Xiaomi 17 Extremely hands-on: The cameraphone with a monstrous zoom

Xiaomi’s Extremely line of telephones has at all times been about one factor: Peak digital camera efficiency. The brand new Xiaomi 17 Extremely, launched forward of MWC 2026 in Barcelona, pushes the boundaries as soon as extra, although it suffers from related setbacks as its predecessors.

Notice that there was no Xiaomi 16 Extremely; the corporate determined to skip that quantity and go straight from the Xiaomi 15 and 15 Extremely to Xiaomi 17 and 17 Extremely, more likely to “catch up” with Apple, whose newest fashions additionally bear the quantity seventeen. Regardless of the change, the brand new Xiaomi telephones are very a lot an evolution of final 12 months’s flagship fashions.

On the cellphone aspect of issues, the Xiaomi 17 Extremely is a particularly succesful Android smartphone, with a 6.9-inch, 120Hz OLED show, a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip, 16GB of RAM, 512/1024GB of storage, and a 6,000mAh battery with 90W quick charging and 50W wi-fi charging. It is available in three colours: Black, White, and the sparkly Starlit Inexperienced (Xiaomi despatched me a black unit, however the Starlit Inexperienced seems approach cooler).

The place the Xiaomi 17 Extremely differs from the common Xiaomi 17, which additionally debuted right here in Barcelona, is especially in display dimension (6.9 vs. 6.3 inches), and the digital camera. The Extremely’s obtained an enormous, Leica-branded digital camera array on the again, with a 50-megapixel primary digital camera, a 200-megapixel telephoto digital camera, and a 50-megapixel ultra-wide digital camera, coupled with a 50-megapixel selfie digital camera on the entrance.

At 8.29mm thickness and 218 grams of weight, it is the thinnest and lightest Xiaomi Extremely cellphone ever.
Credit score: Stan Schroeder/Mashable

The 200-megapixel, 75-100mm telephoto digital camera offers this cellphone otherworldly zoom capabilities, with as much as 17.2x of “optical-level zoom.” I’ve tried it out, and was capable of take usable photographs at 100x zoom or extra, far past within the distance than what my bare I may see.

Left:
That is what the XIaomi 17 Extremely’s telephoto digital camera can do.
Credit score: Stan Schroeder/Mashable

Proper:
Credit score: Stan Schroeder/Mashable

Enterprise that far out, and AI takes the reins fairly heavy handedly, which you may see in the way in which the system recreates the letters of an indication you took within the distance. Nonetheless, in the event you like the thought of getting a digital camera that may take sharp photographs of a flower that is 100 yards away, that is the cellphone to do it with.

Left:
Credit score: Stan Schroeder/Mashable

Proper:
The zoom on this cellphone is so good, it is price offering one other instance. It is like having a set of binoculars.
Credit score: Stan Schroeder/Mashable

So as to add an exclamation level to the cellphone’s digital camera capabilities, Xiaomi additionally sells two non-obligatory pictures kits which consists of two completely different circumstances that flip the cellphone into one thing that basically seems like a compact digital camera, and add a couple of buttons, visible particulars, and battery life to the combo. The smaller Xiaomi 17 Extremely Images Package makes extra sense to me because the cellphone nonetheless retains considerably regular dimensions; the two-part Xiaomi 17 Extremely Images Package Professional makes it a bit too huge for my style.

The pictures kits look cool, however they make the cellphone loads bulkier.
Credit score: Stan Schroeder/Mashable

The kits, as cool as they could be, illustrate the obvious disadvantage of this cellphone: it is an excessive amount of of a digital camera. It is prime heavy, has a smaller battery than the common Xiaomi 17, and – as a consequence of its large digital camera bump on the again – does not help Xiaomi’s wi-fi, magnetic battery. Do not get me flawed, that is one highly effective cellphone, but it surely’s primarily geared toward pictures fans. Kudos to Xiaomi for making the Extremely lighter than ever, although at 218 grams it is nonetheless not precisely light-weight.