I Clicked Over 350+ Photos on the Xiaomi 17 Ultra: Here’s What I Think of It

The word “Ultra” has been thrown around so much in the smartphone industry that it’s slowly starting to lose its meaning. Almost every flagship phone now carries some version of the label, usually paired with a larger camera bump and a spec sheet that promises the world.

At the same time, smartphone cameras themselves have reached a bit of an interesting stage. Most high-end phones today take really good photos. Sometimes even great ones. The differences between them are no longer as obvious as they used to be unless you really start paying attention to things like colour science, dynamic range, zoom performance, or consistency across different lighting conditions.

Which makes evaluating a phone like the Xiaomi 17 Ultra a little more interesting and challenging.

I spent several days using the Xiaomi 17 Ultra as my primary camera and ended up capturing more than 350 photos along the way. These ranged from simple daylight scenes and street shots to portraits, zoom photography and low-light images.

Because at this point, the question isn’t whether a flagship phone can take good photos. The real question is whether it can do it consistently and actually live up to that “Ultra” badge. Short answer, yes, it does.

The Camera Hardware

The Xiaomi 17 Ultra features a triple-camera setup at the back, and the hardware itself already hints at where Xiaomi’s priorities lie this year.

Last year’s Xiaomi 15 Ultra (Review) came with a four-camera setup, so my first reaction when I saw the Xiaomi 17 Ultra’s triple-camera system was that this might be a bit of a downgrade. But once you look a little closer, that doesn’t really seem to be the case.

The most interesting camera here is easily the 200-megapixel periscope telephoto. It features a variable aperture that ranges from f/2.4 to f/3.0, and it’s also the camera responsible for Xiaomi’s continuous optical zoom system. I’ll get into that in a bit, but the idea here is fairly straightforward. Instead of jumping between fixed focal lengths like most smartphone zoom systems do, this setup aims to make zoom feel a lot more fluid.

Alongside that sits the main 50-megapixel wide camera with an f/1.7 aperture that uses a 1.0” sensor, making it the only flagship in the Indian market to still use this sensor, while the rest have opted for a smaller one. Then there’s a 50-megapixel ultra-wide camera with a 115-degree field of view and an f/2.2 aperture for wider scenes and landscapes. On the front, the phone carries a 50-megapixel selfie camera with an f/2.2 aperture.

When it comes to shooting formats, Xiaomi gives you quite a bit of flexibility. You can shoot in JPG, RAW, and URAW. The latter two retain much more information in the image, which means you get a lot more room to tweak things like highlights, colours, and exposure later if you’re editing the photos in software like Lightroom or Photoshop.

The Pro mode also brings a few tools that photographers will appreciate. You get things like Focus Peaking, Exposure verification, and a Histogram right in the camera interface. These are the kind of tools that help you check focus and exposure before taking the shot rather than fixing things later. There are also a couple of metering options available, including Face and Average metering. Face metering prioritises exposure based on the subject’s face, while Average metering looks at the entire scene and balances exposure across it. You can also switch between JPG and HEIF formats depending on whether you prefer smaller file sizes or maximum compatibility.

On the video side, the Xiaomi 17 Ultra can shoot up to 8K at 30fps. At 4K, it goes all the way up to 120fps, and it also supports Dolby Vision recording.

And since the cameras are tuned in collaboration with Leica, you get a few Leica colour options inside the camera app as well. You can switch between Leica Vibrant and Leica Authentic depending on the look you prefer. There are also several Leica filters, such as Leica Natural, Leica Vivid, Leica BW, and Leica BW High Contrast, if you want to experiment a bit.

What is Continuous Optical Zoom?

One of the more interesting things about the Xiaomi 17 Ultra’s camera system is the continuous optical zoom on its 200-megapixel periscope telephoto camera.

During the briefing, Xiaomi actually showed us the moving mechanism inside the module. Unlike most smartphone telephoto cameras that switch between fixed focal lengths, this one physically moves the lens elements inside the periscope. In simple terms, the lens shifts forward and backwards within the camera module, which changes the focal length optically.

On the Xiaomi 17 Ultra, this works in the range between roughly 75mm and 100mm. So instead of being locked to just two zoom levels like 3.2x (75mm) or 4.3x (100mm), you can actually shoot anywhere in between. That means focal lengths like 85mm or 90mm are possible as well, and they’re still optically achieved rather than digitally cropped.

The practical advantage here is that zooming feels more natural. On most phones, when you pinch to zoom, you’ll often notice the camera abruptly switching between lenses or suddenly cropping into the sensor. With the Xiaomi 17 Ultra, those transitions are far less noticeable because the focal length is changing mechanically inside the lens system.

What’s interesting is that this approach is still very rare in smartphones. Until now, the only phones that really experimented with continuous optical zoom were the flagship models from Sony Xperia, like the Sony Xperia 1 VII (and others). Most other brands rely on fixed focal lengths and then bridge the gaps using digital zoom or sensor cropping.

And while the zoom range here isn’t massive, it does give photographers more flexibility when framing shots. Small shifts in focal length can make a noticeable difference, especially for portraits or tighter compositions, and that’s where this system actually starts to make sense.

What is LOFIC?

LOFIC is a technology used on the Xiaomi 17 Ultra’s primary camera, which also happens to use the large 1-inch sensor. LOFIC stands for Lateral Overflow Integration Capacitor, and it’s essentially a sensor-level way of improving dynamic range.

Normally, when a camera sensor is exposed to too much light, the pixels can overflow, and highlights start to clip. That’s when you see blown-out skies or bright light sources losing detail. LOFIC tackles this by adding an extra capacitor inside each pixel that stores the overflow charge when the pixel starts filling up. So instead of the highlight data getting lost, the sensor can still capture that extra information and read it separately later.

