Flagship camera phones have had a busy week. A day after Oppo unveiled the Find X10 Pro Max with three 200-megapixel rear cameras, Xiaomi has followed with the 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max. The larger Pro Max gets two 200MP Leica cameras, Qualcomm’s most powerful new mobile chip, a secondary screen on the back, and a main display with a clever privacy feature.
Qualcomm only announced its new flagship chips yesterday, and Xiaomi is already putting them to work. The Pro Max gets the Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6, while the smaller 18 Pro uses the regular Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6. Both are built on a 2nm process and can push their prime CPU cores to 5GHz.
Two 200MP cameras sit beside another screen
The Pro Max starts with a 200MP Leica main camera using a large 1/1.28-inch sensor, while another 200MP sensor handles the 3.2x periscope telephoto. The telephoto also supports macro shots from 12cm, and Xiaomi claims it captures 83% more light than the equivalent camera on last year’s model. A 50MP ultrawide is the last camera in the rear setup.
Speaking of the back of the phone, the small rear display is also sticking around for another generation. Xiaomi introduced it on the 17 Pro series, and the Pro Max now gets a 2.86-inch 120Hz OLED beside the cameras. It can show custom images, wallpapers, and app cards, while Xiaomi has also added AI-generated cards this time around.
Xiaomi has its own version of Samsung’s privacy display
The 6.9-inch OLED on the front comes with all the jazz you’d expect from a flagship, but the one feature worth paying special attention to is Xiaomi’s Smart Privacy Screen 2.0. It can restrict the viewing angle at the display level, making content much less visible to someone looking at the phone from the side.
Samsung introduced the first built-in Privacy Display on the Galaxy S26 Ultra earlier this year. Its implementation controls how pixels disperse light and can protect the entire screen or selected apps and notifications. Xiaomi takes a similar hardware-level approach using narrow-angle privacy pixels. The company claims side-view brightness can fall to around 1% beyond a 60-degree viewing angle when privacy protection is active.
Elsewhere, the Pro Max packs an 8,500mAh battery with 100W wired and 50W wireless charging. The smaller 18 Pro drops to a 7,000mAh battery and a 2.66-inch rear screen, but keeps the dual 200MP cameras and privacy display.
Chinese pricing starts at 6,999 yuan (~$1,045) for the Xiaomi 18 Pro Max and 5,999 yuan (~$895) for the 18 Pro. Both phones are on sale in China starting today, with no international launch details announced yet.
