cons
- Advertisements in the user interface and system apps
- Plenty of bloatware
