Xiaomi 17T Review – Trusted Reviews

Design

• Similar look and feel to the previous generation
• Lovely colour options
• Excellent water and dust resistance

Xiaomi hasn’t altered the look of the new 17T too much against last year’s 15T, opting against a drastic redesign like Honor employed when moving from the 400 to this year’s 600.

This means we’re getting a mix of pleasant, polished, and brushed surfaces that almost give this phone a pearlescent quality when the rear surfaces catch the light – the fact I find myself talking about this phone’s design as I would a watch should tell you something. It still uses a predominantly plastic frame, though, which is a little bit of a shame, given that you get metal on the 17T Pro.

To Xiaomi’s credit, it’s offering the 17T in some fantastic colours, with a standard Black being offered alongside a Blue and the Violet I have here, which I think looks fantastic. There is also an Opal colour, which, judging by the press imagery, looks like a mix of white, orange and red, and would be a properly different, pearlescent finish.

The camera bump on the rear of the phone has been downsized compared to the previous generation, with Xiaomi saying it’s smaller and lower. It’s shallow enough of a protrusion to mean the phone will sit properly on a desk without a case. Some handsets can be a little wobbly by default, so this is nice to see.

The 17T comes with flat edges, which keep it right on trend with this year’s flagships, as it seems like we’ve moved beyond curved edges and back to flat again. The bezel around the edge of the screen is also rather thin to help the phone’s modern look.

Ports across the bottom are standard fare, with a USB-C port and pop-out SIM tray, and for buttons, you’ll find a volume rocker and power button in their usual places on the side. There isn’t an AI button anywhere to be found.

The IP68 water and dust resistance rating this phone achieves hasn’t changed from the 15T – while I’d usually bemoan the lack of progress, it’s already top-notch and makes this phone as rugged as it is stylish.

Screen

• 6.59-inch 120Hz 1268×2756 AMOLED
• 3500 nits peak brightness
• Smaller screen is pleasant to use

Both the 17T and 17T Pro utilise the same resolution screen, although the 17T’s is a little smaller at 6.59 inches, leading to a more compact feel in-hand that I’m a fan of. It’s virtually identical in size to the Honor 600’s screen, although with a slightly higher 1268×2756 resolution and 120Hz refresh rate for good measure.

Okay, it may not be as large as some of the other screens I’ve seen on more modestly-priced handsets, but I don’t mind that. The real estate on offer here is still more than enough for most folks. It’s also smaller than what you got with the older 15T.

Xiaomi promises a hefty 3500 nits of peak brightness here, presumably with HDR involved, which keeps this panel bright and sharp for indoor and outdoor use. At peak, it’s more than enough to deal with the sunny and warm days the UK has had in the time I’ve tested the phone, and I’ve been impressed with it. HDR support comes in the form of HDR10+ and Dolby Vision for punchy media consumption.

Having up to 120Hz of refresh rate on offer helps general zippiness, and is a surefire bump if you’re moving from a more standard 60Hz or slightly higher panel. This phone lacks the LTPO tech you’ll find on some more expensive phones, meaning the variable refresh rate works in a blockier manner. In my experience, I was mostly seeing and feeling the full 120Hz, for what it’s worth.

There is an under-display fingerprint sensor here, which is responsive to inputs for unlocking, although it suffers the same ailment as I’ve observed on some Xiaomi phones in that it’s mounted quite far down the screen.

Cameras

• Stronger camera setup than previous model
• Good detail and depth in ideal conditions
• Much better 5x telephoto lens

Xiaomi has leaned into its partnership with Leica for this mid-range handset and has rearranged the camera array a little to suit. The 17T comes with a triple camera array that features a 50MP f/1.7 main sensor with a 23mm equivalent focal length, a 50MP f/3.0 telephoto lens with 5x optical zoom and up to 120x digital zoom and a 12MP f/2.2 ultrawide snapper with a 15mm equivalent focal length.

For reference, the 15T had a 50MP f/1.7 main snapper, a 40MP f/1.9 2x telephoto lens and a 12MP f/2.2 ultrawide. On base specs alone, it’s the telephoto lens that’s had the biggest glow-up that could potentially take this phone above its key rivals.

The main 50MP snapper takes solid shots for most photography needs, with good resolution and detail resolution across different lighting conditions. Colours in bright daylight seemed poppy and punchy to my eyes, alongside great dynamic range that makes it a treat for social media shooting.

