Xiaomi 18 Pro Max: They've Done It Again!

0:02 So this is the new iPhone 18 Pro Max, and this is the new Xiaomi...

0:07 18 Pro Max.

0:08 Do you remember this from last year?

0:11 One of the most interesting and best phones from all of 2025,

0:15 the Xiaomi 17 Pro Max,

0:16 is a phone designed specifically to one-up the iPhone 17 Pro Max.

0:20 And now they're back for more.

0:22 So when I saw that they're doing this again, I had to check it out, of course,

0:26 just to see if they're also doing an 'S' year update like Apple,

0:30 or if they're taking it to the next level again somehow.

0:33 So within a month of the iPhone 18 Pro Max coming out,

0:36 sure enough, this is the Xiaomi 18 Pro Max.

0:38 As expected, this phone still kind of looks like an iPhone,

0:42 it's still shaped like an iPhone,

0:43 still has a lot of features that will be familiar to iPhone users.

0:47 But it turns out there is a lot more going on here.

0:50 So basically, if last year's phone was trying to one-up the iPhone,

0:54 this year's update is trying to one-up the iPhone's update.

0:58 So let's just start at the front here.

0:59 Right, so you probably already know the iPhone's

1:01 update was getting that slightly smaller Dynamic Island.

1:04 Xiaomi already had just a hole punch cutout,

1:06 so there's not really much more to shrink

1:08 down here without going to an under-display camera,

1:10 which would compromise quality pretty hard.

1:12 They also already have the under-display ultrasonic fingerprint reader,

1:15 which is super fast.

1:16 So what's their display upgrade?

1:17 Well, they decided to borrow a feature you

1:20 might remember from, from the Galaxy S26 Ultra, a whole privacy display...

1:24 So this new screen can basically delete side-viewing

1:26 angles with the press of a single button.

1:29 And I think they've even improved on Samsung's feature.

1:32 So, yes, you can turn it on for the whole screen or you

1:35 can have it turn on like automatically just for certain apps or notifications,

1:39 or only in certain places.

1:41 But they also added a feature called gaze detection.

1:43 So if you're using your phone and, and the front-facing

1:47 camera detects another person that's not you gazing at your screen,

1:50 it'll notify you and tell you to turn on privacy display,

1:53 which is kind of hilarious.

1:55 So that's a real display upgrade over last year.

1:58 Now, the iPhone also got a chip update, right?

2:01 This went from the A19 Pro to the A20 Pro, which is its first 2-nanometer chip.

2:05 And that did deliver huge gains.

2:07 That's gonna be hard to beat.

2:09 But of course, of course,

2:10 this phone is up to that challenge because this phone also got a chip upgrade...

2:14 and it's also their first 2-nanometer chip,

2:17 because this is one of the first phones

2:19 in the world shipping with the new Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme...

2:22 Gen 6.

2:23 Basically a flagship processor we're going to start seeing

2:26 in a bunch of the highest-end phones for the next year.

2:29 And yeah, on paper this chip is a beast.

2:31 There are cores with 5 GHz clock speeds now, which is insane.

2:35 And yeah, the benchmarks do not disappoint.

2:37 It's the 15 to 20% improvement

2:39 from the already great chips from, from last year...

2:41 And so of course flipping through the phone and a ton

2:44 of pre-installed apps 'cause this is the China version of the phone,

2:47 it absolutely cooks.

2:48 That is no surprise.

2:49 And I'm very curious to see how other phones perform when they do get this chip.

2:53 By the way, the names, Qualcomm, the names are terrible.

2:57 The Pro version of this phone gets the Snapdragon 8...

3:01 Elite...

3:02 Gen 6, but the Pro Max has the Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6.

3:08 Terrible names.

3:10 But yeah, the Extreme version is basically the one with slightly

3:13 higher clock speeds for the absolute bleeding edge best phones.

3:16 So yeah, 2-nanometer chip in this phone...

3:18 What a time to be alive.

3:20 And they pair it with...

3:21 16 gigs of LPDDR5X RAM with UFS 4.1 storage with a huge vapor chamber...

3:26 This is like a great performing phone.

3:28 It could be a gaming phone, but it's not, it's just a regular flagship.

3:33 Now the iPhone also got substantial...

3:35 battery gains, mostly because of the new 2-nanometer chip,

3:38 but also from a little bit of extra battery capacity.

3:41 This phone also gets the 2-nanometer chip gains,

3:44 but it also goes from a 7,500 milliamp-hour battery...

3:48 to an 8,500 milliamp-hour battery on the Pro Max.

3:51 Thanks to this higher density of silicon.

3:53 These numbers are just getting ridiculous now.

