The best never rest, as they say. As soon as Apple dropped its latest iPhone, companies jumped in to announce new devices. Nothing touted a September hardware launch, Meta announced the Meta Connect event, and Xiaomi’s been the most aggressive, dropping news on its latest flagship. I say the most aggressive because what Xiaomi’s doing isn’t riding the Tech-tember wave, it’s quite literally putting the iPhone in its crosshairs. Revealed just yesterday to the press, Xiaomi’s 17 Pro Max has a pretty impressive trick up its sleeve… or its plateau, so to speak.
The upcoming flagship boasts a design (and name) that’s quite similar to the iPhone 17 Pro Max. You’ve got a simple back with the massive camera plateau and lenses, but unlike the one on the iPhone 17 Pro series, this one also packs a screen. Xiaomi made this announcement via its official Weibo page, revealing a first look of the 17 Pro Max while also pretty much confirming that it was skipping the 16 Pro series (which would have launched this year) entirely. This means not only are they locking horns with Apple on a design front, they’re also effectively skipping a generation so that both flagships have the exact same name. I wonder what Apple’s lawyers would think!
The official word on the Xiaomi 17 Pro Max is still fairly limited, and we’ve only got one image to go by, but it’s enough to sort of chart Xiaomi’s product evolution. This isn’t the first time Xiaomi’s put a screen on the back of a phone. The Mi 11 Ultra had a tiny display too, and this feels like the natural upgrade to that. However, with the way the display sort of wraps around the two camera lenses, it’s a lot like the Mix Flip 2 or even the new flip phones from Samsung and Motorola. The screen covers the entire plateau, with what I assume are the two main cameras – the primary shooter and the periscope telephoto shooter.
You’d probably wonder why this Pro phone only has 2 camera lenses, but there’s a third one hidden right below it. Beside the flash is a third lens, existing outside the camera plateau, with Leica branding on the side. What these lenses are capable of capturing is something only time can tell, but it’s truly remarkable how Xiaomi just took a mere 6 days to look at the iPhone 17 Pro’s camera plateau and go ‘yeah, we can do you one better’.
The image shows a clock widget on the secondary screen, but it could easily become as useful as a rear-facing viewfinder or even a notification center. We’ve seen Nothing create a Glyph Matrix for its 3rd gen flagship, although the excitement died down pretty fast as people raged over the obscenely high price tag for the phone. Given that Xiaomi’s previous flagship was also in the same $700+ price range, it only makes sense that if someone had to choose a cutting-edge phone with a rear display, they’d choose a vivid color one over a low-res Glyph Matrix… but more importantly, it really shows that camera bumps are dead space that can be efficiently utilized. Now until Apple figures out that a Camera Plateau can be turned into a Dynamic Plateau by slapping a screen on, we’re just going to have to see what Xiaomi pulls off with this phone.
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