The 12MP ultrawide option isn’t as detailed as the main sensor, but still provides a consistent experience in terms of overall look, which makes it a ‌consistent experience when you want a shot that’s a little wider than the default 23mm equivalent focal length.

As for the telephoto, my theory was correct: it’s the most improved lens of the bunch, affording more detail at longer range than the 15T. Colours here are also good, and the detail resolved across the optical range is quite good. Go far into the digital zoom, though, and quality can fall off.

Low-light performance is strong from the main snapper, but in less-than-ideal conditions, when zooming in, detail levels aren’t as strong as in good light. One thing Xiaomi has added with the 17T for concert photography fans is a dedicated ‘stage’ preset that automatically pops up when it detects you’re taking a photo of someone on a stage, which is a pleasant touch.

The 32MP selfie snapper is decent for selfies. It provides good clarity and depth, plus good bokeh at its widest aperture. 

Performance

• New MediaTek Dimensity 8500 Ultra SoC
• Middling benchmark results
• Okay for more intensive gaming

The 17T features the MediaTek Dimensity 8500 Ultra SoC inside, the same chip you’ll find in the more affordable Poco X8 Pro, mated with 12GB of RAM and either 256GB or 512GB of internal storage, depending on the variant you choose.

It’s a reasonably powerful chip for a more affordable phone, but with the price tag in mind, the benchmark results in the likes of Geekbench 6 are more in line with phones down the price ladder, rather than up it. Single-core scores sit more in line with the likes of the Nothing 4a Pro and the Google Pixel 10a than the proper Xiaomi 17, and it’s much the same story for more intensive, multi-threaded workloads.

3D performance is hard to judge, as our usual 3DMark benchmark tests are firmware blocked by Xiaomi with the 17T, as has been the case in the past. It’s never been clear why this is, but it isn’t the most confidence-inspiring.

With this in mind, the Dimensity 8500 Ultra SoC can take on some games, be it more low-fidelity eSports-type choices. More intensive loads, such as heavy gaming with titles like Wuthering Waves, will bring this phone down a peg against the more obvious flagships, though.

For more prolonged and intensive use, the vapour chamber cooling that this phone has does an admirable job of keeping it cool. The phone can get warm under load, although it isn’t to the point where I felt as if I had to put the 17T down for any length of time.

Software & AI

• HyperOS isn’t as polished as its rivals
• Some useful AI features
• Reasonable OS and security update commitments

The 17T ships with Xiaomi’s HyperOS Android skin, one of the more divisive choices in the hoards of options out there. It’s never personally been my favourite against the likes of One UI or the Stock Pixel Launcher due to a lack of polish and the presence of pre-installed guff I didn’t ask for.

There are also Google’s latest AI additions, such as Circle to Search and utilising Gemini as an assistant. There are Xiaomi-specific AI gubbins here, which mostly feature in the gallery app when editing images, such as object removal and portrait blurring with an artificial bokeh effect. There are also a few more advanced options, such as background removal, FOV expansion, and AI-powered automatic video editing.

What I dislike about HyperOS is the amount of bloatware that comes pre-installed, such as Xiaomi’s own MI app store, as well as OneDrive, the Opera browser, and the Booking.com app. Honor is guilty of this, too, and I wish more brands would opt for a cleaner approach to their Android skins.

For the 17T, Xiaomi is committing to six years of security updates and five years of Android updates. giving some peace of mind for long-term use.

Battery Life

• 6500 mAh battery
• 67W wired charging
• No wireless charging support

One area where the 17T has definitely improved over its predecessor is with battery capacity, with this model coming with a hefty 6500mAh cell. This was easily enough to power through a couple of working days of my usual workloads – that’s around six hours of screen-on time when it came to an intensive day of multi-tasking and using my phone as normal.

For reference, that’s scrolling my social media, streaming music through Tidal or Plexamp, taking the odd photo when out and about, and dealing with a small amount of work in a pinch in Google Docs.

For a more scientific test, a cursory run of the PCMark Work V3.0 battery test at 50% brightness worked out to exactly 17 hours of use – a fantastic result.

The 67W charging speed is the same as before, and you’ll need a suitable charger to get the most out of the 17T in this regard. Using my 66W 6A charger revealed surprisingly slow speeds, with it taking 44 minutes to get back to 50% and some 95 minutes to get to 100%. You’ll probably want to find a decent PPS charger (or the HyperCharge charger, which doesn’t come in the box) for this one.

Moreover, this phone doesn’t support any form of wireless charging, which feels like quite a misstep in 2026, as many of its rivals do.

Should you buy it?