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Marques Brownlee
11:5210/14/25

Xiaomi 17 Pro Max: An iPhone... But Better!

TLDR

The Xiaomi 17 Pro Max initially appears as an iPhone clone but surpasses it in several key areas, including display, processing power, battery life, camera capabilities, and particularly its innovative, fully functional rear OLED display.

Takeways

Xiaomi 17 Pro Max matches iPhone aesthetics but offers superior hardware specifications.

Features a leading Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip, brighter display, and an enormous 7,500 mAh battery with rapid charging.

Includes a highly functional 2.9-inch rear OLED display for advanced selfies and integrated smart features, elevating it beyond a simple gimmick.

The Xiaomi 17 Pro Max intentionally mirrors the iPhone's design and software aesthetics to appeal to iPhone users, yet it significantly outclasses its Apple counterpart in performance, display technology, and battery capacity. This device features a powerful new Qualcomm chip, an enormous 7,500 mAh battery with rapid charging, and an impressive triple 50MP camera system. Its standout innovation is a large, high-refresh-rate OLED rear display that goes beyond a mere gimmick, offering advanced selfie capabilities and integrated smart features.

iPhone Similarities & Initial Appeal

00:00:05 The Xiaomi 17 Pro Max intentionally mimics the iPhone 17 Pro Max in its physical design, featuring a similar shape, flat sides, speaker placement, antenna lines, and camera plateau aesthetic. Xiaomi has also integrated iOS-like software elements, including quick control pulldowns, stock app aesthetics, widgets, icons, and even a 'dynamic island' feature. The company has also aligned its flagship phone naming convention, including the '17 Pro Max' designation, to further appeal to iPhone users and encourage a comfortable transition.

Superior Performance & Display

00:01:30 The Xiaomi 17 Pro Max is a 'spec monster' designed to outperform the iPhone, featuring a 6.9-inch display that is noticeably brighter than the iPhone's, with a smaller cutout due to its super-fast ultrasonic under-display fingerprint reader replacing Face ID. It is one of the first phones to ship with the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip, matching the iPhone's single-core performance and surpassing it in multi-core and GPU performance, positioning it as potentially the world's fastest mobile chip. This is paired with 16GB of RAM and up to 1TB of UFS 4.1 storage.

Unrivaled Battery & Charging

00:03:07 Battery performance is a significant strength, with the Pro Max model housing a massive 7,500 mAh silicon-carbon battery, which is substantially larger than any iPhone battery ever produced. This phone also boasts 100W wired charging (with an included charger) and 50W wireless charging, along with 22.5W reverse wireless charging, allowing it to function as a power bank. Despite its immense battery capacity, the phone remains lighter and no thicker than its iPhone counterpart, and maintains an IP68 rating.

Innovative Rear Display & Cameras

00:04:44 The Xiaomi 17 Pro Max features triple 50-megapixel cameras that produce highly detailed and crisp shots, including an impressive 5X optical zoom telephoto lens. The most significant innovation is a full corner-to-corner, 3000-nit, 120Hz OLED rear display integrated into the camera plateau, measuring 2.9 inches on the Pro Max. This secondary screen serves as an excellent viewfinder for high-quality selfies, handles notifications, offers extensive personalization akin to an Apple Watch, and displays ongoing tasks like timers and music playback, effectively transcending gimmick status to become a genuinely useful feature.