Xiaomi 17T and 17T Pro review: purple patch
The new T series is a strong addition to a strong Leica lineup
Xiaomi is announcing its T series a little earlier this year, only a few months after the global launch of the Xiaomi 17 and 17 Ultra. The 17T and 17T Pro have just been unveiled in full, and I’ve been using both models.
What is the T series? It hasn’t always been easy to pin down, often reusing various parts from Xiaomi’s vast supply chain. Last year, though, the 15T series got an industrial design of its own and stood out more as a relatively high-end option that allowed Xiaomi to pursue different priorities than the rest of its flagship lineup.
This year’s 17T series isn’t as big an overhaul, but the result is that Xiaomi now has a Leica phone for almost everyone.
The 17T mostly keeps the same design language as last year’s models: these are boxy phones with a squircle camera bump housing a quartet of round modules. That bump itself has been squared off at the edges this year, moving on from the 15T’s bevelled approach.
The most visible change is actually in the available colourways: the 15T series was solely offered in neutral metallic finishes, but the 17T and 17T Pro both have blue and purple options, which are darker and described as “deep” on the Pro model. They’re each available in black, too, with a further pearlescent “opal white” option for the 17T.
I actually kind of miss the raw silver option, which I thought looked great on the 14T and 15T, but I’ll never complain about more colours. In particular, the lighter “violet” I’ve been using on the 17T is a really good look.
The other main design change is that the 17T is now a little smaller than the Pro model, moving down to a 6.59” display while the Pro stays at 6.83”. It’s not a huge change, but they do feel different side by side — it’s roughly in line with the size disparity between the iPhone Air and the 17 Pro Max.
While the panels themselves remain similar, Xiaomi is making a big deal out of the steps it’s taken to ensure a comfortable viewing experience. This includes features like full-brightness DC dimming on the 17T Pro and 3,840Hz PWM on the 17T, which can alleviate eye strain that some people experience with other OLED phone panels, as well as a comprehensive approach to blue light reduction and ambient color shifting.
I’m not someone who’s ever suffered from flickering or low PWM rates on other devices, but I have noticed that the 17T Pro does a much better job than most Android phones of adapting its colours and brightness to various lighting environments. I often find myself brute-forcing white balance by manually using the reading modes on other devices; Xiaomi has taken a more user-friendly approach here.
On the spec sheet, the 17T Pro jumps to a MediaTek Dimensity 9500 SoC while the 17T has a Dimensity 8500 Ultra — that’s up from the 9400+ and 8400 Ultra respectively. The 9500 is MediaTek’s flagship chip and was announced the same week as the 15T Pro, so this earlier launch puts Xiaomi on a more favourable timeline.
As with the Xiaomi 17, the 17T and 17T Pro have received substantial upgrades in battery capacity. The 17T jumps to 6,500mAh from 5,500mAh, while the Pro gets an even bigger bump to 7,000mAh from the same prior 5,500mAh figure.
The Pro supports 100W fast-charging and 50W wirelessly, but the 17T is restricted to 67W with a cable and no wireless capability at all. That’s an unfortunate omission for a phone in this class.
The 17T Pro’s camera hardware is similar to the 15T Pro’s: a 1/1.31” 50-megapixel Light Fusion 950 sensor; a 1/2.76" 50-megapixel 5x telephoto camera and a 1/3” 12-megapixel ultrawide. The 17T has a smaller 1/1.55” Light Fusion 800 sensor seen on phones like the Poco M8 Pro, but gets the same 5x telephoto for the first time for a non-Pro model in the T series.
The bump from the Light Fusion 900 to the 950 is subtle but welcome, and it’s nice to see that the 5x telephoto lens now formally supports telemacro photography. As ever with the T series, though, the selling point here is that you get the excellent Leica image processing on less cutting-edge hardware that is generally up to the task.
This year’s phones also introduce a couple of new features. There’s a stage mode that optimizes the exposure for complex lighting situations like concerts; Oppo has been doing this on its recent phones, too, and it makes a big difference.
There’s also a new feature called Leica Live Moment, which is basically Xiaomi’s take on Apple’s Live Photos. There are a couple of advantages here, though — Leica’s image processing is applied to every frame of the moving image, for example, and it also works in Portrait mode. You can further customise the output with Leica watermarks and multi-frame collages.
I use Live Photos all the time on iOS but Android implementations have never really caught on with me, since they tend not to work as well across the entire operating system — let alone with others. While Xiaomi isn’t the first to try this, the Leica pipeline support and integration with apps like WhatsApp and Instagram make it a better attempt than most.
I’m not sure what (if anything) is happening in the second half of the year, but with this earlier T-series launch, Xiaomi has now set itself up for 2026 with a really strong lineup across screen sizes and Leica camera setups.
Here’s the rundown:
The Xiaomi 17 is a compact powerhouse with a 6.3” screen, a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 processor and a 6,300mAh battery. The 2.6x telephoto lens could be considered a pro or a con.
The 17T is a great mainstream phone at 6.59”, a Dimensity 8500 Ultra chip and a 6,500mAh battery. The lack of wireless charging will be a miss for many, but the 5x telephoto can be seen as a selling point over the regular 17.
The 17T Pro bumps the screen, processor and battery to 6.83”, Dimensity 9500 and 7,000mAh. This hardware is easily on par with Pro-level iPhones or Pixels, if not quite Chinese flagship-level.
The 17 Ultra pulls out all the stops with a 6.9” screen and a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset as well as by far the most advanced camera system, though it actually has the smallest battery of the lineup at 6,000mAh. (This can be augmented by the extra 2,000mAh in the Photography Kit Pro.)
So what does “T” really mean?
This lineup actually reminds me a lot of what Apple has done with the iPad in recent years. You have the iPad mini as a premium product for people who prefer smaller screens, the iPad Pro at the top with an overkill spec sheet, and two sizes of iPad Air in the middle.
In Apple parlance, “Air” has evolved from meaning “ultra-thin” to “the right pick for most people”. I think the same could be said for the new Xiaomi 17T phones. There’s something for everyone in this lineup, but the 17T Pro in particular is essentially playing the hits.