Xiaomi 17 Ultra is awesome. 🔥
It is a bit different compared to prior flagship phones from this brand, especially in terms of the overall camera tuning and how solid it feels to hold.
For instance, that continuous periscope telephoto lens (75-100 mm) is truly impressive.
Even though this phone is not perfect, I'd say it has a huge potential.
After using this phone as my daily driver for a month, here's what I think about this phone in detail. 👇
It is a bit different compared to prior flagship phones from this brand, especially in terms of the overall camera tuning and how solid it feels to hold.
For instance, that continuous periscope telephoto lens (75-100 mm) is truly impressive.
Even though this phone is not perfect, I'd say it has a huge potential.
After using this phone as my daily driver for a month, here's what I think about this phone in detail. 👇
Part 1:
Camera 📸
The strongest part about the Xiaomi 17 Ultra is definitely the photography experience.
Pros:
✅ Incredible overall main camera photography performance, one of the best I've used yet.
✅ The continuous periscope telephoto lens is extremely reliable, and it is among the most powerful out there right now.
✅ I see a huge improvement in detail preservation, noise handling, and highlight control, especially at night.
✅ The new "Scene Card" options are finally here, and you can choose five different scene options here (including true auto/off).
✅ That artistic "Leica-feel" when capturing street photography photos is still there, and I love that style.
✅ Video quality is mostly decent. The level of detail is decent, noise handling is great, and the highlight control is excellent.
✅ The camera app looks nice, pretty user-friendly, and extremely rich in features.
✅ The selfie camera has been improved.
Cons:
🚫 Aspects like white balance, colour tuning (including skin tones), and exposure control are quite unreliable, especially in mixed lighting conditions.
🚫 The minimum focusing distance for the telephoto lens is quite far (~30 cm), so you have to use a higher zoom level to capture macro photos using this lens.
🚫 The video performance is quite underwhelming for a flagship phone. The colour tuning is not reliable, the exposure control is inconsistent, and it is prone to frame-drops.
🚫 The lens-switching transition is bad in the photo mode, and it is not good enough in the video mode.
🚫 It's understandable that they have to compromise the ultra-wide sensor for large primary sensors, but the image processing isn't helping much.
🚫 There's nothing special about its selfie camera, especially for a high-end phone.
Even with its disadvantages, I've never felt this happy when using the auto mode on a Xiaomi phone for taking photos before.
That's why I can comfortably use this phone's camera for photography every day now.
And because of how easy it is to fix some of those existing problems with a software update, its potential is extremely high.
Camera 📸
The strongest part about the Xiaomi 17 Ultra is definitely the photography experience.
Pros:
✅ Incredible overall main camera photography performance, one of the best I've used yet.
✅ The continuous periscope telephoto lens is extremely reliable, and it is among the most powerful out there right now.
✅ I see a huge improvement in detail preservation, noise handling, and highlight control, especially at night.
✅ The new "Scene Card" options are finally here, and you can choose five different scene options here (including true auto/off).
✅ That artistic "Leica-feel" when capturing street photography photos is still there, and I love that style.
✅ Video quality is mostly decent. The level of detail is decent, noise handling is great, and the highlight control is excellent.
✅ The camera app looks nice, pretty user-friendly, and extremely rich in features.
✅ The selfie camera has been improved.
Cons:
🚫 Aspects like white balance, colour tuning (including skin tones), and exposure control are quite unreliable, especially in mixed lighting conditions.
🚫 The minimum focusing distance for the telephoto lens is quite far (~30 cm), so you have to use a higher zoom level to capture macro photos using this lens.
🚫 The video performance is quite underwhelming for a flagship phone. The colour tuning is not reliable, the exposure control is inconsistent, and it is prone to frame-drops.
🚫 The lens-switching transition is bad in the photo mode, and it is not good enough in the video mode.
🚫 It's understandable that they have to compromise the ultra-wide sensor for large primary sensors, but the image processing isn't helping much.
🚫 There's nothing special about its selfie camera, especially for a high-end phone.
Even with its disadvantages, I've never felt this happy when using the auto mode on a Xiaomi phone for taking photos before.
That's why I can comfortably use this phone's camera for photography every day now.
And because of how easy it is to fix some of those existing problems with a software update, its potential is extremely high.
Part 2:
Design & Display 🤳
Pros:
✅ The design has been improved in terms of the look, in-hand feel, and how solid it is compared to prior Xiaomi phones.
✅ The phone's body is thinner now, which contributes to how nice it feels to hold
✅ The green colour is very eye-catching, especially with that starry pattern on the back cover.
✅ An unpopular opinion, but I love the circular volume buttons here. Reminds me of one of those older iPhones.
✅ The bezels are super thin and symmetrical.
✅ The flat display is bigger now, and it looks great. Vibrant, sharp, and visually comfortable, albeit with a downgrade in resolution (1.5K vs 2K).
✅ The display gets extremely bright and that brightness does not throttle easily.
Cons:
🚫 The use of plastic (fibreglass) on the rear side is not what I prefer for a flagship phone.
🚫 The way they designed this phone makes it feel a bit sharp to hold, even when compared to other phones with the same flat edges.
🚫 I don't have a big problem if a phone is heavy on paper, but the 17 Ultra's weight distribution is just not that good.
Design & Display 🤳
Pros:
✅ The design has been improved in terms of the look, in-hand feel, and how solid it is compared to prior Xiaomi phones.
