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Rating:
8/10
WIRED
Leica-inspired Leitzphone and 17 Ultra designs are gorgeous. Powerful and versatile camera systems. Excellent performance and battery life. Handy photography kit.
TIRED
Bloatware. No Qi2 support.
I’ve been reviewing Xiaomi’s smartphones for several years, and I always look forward to the new Ultra. If you’ve never sampled its wares, preferring the latest Apple or Samsung iteration, you might be surprised at just how good these devices are. The Chinese company is the third-largest phone maker in the world behind Apple and Samsung, and it packs all the latest cutting-edge hardware into its annual flagship release. Xiaomi’s Ultra line has long battled for the camera king title.
Photograph: Simon Hill
Amusingly, Xiaomi skipped the 16 series to compete directly with Apple’s latest iPhone generation. There’s no radical redesign for the 17 Ultra over last year’s Xiaomi 15 Ultra, but there is refinement and a special version called the Leitzphone, designed with Leica, that may prove irresistible to fans of the German camera brand. The Xiaomi 17 Ultra is easily one of the best phones you can’t officially buy in the United States. While importing a Chinese smartphone is not without potential pitfalls, this one will tempt keen American photographers.
Leica a Lot
I’ve always appreciated Leica’s minimalist industrial design. Textured black and silver materials with a splash of red add some identity. It strikes me as a careful balance between form and function, and it comes through very strongly in Xiaomi’s Leitzphone. The aluminum alloy frame is ribbed for enhanced grip, you can rotate the ring around the camera for fine zoom control, and the user interface has an elegant Leica-themed makeover. I’m surprised there’s no dedicated shutter button, though you can add one with the optional photography kit (more on that later).
Photograph: Simon Hill
The regular 17 Ultra is a teeny bit slimmer and lighter, but all versions sport a stunning, completely flat 6.9-inch OLED display that really sings. It boasts all the features you’d expect, including variable refresh rate (1 to 120 Hz), high peak brightness to keep it legible in direct sunlight, and eye-care dimming that makes it equally comfortable to use in a dark room.
Photograph: Simon Hill
The weakness of the design is the compromise necessary to house such a marvellous camera system. You inevitably have a huge camera module. Camera bumps are an issue for all phones nowadays, but Xiaomi’s circular Ultra camera module is perhaps the biggest and most awkward. The phone can’t sit flat and sometimes slowly slides off smooth surfaces, the camera module is prone to catching on pockets, and it can feel a little top-heavy in hand.
The Leitzphone has a lovely matte black finish on the back with the red dot Leica logo at the top left. The regular 17 Ultra comes in black or white, but I was lucky enough to get the classy and interesting Starlit Green finish to test. Trendwise, this is the same flat glass sandwich with a thick metal frame modeled on the Apple iPhone 17 Pro Max and Google Pixel 10 Pro XL.
Fabulous Photography
The main attraction of the 17 Ultra, and even more so the Leitzphone, is the versatile camera system. Ostensibly, Xiaomi has dropped a lens here, but you won’t notice. The main 50-megapixel shooter boasts a new 1-inch sensor and lens pairing that guarantees superb results in a variety of scenarios, including low light. It captures sharp, detailed, color-accurate photos of whatever you point it at.
Photograph: Simon Hill
There’s just one telephoto lens this year, but it’s a 200-megapixel shooter that slides between 3.2X (75 mm) and 4.3X (100 mm) optical zoom. Throw cropping into the mix, and you can get the equivalent of 17.2X optical zoom. I’ve had a blast zooming in with this camera (I love the fine control the adjustable ring on the Leitzphone provides), and the results are simply superb. It comes close to matching the main shooter in detail and color.
Xiaomi’s third lens is a 50-megapixel ultrawide, and it’s great for wide landscape or group shots where you want to squeeze more in. The color matching and quality are better than your average ultrawide, which is often the weak link in a triple lens setup. Perhaps the biggest upgrade is the front-facing lens, which has jumped from 32 to 50 megapixels, and will satisfy selfie addicts.
Photograph: Simon Hill
Photograph: Simon Hill
The Photography Kit Pro is an optional extra that’s compatible with the Leitzphone and the regular 17 Ultra. It adds a magnetic case that enables you to use Qi2 chargers (though not every one I tested worked well). Sadly, when used with the Leitzphone, it covers the adjustable ring. The kit also includes a camera grip with traditional controls, including a shutter button and exposure dial, and it slots into the USB-C port to provide an extra 2,000 mAh of battery, which is very handy if you’re out shooting lots of photos or video.
Xiaomi has beefed up the video specs in the 17 Ultra to include 4K Dolby Vision from 30 fps to 120 fps (shame there’s no 24 fps) and 8K at 30 fps for the main camera. I the motion tracking autofocus, though the iPhone still has superior stabilization. There’s also spatial audio capture and a Pro mode with LOG recording and some other extras.
Flawless Flagship
As ever, the Ultra is a specs beast, with this year’s fastest hardware, so you get the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset, 16 GB of LPDDR5X RAM, and 512 GB or 1 TB of UFS 4.1 storage. Performance is as silky smooth as you’ll find, and there’s no Android app or game this phone can’t run. From photography to gaming to watching movies, my experience with the 17 Ultra was hitch-free. The speakers are good too.
Photograph: Simon Hill
A big screen, powerful camera system, and top-notch performance can eat right into your battery life, but Xiaomi has managed to pack a 6,000-mAh battery into the 17 Ultra (up from 5,410 mAh last year). The jump gives it serious stamina, and this phone can go a couple of days between charges.
I wish Xiaomi had found a way to include Qi2, as magnetic wireless charging is the one thing I missed in switching from the Pixel 10 Pro XL (though you can sort of add it with the photography kit case). The 17 Ultra does support wireless charging at an impressively fast 50-watt rate, but the camera module makes it awkward to use with some wireless chargers. Wired charging goes up to 90 watts with the right adapter (not included).
Software used to be the big caveat, but I didn’t find much to complain about with the 17 Ultra. Xiaomi’s HyperOS apes iOS in places, and I still don’t the unlabeled quick-settings icons, but it’s mostly perfectly fine. The Leica interface, with minimalist app icons and photography widgets, is much nicer than the slightly cartoonish HyperOS, but it’s very easy to customize. I don’t think bloatware has any place on a flagship phone, so I’m always annoyed to see apps Facebook and TikTok preinstalled.
There’s plenty of AI onboard, if you care, and you can use Google’s Gemini or Xiaomi’s HyperAI for all sorts of photo and video editing, transcription, translation, summarization, and more. It’s not quite as slick and elegant as Google’s Pixel, but you can broadly achieve all the same results.
The Xiaomi 17 Ultra is not officially available in the US, but you can pick it up for £1,299 in the UK (1,499 euros in Europe). The Leitzphone costs £1,799 (1,999 euros). For folks who can get their hands on the global model more easily, it’s a near-flawless flagship contender that will satisfy anyone craving a big, powerful, photography-first phone.
Sumber Artikel:
Wired.com