3:56 I just saw a OnePlus 16 launched in China with a 9,000 milliamp-hour battery,

4:00 which, we got phones cracking the 10,000 mark now, which is just nuts.

4:05 And it almost kind of feels a little bit like the megapixel count,

4:08 where this doesn't guarantee you have the best battery life.

4:12 But it doesn't hurt.

4:13 By the way, that's also without getting rid of the SIM card tray, and...

4:17 without getting heavier than the Pro Max iPhone it's competing against...

4:20 And it still comes with the 100-watt charger in the box,

4:23 so it charges ridiculously quickly...

4:25 And this is what I'm talking about, like 50, 50 watts on the new iPhone.

4:28 That's nice and all, but it's just, it's really hard to beat the crazy

4:32 charging rates that silicon-carbon batteries are getting.

4:34 I plugged this phone in for five minutes and it basically locked

4:38 at 80 watts the whole time and it went from 12 to 25%...

4:42 in five minutes.

4:43 It's great.

4:43 Plus 50-watt wireless charging with the right accessory...

4:47 and...

4:47 reverse wireless charging.

4:49 So you can use this phone...

4:50 as a battery bank for your iPhone, charge it from 0 to 100,

4:54 and then still have battery leftover for yourself for the rest of the day.

4:59 That's kind of a crazy flex.

5:02 So then, okay, the last big upgrade for the iPhone was their new...

5:06 camera system.

5:07 It's basically the same 48-megapixel cameras all the way around,

5:10 but with a new variable aperture lens on the main camera.

5:13 It's a cool feature.

5:14 It's interesting.

5:14 It's a more subtle thing.

5:15 Like, if you've watched the full review,

5:17 you can see the slight difference that it makes.

5:19 The manual controls for it are pretty cool.

5:22 The Xiaomi, though.

5:24 Completely revamps their entire camera system.

5:26 So instead of triple 50-megapixel cameras again this year,

5:29 it's a new 200-megapixel main camera, a new 200-megapixel telephoto camera,

5:34 and this down here is a 50-megapixel ultrawide...

5:36 So there is no variable aperture.

5:38 No, but instead it's just kind of relying

5:40 on having the better sensors across the board.

5:43 The telephoto sensor in particular.

5:45 It's absolutely massive.

5:47 It's literally the same size as a lot of other phones' primary cameras.

5:51 So it's a 3.2x zoom,

5:52 but cropability factor is very high when you have 200 megapixels to play with...

5:57 And then of course, the rest of the camera is full-featured too.

6:01 You can shoot 200-megapixel mode,

6:03 you can use different Leica color profiles, you can shoot 8K video...

6:06 It's not missing anything.

6:08 And then all of this is not even mentioning the star feature of this phone,

6:11 the display on the back, which you can use as a camera viewfinder to take

6:15 the highest quality selfies the world has ever seen.

6:17 And then a whole bunch of other things too.

6:19 So this is not a full review.

6:21 I can't daily this Chinese phone here.

6:22 There are rumors of a global launch though, so that is exciting.

6:25 But I was able to get Google Play on this one and I've been playing with it,

6:29 and I do have some thoughts on what it's been like to use this for a bit.

6:33 And you know, I think with these iPhone comparisons,

6:36 a lot of what comes up usually is that...

6:38 it's not always the numbers that make the big difference, it's the experience.

6:41 Right?

6:42 So these Android phones...

6:43 have amazing hardware, they...

6:45 these massive numbers.

6:46 But the experience and the optimization is what makes the iPhone great.

6:50 I genuinely think if Xiaomi can work on a few things here, they can have both,

6:55 like, they can have the smoothness

6:57 and the optimization and the efficiency and the...

7:01 huge numbers and raw horsepower.

7:03 So this new privacy display, to start, it's interesting, you know,

7:06 we know how Samsung does theirs

7:08 with the half-normal pixels and half-narrow pixels.

7:11 Xiaomi is doing it a bit differently here with what they're calling HyperRGB.

7:14 Basically, they have the complete red, green,

7:17 and blue subpixel array for every pixel.

7:19 So when they switch to privacy display,

7:21 you don't get as big of a perceptible drop in resolution.

7:25 But also the thing is it only obscures...

7:27 left and right viewing angles, not above and below.

7:31 So yeah, to me it's an interesting trade-off...

7:33 Not as big of an overall hit to image quality as Samsung's,

7:36 but it does still have some of the other downsides,

7:39 like slightly worse overall viewing angles and this kind

7:42 of a rainbowy sheen with off-axis viewing.

7:44 But Xiaomi's whole panel is also overall brighter to make up for it.

7:48 It hits 4000 nits now...

7:49 and honestly, I think it's all worth the trade-off.