✅ The phone's body is thinner now, which contributes to how nice it feels to hold
✅ The green colour is very eye-catching, especially with that starry pattern on the back cover.
✅ An unpopular opinion, but I love the circular volume buttons here. Reminds me of one of those older iPhones.
✅ The bezels are super thin and symmetrical.
✅ The flat display is bigger now, and it looks great. Vibrant, sharp, and visually comfortable, albeit with a downgrade in resolution (1.5K vs 2K).
✅ The display gets extremely bright and that brightness does not throttle easily.
Cons:
🚫 The use of plastic (fibreglass) on the rear side is not what I prefer for a flagship phone.
🚫 The way they designed this phone makes it feel a bit sharp to hold, even when compared to other phones with the same flat edges.
🚫 I don't have a big problem if a phone is heavy on paper, but the 17 Ultra's weight distribution is just not that good.
Part 3:
Performance, Audio, & Usability 💨
Xiaomi 17 Ultra is a flagship phone running the latest high-end SoC, so it's no surprise that it has an excellent performance.
It also nailed most of the essentials here, so I'm happy with the overall capabilities of this phone.
Pros:
✅ Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 works well on this phone, and it is properly optimised this time.
✅ They've improved the cooling system here, since it performs well and it does not throttle as easily as priot Xiaomi Ultras while doing heavy tasks.
✅ Audio quality coming out of the dual stereo speakers is excellent, and they are pretty loud too.
✅ Audio quality when using earbuds is also excellent, and I have no problems with connection stability so far.
✅ Excellent vibration motor, with a great haptic feedback utilisation across the system UI.
✅ The ultrasonic under-screen fingerprint scanner is excellent and very reliable.
Cons:
🚫 While the vibration motor feels great, it doesn't sound appealing when playing games (unnatural, almost cheap-sounding).
🚫 The sustained performance and cooling needs to be even better, despite them already improving it.
Performance, Audio, & Usability 💨
Xiaomi 17 Ultra is a flagship phone running the latest high-end SoC, so it's no surprise that it has an excellent performance.
It also nailed most of the essentials here, so I'm happy with the overall capabilities of this phone.
Pros:
✅ Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 works well on this phone, and it is properly optimised this time.
✅ They've improved the cooling system here, since it performs well and it does not throttle as easily as priot Xiaomi Ultras while doing heavy tasks.
✅ Audio quality coming out of the dual stereo speakers is excellent, and they are pretty loud too.
✅ Audio quality when using earbuds is also excellent, and I have no problems with connection stability so far.
✅ Excellent vibration motor, with a great haptic feedback utilisation across the system UI.
✅ The ultrasonic under-screen fingerprint scanner is excellent and very reliable.
Cons:
🚫 While the vibration motor feels great, it doesn't sound appealing when playing games (unnatural, almost cheap-sounding).
🚫 The sustained performance and cooling needs to be even better, despite them already improving it.
Part 4:
Software & Endurance 👨💻🔋
Pros:
✅ Android 16-based HyperOS 3 on the Xiaomi 17 Ultra is extremely smooth, and it is filled with customisation options
✅ Despite being a Chinese unit, it is also rich in features, with some of the China-exclusive features being usable overseas
✅ This phone has the best battery life of all Xiaomi flagship phones I've used so far, with that 6800 mAh Silicon-Carbon battery.
✅ With my general moderate-to-heavy usage as a daily driver, I usually get ~1.5 days of battery life (20-30% left at 11 pm after a 14 to 15-hour usage).
✅ It charges quite rapidly, and supports PD charging standards too.
Cons:
🚫 HyperOS 3 doesn't bring any big changes in features, quality-of-life, and visuals.
🚫 There are some frequent visual bugs that I noticed in the system UI.
🚫 The idle battery drain needs to be more optimised, as it can lose up to 10-15% battery overnight, even with around the same background battery usage as my other phones.
Software & Endurance 👨💻🔋
Pros:
✅ Android 16-based HyperOS 3 on the Xiaomi 17 Ultra is extremely smooth, and it is filled with customisation options
✅ Despite being a Chinese unit, it is also rich in features, with some of the China-exclusive features being usable overseas
✅ This phone has the best battery life of all Xiaomi flagship phones I've used so far, with that 6800 mAh Silicon-Carbon battery.
✅ With my general moderate-to-heavy usage as a daily driver, I usually get ~1.5 days of battery life (20-30% left at 11 pm after a 14 to 15-hour usage).
✅ It charges quite rapidly, and supports PD charging standards too.
Cons:
🚫 HyperOS 3 doesn't bring any big changes in features, quality-of-life, and visuals.
🚫 There are some frequent visual bugs that I noticed in the system UI.
🚫 The idle battery drain needs to be more optimised, as it can lose up to 10-15% battery overnight, even with around the same background battery usage as my other phones.
Also, I don't consider this part to be a real disadvantage because of the sheer capability of the camera system, but the Xiaomi 17 Ultra is extremely noisy when shaken.
It was already bad on the 15 Ultra, and it is even worse here.
Even when picking up this phone, the moving parts in the camera housing make a loud enough noise, with a shakiness that you can feel when you hold the phone.
It was already bad on the 15 Ultra, and it is even worse here.
Even when picking up this phone, the moving parts in the camera housing make a loud enough noise, with a shakiness that you can feel when you hold the phone.
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