Xiaomi 17T Review: A Camera-First Mid-Range Smartphone That You’d Like To Keep Just A Little Bit Longer

It was in October of 2023 when I realised something about the smartphone industry. I was hopping from one pandal to another during Durga Puja with four of my friends. It was then that I realised Xiaomi could make one of the best an mid-range smartphones on the market. That smartphone was the Xiaomi 13 Pro. Last year, a friend wanted to buy a compact phone and settled on the Xiaomi 15.

For 2026, the company released the Xiaomi 17. Then, a few months later, it was the Xiaomi 17T. Over the course of a month-long trip to Taiwan, Canada and England, I've come to really appreciate the smartphone. Yes, Xiaomi can make great mid-range smartphones, and despite rising prices, I hope they keep on churning them out, year after year.

The mid-range, or sub-flagship, category is one where companies have to make hard decisions about which hardware and software features to cut and which to keep. Cutting corners really irks consumers. Yes, companies do it to reach a specific price point, but sometimes it can be a dealbreaker.

With Xiaomi’s 'T' series, and the latest offering of the Xiaomi 17T, I hardly have anything to complain about. One of my major criticisms is that the company should have brought the Xiaomi 17T Pro to the country, but it may have been priced at a level that only few one would agree with.

The Xiaomi 17T has a lot going for it. There’s solid build quality, fantastic performance, a refined operating system I can get behind, capable and versatile cameras, and an excellent, vibrant 120Hz AMOLED display with Dolby Vision and HDR10+ support. The kicker, though, is the 6,500 mAh battery, which means you don’t need to have a charger handy at all times. There’s also the 5x telephoto camera that shines bright.

The Xiaomi 17T, like all smartphones, isn’t perfect, but it’s one I want to hang on to longer than my review period. It took me over a month to come to that conclusion, but I’m happy I took my time with it.

Camera, Battery And Display Stand Out

Let’s start with one of the biggest highlights of the Xiaomi 17T: the 50 MP 5x periscope telephoto camera. Thanks to the dedicated 5x periscope telephoto lens, you get genuine reach. You don’t need to get closer to the subject anymore. It retains far more details that other smartphones tend to struggle with. 5x may be a bit extreme, but there is no doubt about the immense quality here. Even at 10x, images look pretty good, and 20x shots are more than usable. It’s beyond that where things get blurry, but you’d hardly zoom that far in any case.

In fact, the telephoto lens is the same as on the Pro model. The resulting photos from the telephoto lens are sharp, with vibrant colours and great contrast. My favourite shots were the portraits that I captured. The 115 mm focal length can be a bit too long, but for the most part, I was impressed. Sharpness was great; lots of detail was retained; skin tones were accurate; and background blur felt natural.

Just one thing to note: turn off Xiaomi’s automatic lens switching.

The main camera features a 50MP 1/1.55-inch sensor, and that makes a big difference in low-light photography. In daylight photos, the main sensor is outstanding. There's plenty of contrast, colours are punchy and vivid, and the photos look good on social media and when blown up on a TV or monitor.

The Xiaomi 17T makes full use of the company’s partnership with Leica. You get a variety of styles to add to your images. There’s also Leica Live Moment. It records a short video every time you take a photo. This feature also works in Portrait Mode and saves it to the video recording as a separate file. Furthermore, you can shoot in LOG on all the rear lenses, and preview the output with a variety of LUTs. You can also shoot up to 4K 60fps on both the main and telephoto.

Battery life: The other thing that impressed me most about the smartphone was the 6,500 mAh battery. A day’s use out of the smartphone? Very easy. I often reached lunchtime on Day 2 before I had to reach for a charger.

Display: With the Xiaomi 17T, you get a 6.59-inch AMOLED display (2756 x 1268 pixel display resolution). It’s a 12-bit display and is certified for Dolby Vision and HDR10+. With a peak brightness of 3,500 nits, outdoor legibility was never going to be an issue.

It also has a 120Hz refresh rate. The bezels are slim, and there is an optical under-display fingerprint reader that’s fast and efficient. The display has excellent colour reproduction and great black levels. Yes, it isn’t an LTPO display, but that’s not a dealbreaker.

Performance: Powered by a MediaTek Dimensity 8500-Ultra, and combined with 12 GB of RAM, the smartphone flies through most tasks. The phone also never heated up during my testing, which is always a good thing.

What's Average In Xiaomi 17T

Software: The Xiaomi 17T runs HyperOS 3 (based on Android 16). The company has promised five years of Android upgrades and seven years of security updates. If you’re used to stock Android (say on a Pixel), then you’ll find HyperOS 3 very overwhelming.

It’s well-designed and has improved considerably recently, but it also takes a lot of inspiration from Apple. There’s also the carbon copy of Dynamic Island, which Xiaomi calls Hyper Island.

Along with this, you also get a tonne of AI features. There’s AI-assisted transcription, translation and summarisation. There are also editing tools, including swapping out the sky and cutting out unwanted humans. It’s mostly the run-of-the-mill stuff and nothing out of the ordinary.

What's Not Likeable In Xiaomi 17T

Plastic frame: The Xiaomi 17T gets a plastic frame, which makes the smartphone feel slightly less premium than its rivals. It may not make a difference to durability, but again, for the price, it should have been an aluminium frame.

No LTPO tech: Yes, it is a 120 Hz refresh rate panel, and the smartphone can dynamically adjust it when displaying static content; there is one thing missing. The display only goes down to 30 Hz, rather than 1 Hz.

Bloatware: There’s a little bit of bloatware when you first set up the Xiaomi 17T. It’s not a dealbreaker and can be cleaned up, but it’s annoying to have there.

67W charging support: This is a smartphone that costs upwards of ₹65,000 and is borderline flagship territory. Having support for just 67W charging feels a little underwhelming, especially for the asking price.

No wireless charging: Not a dealbreaker, but I would have loved for Xiaomi to have given the 17T some wireless charging love.

Ultrawide lens: It’s just not the same as the other lenses on this smartphone. Yes, that’s a problem with a lot of other smartphones out in the market as well, but I just have to mention it every time, in the hopes that one day, the ultrawide lens will finally match the quality of the other cameras.

Verdict: Best mid-range smartphone in India?

It borders on flagship territory, but it’s still safely a mid-range smartphone. Yes, it is one of the absolute best smartphones currently available in its segment in the market today.

It’s one of those smartphones that you’ll instantly fall in love with. It has an excellent display, extremely good battery life, one of the best cameras in a smartphone that’s available for under ₹70,000, best-in-class zoom, and solid performance.

What one needs to talk about is the market in general. Prices have shot up recently, and every new smartphone is launching at a higher price than its predecessors. It’s sad for the consumer, but it's the reality we’re living in. We, the reviewers, are looking at smartphones at their current prices and not at the price they should have been launched at if there wasn’t any RAM crisis going around.

Still, the plastic frame and the USB 2.0 port seem like minor inconveniences. What I just cannot overlook is the slow 67W charging (yes, we’ve all been spoiled over the last few years). Even some of the less expensive models in Xiaomi’s portfolio have faster charging.

Xiaomi knows it is targeting photographers rather than gamers with this smartphone, and it’s totally fine with that. For those who genuinely want a great 5x periscope telephoto experience without moving up to the flagship territory, their options are limited to the Xiaomi 17T.

At ₹64,999 (12 GB + 256 GB variant), I’d wait for a discount and grab it the moment it is under ₹60,000. At that price point, this is the easiest recommendation I can give to photographers.