Review: Xiaomi 17 Ultra is the new cameraphone king with astonishing photos

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Phone: Xiaomi 17 Ultra (512GB)

Price: €1,499

Pros: best-in-class camera with unrivalled zoom lens

Cons: no 1TB storage option in Ireland

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For a long time, Xiaomi was known as a mass-selling Chinese phone brand that made phones strongly resembling Apple’s designs.

But in recent years, it has started to carve out its own niche as a feature-rich, relatively innovative marque that is pulling away from also-rans to eye a standalone number three spot behind the big two.

The newly-released 17 Ultra is probably the best example of this. In terms of raw ability, it is arguably now the single best, most powerful, most capable Android flagship phone out there.

It beats Samsung on its telephoto cameras. It tops Google Pixel and Nothing on power, speed and charging. And it’s more polished than what remains of OnePlus.

In fairness, it has the kind of price tag (€1,499 for 512GB) that would warrant an expectation of it being something special.

But it delivers. Over a week of using it, I’ve been genuinely taken aback by the capability and quality of its camera, in particular.

Its one-inch, 50-megapixel main camera sensor blows every other high-end smartphone away, letting in far more light and detail into photos.

And with the possible exception of Honor’s Magic 8 Pro, this Xiaomi 17 Ultra has, by far, the best telephoto zoom camera available on the Irish market.

Other cameras’ claims of using AI to make up for lost detail look like slop compared to the 17 Ultra’s astonishing (for a phone) close-ups from far away.

One small illustration of this is photographing the moon. I’ve shot thousands of photos of the moon over the years. As hard as it is to shoot clearly, even with a good standalone camera and a foot-long telephoto lens, it has always been impossible to make the moon even vaguely passable from any flagship phone.

Until now, that is. I was astonished to see that the 17 Ultra’s telephoto zoom (1/1.4 sensor) returned a genuinely decent photo of the moon, with its visible scorch marks and craters. What’s even more impressive is that it seemed to do this without recourse to AI, which is usually the cheat mode tactic used by other phones that claim exceptional telephoto zoom results but which don’t actually have the optical physics under their hoods to authentically back it up.

Another example of the 17 Ultra’s superiority is visible by choosing the dedicated 200-megapixel mode (which is set at between 3.5x and 4.5x zoom). It takes about six seconds to take the photo (which means it will rarely be used), but the minute detail in the resulting shot is jaw dropping — far more clarity than almost any other smartphone I’ve ever used.

There’s only one other phone on the market that comes close to this kind of performance from a telephoto zoom lens, and that’s Honor’s recently-launched Magic 8 Pro.

It’s a similar story from the 17 Ultra’s main camera, thanks to that huge (for a phone) one-inch sensor. The detail, low light performance and depth of field is technically superior to just about everything else on the market, including the iPhone 17 Pro Max.

Video performance is also excellent, although still a microbeat off both Apple and Samsung for stabilisation — you can still see very small judders or jitters sometimes.

A strong point for the 17 Ultra’s video, though, is the staggering number of features available within the video app. This includes 8K (at 30 frames per second) and some genuinely useful add-ons for people who need to use their phones in creative industries (such as mine). For example, there’s a teleprompter function where you can simply paste in a script for a video you’re recording for work (or pleasure).

The only price one pays for this camera superiority is a slight extra bulkiness (to house all of these great cameras) on the back of the phone. This feeds into a slightly thicker form factor compared to its main Android rival, Samsung’s Galaxy S26 Ultra.

While it’s almost identical in weight to the same-size-display S26 Ultra, it is very slightly heftier, at 8.3mm thick, compared to the S26 Ultra’s 7.9mm. It is still lighter and thinner than Apple’s iPhone 17 Pro Max (233g in weight and 8.8mm thick), though.

Oh, I should also mention that the camera is co-branded with Leica, a venerable German marque. I can’t honestly say what, if any, impact that has had on the camera quality, as these branding tie-ups are usually just glorified marketing deals. But it means that Xiaomi gets to call all of this phone’s cameras ‘Leica’ lenses.

The only downside I can think of here is that there is no 1TB storage option for the Irish market, at least at launch; it’s only 512GB. What is the point of having the world’s best cameras when your maximum storage is only half that of rivals such as Apple and Samsung’s? This is probably the only major drawback to recommending the 17 Ultra as a default photographer or videographer’s device.

So much for the camera on the 17 Ultra — what about the rest of its performance as a phone?

The vast majority of its features are at the top end of what you’d expect. There’s a 6.9-inch Oled display (with 3,500 nits peak brightness), a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip and 16GB of Ram.

The underscreen fingerprint reader is also exceptionally fast, which is a bonus.

Its overall look and feel is fairly sleek, with the exacerbation of that aforementioned camera bump on the back. Its colour options are muted, with black (my test model colour), white or ‘starlit green’ available. An IP68 rating gives it a general waterproof and dustproof status.

Battery life is fine, but not outstanding (even despite its large 6,000mAh size). I found that while it was completely fine for a single day’s use, you couldn’t rely on it for much more. It certainly doesn’t surpass any of its main rivals. On a more positive note, its charging speeds are excellent, at 90-watts with a wired charger and an impressive 50 watts for wireless.

There are plenty of AI features available here, including some general Google features (such as ‘Circle to Search’ and Gemini) and its own writing, search, ‘interpreter’ and creativity assistant. While phone manufacturers are still trying to position these features as the next big thing in smartphones, I think it’s increasingly clear that this isn’t the case; the vast majority of these AI features are only marginally useful, with little evidence that people use them much.

The only remaining issue, then, is its ‘HyperOS’ Android interface. Overall, it’s nicer than previous Xiaomi operating systems and you can expect to see four major OS upgrades for this model, as well as six years of security updates.

Overall, it’s hard not to recommend this phone. Despite its limited storage, it is the most impressive cameraphone, overall, on the market. And it is in or around the top for almost every other feature, too.