It’s been a packed week for flagship camera phones. Just a day after Oppo showed off the Find X10 Pro Max with its trio of 200-megapixel rear cameras, Xiaomi answered with the 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max.
The bigger Pro Max packs two 200MP Leica cameras, Qualcomm’s newest and most powerful mobile chip, a secondary screen on the back, and a main display with a genuinely clever privacy trick built in.
Qualcomm only revealed its new flagship chips yesterday, and Xiaomi wasted no time putting them to use. The Pro Max runs the Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6, while the smaller 18 Pro sticks with the standard Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6. Both chips are built on a 2nm process and can push their prime CPU cores all the way to 5GHz.
Xiaomi 18 Pro Max Cameras
The Pro Max leads with a 200MP Leica main camera built around a large 1/1.28-inch sensor, paired with a second 200MP sensor handling 3.2x periscope telephoto duties. That telephoto lens also handles macro shots down to 12cm, and Xiaomi claims it pulls in 83% more light compared to the equivalent camera on last year’s phone. Rounding out the rear setup is a 50MP ultrawide lens.
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Speaking of the back, Xiaomi is keeping the small secondary display around for another generation. It debuted on the 17 Pro series, and the new Pro Max carries a 2.86-inch, 120Hz OLED screen sitting next to the camera array. It handles custom images, wallpapers, and app cards, and this time Xiaomi added AI-generated cards into the mix as well.
Xiaomi and Samsung’s Privacy Display
You get a 6.9-inch OLED with all the usual flagship trimmings, but the feature genuinely worth calling out here is Xiaomi’s Smart Privacy Screen 2.0. It restricts the viewing angle right at the display level, making whatever you’re looking at much harder to read for someone glancing over from the side.
Samsung got there first with a built-in Privacy Display on the Galaxy S26 Ultra earlier this year, using a system that controls how pixels scatter light and can shield the whole screen or just specific apps and notifications.
Xiaomi takes a similar hardware approach with narrow-angle privacy pixels of its own. The company claims side-view brightness drops to roughly 1% once you’re past a 60-degree viewing angle with privacy mode switched on.
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Battery-wise, the Pro Max houses an 8,500mAh cell with 100W wired charging and 50W wireless charging. The smaller 18 Pro steps down to 7,000mAh and a 2.66-inch rear display, though it keeps the dual 200MP camera setup and privacy screen intact.
In China, pricing starts at 6,999 yuan, roughly $1,045, for the Xiaomi 18 Pro Max, and 5,999 yuan, around $895, for the standard 18 Pro. Both phones go on sale in China starting today, though Xiaomi hasn’t announced any international launch plans yet.