In simpler terms, the sensor can hold onto detail from both the bright and dark parts of the scene at the same time. Because of that, it doesn’t have to rely as aggressively on multi-frame HDR processing to balance the image.

I tested this when comparing the phone with the Google Pixel 10 Pro (image above) in a tricky lighting situation where the sun was passing through a set of trees. When pointing the camera directly towards the light, the Xiaomi 17 Ultra produced a much more balanced image overall. The highlights were controlled while the foreground still retained good brightness. The Pixel handled the highlights well, too, but it tended to darken the foreground more to protect the bright areas.

Another place where this became obvious was during a nighttime fire show. The performers were throwing flames into the air, which created a very difficult exposure scenario. The Xiaomi 17 Ultra managed to keep the fire properly exposed while still brightening the performer’s face and the ground around them. In most cases, the flames would either blow out completely or the surrounding scene would turn too dark, but here the balance felt surprisingly natural.

The Output

Hardware is one thing, but for most buyers, what really matters is the output. And more importantly, whether the camera is reliable. When you press the shutter, you should have a fair idea of what the result will look like. That kind of consistency is something I personally value a lot in any phone, and so far, the Xiaomi 17 Ultra hasn’t disappointed.

Over the course of a few days, I ended up shooting more than 350 photos with the phone across a mix of lighting conditions and scenes. Bright daylight, indoor lighting, street shots, portraits, and low-light environments. For most of this time, I also had the Photography Kit Pro attached to the phone. With the kit on, the Xiaomi 17 Ultra almost starts to feel like a compact camera. It adds a physical shutter button, a dedicated video record button, and a dial that you can map to things like exposure or shutter speed. The kit also carries a small 2000mAh battery inside it, which can come in handy when you’re out shooting for long periods. That said, it’s an optional accessory and costs Rs 19,999, so you should only buy it if you see yourself taking a lot of photos with the phone.

One thing I noticed fairly quickly was how responsive the camera felt. The shutter speed is quite fast, even in the standard camera mode, which makes it easier to capture fast-moving scenes. That might sound like a small thing, but it can make a big difference. When I was previously using the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra and Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, the shutter lag occasionally made me miss shots, especially when trying to capture moving cars. The Xiaomi 17 Ultra feels much more immediate in comparison.

Colour science is another area where Xiaomi gives you some flexibility. Photos taken in Leica Vibrant mode come out quite punchy, with colours like greens, blues, and reds getting a noticeable boost. It works well if you plan on sharing the image directly on social media. If you want something a little more natural, Leica Authentic tends to look more balanced.

The primary camera delivers excellent dynamic range and detail. Even under harsh sunlight, the phone manages to keep things under control without making the image look overly processed. Highlights stay in check, and the overall exposure feels balanced enough that most shots don’t really need editing afterwards. That said, I found myself using the periscope telephoto camera more often than the main sensor. Out of the 350-plus photos I captured, a large portion came from that lens. I tend to prefer tighter compositions because they help isolate subjects and tell a clearer story within the frame.

The only little irk I had with the telephoto camera is that it prefers you to maintain a fair bit of distance from the subject for it to properly lock focus. If you get too close, the camera will usually throw up a small prompt asking you to move further away. It’s not really a dealbreaker, though. If you ignore the prompt and still take the shot, the photo can still come out good at times. But at that point, it becomes a bit of a gamble. Most of the time it just means stepping back slightly and reframing the shot instead of sticking to the exact composition you had in mind.

At a small café in Phu Quoc, for example, I noticed sunlight falling on a table in a way that cast a sharp, cinematic shadow on the couch behind it. I took the shot at around 75mm with the aperture at f/2.39 and ISO set to 50. A couple of friends who saw the image joked that it looked like a catalogue photo for furniture.

Portrait mode paired with the 75mm lens also works really well. In one shot, I had a takeaway coffee cup in the foreground while the background was filled with trees, a bright parking sign, and a blown-out sky. Despite the busy background, the phone managed to separate the subject cleanly while keeping the edges of the cup intact. That level of edge detection stayed consistent across most of the portrait shots I took.

Low-light performance was also quite reliable. Even during a fire show at night, the Xiaomi 17 Ultra managed to capture some excellent shots without me needing to jump into Pro mode and start tweaking the shutter speed. The performers were throwing flames high into the air, which is usually a tricky scene because the camera has to deal with both motion and extremely bright highlights. Despite that, the phone managed to retain the structure of the flames and sparks while still keeping the performer in focus and reasonably well-lit.

Final Thoughts

After spending a few days with the Xiaomi 17 Ultra and sorting through more than 350 photos, the biggest takeaway is fairly simple. This is a camera system that rarely surprises you in a bad way. And for a camera phone, that’s a very good thing.

Smartphone photography has reached a point where most flagship phones can take great photos. The difference now lies in how dependable the camera feels when you’re actually out shooting. With the Xiaomi 17 Ultra, I almost always knew what I was going to get the moment I pressed the shutter. And I often believe the best camera is the one you can trust when the moment shows up.

That’s really where the 17 Ultra shines. The large primary sensor paired with LOFIC handles tricky lighting surprisingly well, while the telephoto camera encourages you to frame shots a little more thoughtfully. It’s the kind of camera system that quietly pushes you to experiment a bit more.

Of course, all of this comes at a price. At around Rs 1,40,000, the Xiaomi 17 Ultra is easily one of the most expensive smartphones you can buy right now, and there are several excellent flagship phones available for much less. But photography has always been one of those hobbies where enthusiasts are willing to spend more if the tool helps them capture the moment the way they imagined it.

And if smartphone photography is something you genuinely care about, the Xiaomi 17 Ultra makes a very strong case for itself.

As for the rest of the phone, we’ll be coming up with a full review soon.