7:51 To me, this privacy display feature...

7:53 is great.

7:54 My only gripe, literally my only gripe is why

7:57 is this not in display settings on this phone?

7:59 Seems like that's where it should obviously be.

8:02 Instead it's under privacy settings,

8:05 which I guess that it's fine, but kind of odd.

8:09 Doesn't matter though, because there's a new button here on the side.

8:13 But in a bizarre move, Xiaomi has restricted the use of this button somehow...

8:18 more than Apple did with their own Action Button.

8:21 So this button to Xiaomi is specifically an AI button.

8:25 So a press of this button can either do nothing

8:28 or add whatever you're doing to the Xiao AI memory, which I obviously don't use.

8:33 I wish I could launch literally any other app I want with that button...

8:37 But a long press can at least do a little bit more things.

8:40 So you can have it launch a voice note or switch to silent

8:43 or Do Not Disturb or instantly turn on the privacy display for the whole screen.

8:48 Maybe when you get that gaze

8:50 notification when someone's looking over your shoulder.

8:52 But also, Xiaomi, let us do other things

8:55 with a single press of that button, obviously, please.

8:58 That back screen is still as useful as ever.

9:00 Plus with a couple extra little things, like,

9:02 I like that the camera rings are now flush with...

9:04 with the glass here.

9:05 It just makes it that much easier to kind of swipe across and open the camera.

9:10 Maybe also makes it easier to smudge the camera glass,

9:13 but yeah, otherwise, same idea, highly customizable...

9:16 And if you look closely, there's also...

9:18 now...

9:18 speakers hidden back here under the screen.

9:21 So one at the top and one at the bottom,

9:23 which I thought may end up doing something funky with the sound quality,

9:27 but it turns out to really not make a huge difference.

9:30 If anything, it just makes it sound like

9:32 the speakers are facing away from you now.

9:34 So you got to kind of cup your hand behind the back to get the full effect.

9:38 But still, the whole back screen thing feels

9:40 like something we'll probably never see on an iPhone.

9:42 So whatever they choose to do

9:44 with this back screen just continues to be unanswered.

9:47 Sure, the shape of the camera island is the same as the iPhone's camera island,

9:51 but is the iPhone doing a back screen desk calendar...

9:54 or a step counter...

9:55 or random fuzzy pet animals?

9:56 Of course not.

9:57 They're not doing that.

9:59 Plus there's a whole bunch more you can download.

10:01 And then these new cameras themselves are actually very welcome.

10:04 You know, the primary camera last year was already huge and great.

10:07 It's huge and great again here.

10:09 But the zoom camera's big upgrade...

10:11 is something else.

10:12 Like phones like this that have an amazing zoom camera just make

10:15 me want to go take tons of zoom photos all the time...

10:19 Pretty classy example of the tool shaping the behavior.

10:22 I'm sure you can relate.

10:23 Unfortunately, the ultrawide...

10:24 is still kind of an afterthought,

10:26 which you can kind of tell by looking at it on the back of the phone.

10:29 But, you know, that's all right.

10:30 It's better than not having one.

10:32 There's also a bunch of AI stuff in this phone.

10:35 Again, you can kind of take it or leave it.

10:37 I obviously don't use the assistant built in, but what I hear and what

10:41 I've read is that it's very well

10:42 integrated into the rest of the Xiaomi ecosystem.

10:45 And for those who don't know, the Xiaomi ecosystem is...

10:48 just as full-featured as anyone else.

10:50 They make tablets, they, they make smart lights,

10:53 they make appliances, they make...

10:55 cars.

10:56 But you know, the real plan when you see companies...

10:59 make phones like this is to make it

11:02 as comfortable as possible for iPhone users to switch...

11:05 just by offering everything that they have on that other side of the fence.

11:09 So, yes, that's including a lot of the aesthetics...

11:12 Like, a lot of the stock apps look and feel the same,

11:15 so you never feel far from home.

11:16 Like, oh, what's that?

11:18 You like the Dynamic Island?

11:19 Great!

11:20 We've got a Dynamic Island here at home.

11:22 Oh, you like the quick controls from the top right-hand corner?

11:25 Of course you do.

11:26 We've got that here, too.

11:28 Oh, you like liquid glass?

11:29 We've got liquid glass, too.

11:31 We might not call it the exact same thing, but...

11:33 we got that.

11:34 And if it's the iPhone duo you're into...

11:37 Well, they also have a version...

11:38 of that, too...

11:39 Get subscribed to see that...

11:41 very soon.

11:42 It's Techtober.

11:42 We're going to check all this stuff out either way.

11:46 Thanks for watching...

11:48 Catch you guys.

11:49 Next one...

11:49 Peace!