There’s a particular type of phone that comes along every couple of years and genuinely shifts your expectations of what a smartphone can do. Not because it ticks more boxes on a spec sheet, but because you pick it up, take a few photos, and find yourself genuinely surprised. The Xiaomi 17 Ultra is one of those phones. Xiaomi has taken a camera-first philosophy and pushed it further than anyone has managed to do before on a smartphone. There are trade-offs, as there always are at this end of the market, but if your priority is imaging quality, very little else comes close right now.
Design
Last year’s Xiaomi 15 Ultra was, quite simply, one of the best smartphone cameras ever made. Not just good. Incredible. But its design was divisive.
I understood what Xiaomi was going for. This wasn’t just a phone with a good camera; this was a camera that happened to be a phone. The optional Photography Kit, with its dedicated shutter button and grip, pushed that idea even further. It blurred the lines between smartphone and dedicated camera in a way that made complete philosophical sense, but it wasn’t for everyone.
What was for everyone, though, was the output. It was arguably the camera of the year.
The Xiaomi 17 Ultra continues that exact same philosophy and refines the execution considerably. The camera module is still massive, rightly so given what lives inside it, but it’s surprisingly well balanced. The central positioning means the weight distribution feels deliberate rather than awkward. It doesn’t feel top-heavy; it feels planted. Purposeful.
Despite packing a 1-inch sensor and a full mechanical optical zoom system, Xiaomi has managed to keep the 17 Ultra to just 8.29mm thick, making it the thinnest and lightest Ultra they’ve ever produced. That’s no small feat when you consider what’s been squeezed in here, including a 6000mAh battery and a 200MP telephoto system. The phone measures 162.9mm x 77.6mm and weighs in at 218.4g for the Black and White versions, with the Starlit Green edging it to 219g. The Starlit Green, incidentally, uses genuine mineral particles in its finish and looks genuinely striking.
The included case is functional rather than premium. It’ll do the job for early protection, but it slightly undermines the hardware it’s meant to complement. A phone at this level deserves better, and I’d recommend sourcing a proper third-party case early.
One thing worth flagging is the audible rattle from the camera module when the phone is shaken. It can be slightly disconcerting at first. It’s not a flaw, though; it’s a byproduct of increasingly complex optical stabilisation systems and mechanical zoom components. As smartphone cameras edge ever closer to genuine optical hardware, this is becoming the norm rather than the exception.
Camera
Simply put, this is the best smartphone camera I’ve ever used.
Just a few shots in, I was genuinely blown away. Photos feel alive in a way that’s hard to articulate; there’s depth and texture and atmosphere that you don’t expect from a phone. More tellingly, it’s the camera I find myself reaching for in moments where I’d normally say “just live it, a phone won’t capture this properly.” Xiaomi is getting dangerously close to proving that assumption wrong.
The starting point is that 1-inch sensor, and it’s worth understanding why the size matters so much. Most smartphone sensors are tiny; increasingly clever at compensating for that through software tricks, but ultimately limited by physics. A 1-inch sensor is closer in size to what you’d find in a premium compact camera, and that extra surface area means it gathers significantly more raw light per shot. In practice, shadows retain detail rather than turning muddy, highlights don’t blow out as aggressively, and in low light, where smaller sensors produce that familiar grainy, smeared look, the 17 Ultra holds its composure far longer.
The telephoto system is where things get genuinely interesting, though. Rather than a fixed zoom lens, the optics here physically move to cover a range of focal lengths; think of it less like a smartphone camera and more like a compact zoom lens that happens to live in your pocket. The result is that you can shoot at different zoom levels without losing any image quality in the process, which is not something phones have been able to do before. The resolution behind it is high enough that even zooming in heavily on a shot retains a sharpness you’d normally only associate with dedicated cameras. It also handles close-up macro shots down to 30cm, which is a genuinely useful addition for food, product, or detail photography.
The ultra-wide and front cameras are well-matched to the rest of the system, which matters more than it sounds. A common frustration with multi-camera phones is the noticeable shift in colour and tone when you switch between lenses. That’s largely avoided here, giving you a more consistent set of results regardless of which camera you’re using.
Leica’s involvement goes deeper than the badge on the lens. The glass itself is engineered to minimise the kind of ghosting and colour fringing that tends to appear around high-contrast edges, particularly in the telephoto. These are the sorts of optical artefacts that software correction handles imperfectly, so dealing with them at the source makes a real difference to the end result.
Video has had a meaningful upgrade too. You can now shoot 4K at 120 frames per second with the kind of HDR encoding that plays back beautifully on modern screens. For anyone who edits their footage rather than just posting it directly, there’s also a Log recording option that preserves far more detail to work with in post. That combination has historically required dedicated video cameras to access; finding it on a phone is a genuine step forward.
Night photography is exceptional. Portraits look natural. Telephoto shots are sharper than they have any right to be. This isn’t a camera system that’s incrementally better than what came before; it feels structurally different.
