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Xiaomi’s new 18 Pro phones improve on Samsung’s privacy display

2026-09-23T10:24:50-04:00

Both 18 Pro phones feature rear displays, just like last year’s 17 Pro models. | Image: Xiaomi

Xiaomi's new 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max launched in China today, and feature a more flexible take on the privacy display tech introduced this year on Samsung's Galaxy S26 Ultra. They combine it with returning rear screens, two 200-megapixel cameras, and both of Qualcomm's new Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 chips. A global launch is confirmed for later this year - especially welcome since last year's 17 Pro phones skipped international markets.

The two 18 Pro phones look similar to the 17 Pros, with similar compact displays built around the rear cameras, capable of displaying notifications, taking selfies, playing simple games, and more.

The bigger …

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Xiaomi’s wide foldable promises more power than Samsung’s

2026-09-08T05:29:14-04:00

Xiaomi is the latest manufacturer to release a short, wide foldable phone, in the week Apple is expected to do the same. I got to try the 18 Fold behind closed doors at IFA last week, and while it looks and feels similar enough to Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold 8, superior specs make it feel like the phone I wish Samsung had made.

The 18 Fold is Xiaomi's first book-style foldable since 2024's Mix Fold 4, but the company has followed Huawei and Samsung in moving to a short, squat design. Xiaomi's phone goes further though: It's both shorter and wider than Samsung's, with a roughly 1.4:1 aspect ratio on both the 7.58-inch inner and 5.38-inch outer s …

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Poco’s F9 Ultra pairs an ultra-bright display with a glowing Bose subwoofer

2026-08-31T09:28:10-04:00

The F9 Pro and F9 Ultra both pack Bose speakers.

Xiaomi spinoff brand Poco has partnered with Bose for the second year in a row for its flagship F9 Pro and Ultra phones. The F9 phones double down on amped up audio, with a light-up subwoofer built into the Ultra, along with extremely bright displays, enormous batteries, and what should be Poco's best cameras yet.

The F9 Ultra sees the return of the Bose-branded 2.1 sound system introduced on last year's F8 Ultra. Poco has only slightly tweaked the hardware, upgrading each of the two main speakers while using the same subwoofer as before, but has changed the structure of the subwoofer mount to include a small LED ring around it. It's only w …

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Xiaomi’s new Redmi phone lasts for three days on a single charge

2026-08-27T03:36:03-04:00

The Note 17 Pro Max also has a photochromic design, which is revealed by sunlight.

The 9,210mAh dual-cell battery in the new Redmi Note 17 Pro Max is the biggest that Xiaomi has fit in any phone it's sold in Europe - and remarkably, in some other markets the phone comes with an even larger 10,000mAh single-cell design.

As you can probably guess, this is a silicon-carbon battery either way, one with a high 16 percent silicon content, meaning it's more energy-dense than most. It's allowed Xiaomi to fit this huge battery into a phone that's basically the same size as an iPhone 17 Pro Max, but 8g lighter and fractionally thinner too.

Xiaomi says the Redmi Note 17 Pro Max should give you "worry-free use" for up to three days, …

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Xiaomi’s SkyNomad N90 Max is an extended-range EV with a transforming interior

2026-07-30T11:44:47-04:00

Hopefully, nobody is giving coffee to that dog. | Image: Xiaomi

The SkyNomad N90 Max is the latest electric SUV from Xiaomi and its first extended-range EV, with a claimed range of over 1,705 km (about 1,059 miles). It will come in both five- and seven-seat configurations, as well as an N90 Max Camping Edition.

One of the big features of the N90 is its highly customizable interior. The front seats rotate 180 degrees, the center armrest slides out to become a small table, and the second row features zero gravity seats with footrests. The Camping Edition adds a pop-up top, a rooftop bed platform, an attachment point for a tent, and a detachable table. Some models will also include a fridge and overhead sp …

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Xiaomi 17T Pro arrives with the company’s biggest battery yet

2026-05-28T09:02:02-04:00

The 17T (left) and 17T Pro (right) are both bigger than the regular Xiaomi 17.

Xiaomi has announced the 17T and 17T Pro, two cheaper spins on its 17 series flagships. As is usual for the T-series, the focus is more on performance than photography, with the biggest batteries Xiaomi has included on any of its phones outside China yet.

The 17T includes a 6,500mAh silicon-carbon battery, while the 17T Pro goes even bigger with 7,000mAh, which I found to be enough to keep the phone running for up to two days. Xiaomi has included bigger batteries than these on previous China-only phones - the recent 17 Max has an 8,000mAh capacity - but never its international models, except those released under subsidiary Poco.

Both phone …

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The US gets the worst phones

2026-04-24T09:11:27-04:00

Apple and Samsung dominate the US phone market, and they've done so for years. Together with Google, they've shaped our sense of what a smartphone is and what it can do, pushing the boundaries of mobile photography, software, and processing power. But over the last few years, they've sat back, content to iterate rather than innovate - and in the interim, China's tech giants have plowed ahead. Now a gulf is growing between the phones on sale in the US and those available in the rest of the world. US phone buyers are missing out.

Some of the blame for that gap lies with Apple. Where it goes, the market follows, and in recent years it's gone s …

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Poco’s first Pro Max phone earns the name with an 8,500mAh battery

2026-03-17T08:29:52-04:00

The RGB light rings are surprisingly subtle.

Xiaomi subsidiary Poco has launched the X8 Pro and X8 Pro Max phones, both of which feature large silicon-carbon batteries, powerful chipsets, and 256GB of storage as standard, with stronger specs on paper than the recent Pixel 10A despite costing less. Both Poco phones also feature a surprisingly subtle take on RGB lighting, with small rings of LEDs inside each of their rear cameras.

The X8 Pro Max, a new tier in Poco's X line, is the more exciting of the two thanks to a huge 8,500mAh silicon-carbon battery - with an even larger 9,000mAh version available in India and some other markets. Either way, it should make for two to three days of …

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Xiaomi, unlike Google and Samsung, thinks camera hardware comes first

2026-03-03T10:24:35-05:00

Xiaomi’s new Leica Leitzphone has new hardware tricks including continuous zoom and a LOFIC sensor. | Photo: Dominic Preston / The Verge

When it launched the 17 and 17 Ultra in Europe on Saturday, Xiaomi bucked an industry trend: it didn't really talk about AI all that much. And it really didn't talk about AI when it showed off the two phones' cameras, including a special edition 17 Ultra co-created with Leica. According to Angus Ng, the company's director of communications and public relations, that's no mistake.

"We're still currently focusing on what is the limitation of hardware," Ng told me at MWC 2026, when I asked why its photography approach seemed so different to Google and Samsung's recent Pixel 10A and Galaxy S26 launches. "If it really comes to a point where we c …

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Xiaomi’s Leica Leitzphone mostly earns the name

2026-03-03T12:01:14-05:00

The Leitzphone has just launched internationally alongside a regular version of the 17 Ultra.

Xiaomi and Leica's long-running phone partnership just got a little closer. Alongside the new international release of its 17 Ultra flagship, Xiaomi has been entrusted with manufacturing a separate version that is the first Leica Leitzphone to release outside of Japan, following three Sharp-made models exclusive to the country.

In truth, the Leitzphone is a 17 Ultra with Leica branding and a rotatable camera ring, and apart from a few design tweaks, it's mostly the same as the Leica Edition of that phone already available in China. But the branding is a big deal: Leica hasn't let Xiaomi use its red dot logo on hardware until now, even thoug …

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