Xiaomi 17 Ultra review: Potent photography at a thrifty premium

Wedged between the more mainstream appeal of the Xiaomi 17 and the high-end Leica Leitzphone, it’d be easy to dismiss the Xiaomi 17 Ultra as a half-measure or a middle ground for those who want to invest in better smartphone photography, but aren’t quite ready to pay the premium attached to the next option up. 

While the Xiaomi 17 Ultra doesn’t have the brand power or haptic sensors found on the back of its Leica-branded cousin, it’s still looking to pitch itself along the same lines. That’s far from a surprise, though. Smartphones with cutting-edge camera tech aren’t necessarily as novel as they once were, but that end of the equation remains a necessity when it comes to the premium market. 

Following in the footsteps of devices like the Huawei Mate 30 and OPPO Find X9 Pro, the Xiaomi 17 Ultra is a big swing that mostly meets the mark.

The eye-catching and disc-shaped camera module on the back of the Xiaomi is the biggest talking point when it comes to the device, but it’s far from the only part of the design worth digging into. 

The front of the Xiaomi 17 Ultra features a 6.9-inch AMOLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate and 3500 nits of peak brightness. As far as screens go, it’s as big, colourful, and crisp as flagship displays get, and those specs translate into a glitzy canvas for all your usual apps without too much trouble. 

The rest of the design is familiar, but Xiaomi hasn’t made any major missteps when it comes to the larger form-factor and feel. The aluminium edges are soft to the touch, the volume and power buttons are satisfyingly clicky, and the back panel on my review sample came coated in a rich and speckled emerald. Minimalism has never felt so cutting edge, and these clean looks don’t come at a compromise when it comes to bells and whistles. 

The Xiaomi 17 Ultra ticks all the boxes you’d expect given the price tag. It’s got an IP68 dust and water resistance, eSIM support, stereo speakers, improved drop-resistance, an in-display fingerprint sensor and support for faster wireless charging. 

Unfortunately, that last one does come with a smidge of small print. Like Samsung’s latest premium devices, the Xiaomi 17 Ultra doesn’t quite meet the Qi2 standard. While the Xiaomi 17 Ultra will play nice with any wireless chargers you have lying around, it doesn’t have the magnets needed to have that MagSafe-style wireless charging experience. 

That’s a fairly small quibble in the grand scheme of things though, and one that quickly fades into the background whenever your focus shifts to the camera on the back of the Xiaomi 17 Ultra. 

While the front of the Xiaomi 17 Ultra boasts a 50MP selfie camera akin to what you’ll find on most flagship devices this side of the Android ecosystem, the other side of the device looks to make the most of a 1-inch sensor that's closer to the ones found in full-blown cameras than it is the average smartphone. 

That main lens comes with 200MPs of resolution and a variable telephoto lens that can go between 3.2x and 4.3x magnification as needed. It comes accompanied by secondary 50MP lenses, which cover your usual ultra-wide and wide angles. 

While the sound of the somewhat-loose optical image stabilisation element inside the camera can be disconcerting, it didn’t take too long for me to get used to both that noise and the decadent results that the hardware here was capable of delivering. Both in daylight situations and low-light conditions, the Xiaomi 17 Ultra delivered exceptional results. 

As someone who likes their smartphone photography, the argument for buying any device based on its camera alone is often difficult to make because the average in the premium market is so high. Even so, the case being prosecuted here is a bit of a slam dunk on the part of Xiaomi.

To see what the camera on the Xiaomi 17 Ultra can do fresh out of the box, check out the image gallery below.

Under the hood, the Xiaomi 17 Ultra is powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 processor. That's about as good as Android flagships get nowadays. Throw in 16GB of RAM and up to 1TB of storage, plus the latest version of both Android 16 and Xiaomi’s own Hyper OS 3 and you’re set up for a fairly good time.

You’re not necessarily set up for as long a time as I’d like, though. Out of the box, Xiaomi is promising five years of OS upgrades and six years of security updates for this device. That’s on par with the likes of OPPO, but short of the high-bar being set by Samsung and Google who offer seven years on both fronts nowadays.

In any case, though, the moment-to-moment performance of the Xiaomi Ultra 17 very much lived up to the price tag involved. Android doesn’t get much snappier than this. As a daily driver, the hardware here was more than capable of meeting my everyday needs. 

That being said, I did sometimes run into some minor issues with Xiaomi’s windowable apps feature – which got in the way more often than I’d have liked. Frequently, I'd accidentally create a windowed instance of whatever app I happened to be using when I meant to simply swipe out of it.

If you’re more of a power-user or someone looking to get every bit of extra bang for your buck, I can easily imagine this feature (and the many other bonus apps built into Hyper OS) being a more tangible value-add, though.

Meanwhile, on the gaming side of things, the Xiaomi 17 Ultra didn’t miss a beat. Even graphically involved games like Diablo Immortal, Destiny: Rising and Zenless Zone Zero ran without issues. While Apple silicon usually has the edge when it comes to mobile gaming, the Xiaomi 17 Ultra is a powerful reminder that Android manufacturers can keep up when they want to – or at least want to pay the extra memory and processing punch needed to do so.

The usual caveats apply, and your mileage may vary based on your specific usage patterns, but –  as someone who has reviewed and handled a fair amount of heavy-duty flagships like this one – I found the addition of a 6000mAh silicon carbon battery inside the Xiaomi 17 Ultra added up to a significant improvement on older battery technologies. The device feels both tangibly lighter, and it still handily delivered the usual two days of usage I’d expect from a single charge.

Burned down via streaming video from YouTube over Wi-Fi, the Xiaomi 17 Ultra took 32 hours and 38 minutes to go from a full charge to zero. That's an incredible result that puts it at the top of our list when it comes to battery performance. You usually have to settle for something in the mid-range when it comes to this kind of longevity so finding a premium device that doesn’t make the usual compromise when it comes to battery life is genuinely exceptional.