Display
The display on the Xiaomi 17 Ultra is genuinely excellent, and on this particular phone, that matters more than it might elsewhere. When you’re carrying a camera system capable of this level of detail and colour accuracy, the screen you’re reviewing those shots on needs to be worthy of them. Here, it is.
It’s a 6.9-inch OLED panel with a resolution of 2608 x 1200, an adaptive refresh rate that scales between 1Hz and 120Hz depending on what’s on screen, and a peak brightness of 3500 nits. That last figure is the one that earns its keep in daily use. Plenty of phones claim impressive brightness numbers that only materialise in specific, narrow conditions. This one stays genuinely readable in direct sunlight, which sounds like a low bar but remains a real problem on a surprising number of devices. The glass covering it has been updated too, and Xiaomi claims a meaningful improvement in drop resistance over the previous generation, which is always welcome on a phone at this price point.
Where it really distinguishes itself, though, is in how it handles the photos you take on it. There’s a particular pleasure in shooting something you’re proud of and being able to review it on a screen that does it justice. Colours are rich without being oversaturated; the kind of calibration that takes restraint to get right, because the temptation is always to push things a little too vivid to impress in a shop. Detail is rendered with enough precision that you can actually use the display to judge whether a shot is sharp before you decide to keep or delete it, which isn’t something you can say about every phone screen.
It also makes a genuine difference to everyday use in ways you don’t fully appreciate until you go back to something lesser. Watching video is noticeably better. Scrolling through photos, browsing, even reading long articles all feel more comfortable and immersive. The refresh rate adapts smoothly enough that you stop noticing it, which is the point. It’s the kind of display that recalibrates your expectations quietly, so that returning to a lesser screen feels like a step back rather than a return to normal.
It’s been a while since I’ve used a phone where the display alone made me stop and take notice. This is one of those phones.
Performance and Battery
The 17 Ultra runs on Qualcomm’s latest flagship chip, which at this point is less a differentiator and more a given at the top end of Android. What matters more is how the phone manages that performance over time, and this is where a lot of devices quietly let themselves down. Sustained workloads, particularly the kind this camera system generates, generate heat. Heat leads to throttling. Throttling leads to that frustrating experience where a phone performs brilliantly for the first few minutes and then quietly slows down when you’re mid-way through shooting something important.
Xiaomi has taken this seriously. There’s a vapour chamber cooling system built into the 17 Ultra that’s designed to spread and dissipate heat during exactly the kind of sustained use this phone invites; long video shoots, burst shooting at full resolution, or running demanding AI processing on-device. In practice, the phone stays composed under pressure in a way that not every flagship manages. You can run extended 4K recording sessions without the camera app warning you about temperature or dropping quality to compensate.
Storage options are 16GB of RAM paired with either 512GB or 1TB, which is sensible given the file sizes this camera produces. A full-resolution shot from the 200MP telephoto takes up meaningful space, and if you’re shooting video at the higher quality settings, storage fills up faster than you might expect. The 1TB option is worth considering if this is going to be your primary camera.
Battery life is where the 17 Ultra is genuinely impressive. The 6000mAh cell is large by any standard, and Xiaomi has managed to fit it into a phone that’s 8.29mm thin by using a higher-density battery chemistry than most competitors currently offer. Day-to-day, you’re unlikely to be reaching for a charger before bed, even with heavy camera use. When you do need to top up, 90W wired charging gets you back to full quickly, and 50W wireless charging is available if you prefer that. The phone is also rated IP68 for dust and water resistance, which at this price point should be expected, but is always good to confirm.
One thing worth noting is that the 90W charging speed requires a compatible adapter to achieve its full rate. It ships without one in some markets, so it’s worth checking what’s included in your region before assuming you have everything you need in the box.
Verdict
At €1,499 for the 16GB/512GB model, Xiaomi is happy to park the 17 Ultra right alongside the iPhone 17 Pro Max at the same price point. The difference, as is often the case, is that the non-Apple device has maxed out the specs to a degree Apple simply doesn’t. The camera system and display alone justify serious consideration here, and when you factor in everything else on offer, the value proposition is hard to ignore.
The Photography Kit Pro is available separately for €199 if you want to lean further into the dedicated camera experience. The standard Xiaomi 17 starts at €999 in 12GB/256GB, available in Venture Green and Black, for those who want the family without the flagship price.
Both go on sale from 1 March 2026. The Xiaomi 17 is stocked at Harvey Norman, Tesco, Eir, Vodafone and Sky Mobile, while the Ultra is available at Harvey Norman and Tesco Mobile. Promotional offers and dates may vary by retailer, so worth confirming directly before you buy.
If you’re shopping in the flagship space this year, the Xiaomi 17 Ultra has a very strong case for being the smartphone of 2026.
Disclaimer: As is often the case with reviews, Xiaomi supplied the 17 Ultra to me on loan to review. I was also invited to MWC Barcelona by Xiaomi for the launch of their 2026 flagships. This included by flights and hotel. Totally normal, but I’d rather be transparent.
