Xiaomi Redmi Note 17 series debuted today, and two devices were launched in China. Redmi Note 17 sits at the base, and then we have a Note 17 Pro version with some upgrades. Both these phones have huge batteries and some of the best displays you’ll find in the entry-level.
Xiaomi Redmi Note 17 Pro
There’s a bigger battery on the Pro and a faster chip. The display is a tad smaller, but the quality is certainly more premium on the Note 17 Pro. We’ll go over the battery first, because that’s one of the highlights. This newcomer is built around a huge 9000mAh cell.
Xiaomi has put its Surge G1 power management chip on this handset, and that 9000mAh battery is wired to a 67W fast charging kit with reverse 22.5W output to recharge other devices. We were not expecting a Snapdragon 6 series chip on the Note 17 Pro.
A Snapdragon 6S Gen 4 chip is used on the Redmi Note 17 Pro. That is a 2.4GHz platform, and they built it on a 4nm process node. Yes, the chip cuts it in power efficiency, but this is definitely a downgrade over the former Note 15 Pro’s Dimensity 7400 Ultra chip.
The screen is a 6.83” OLED flat and with 1.5K resolution. There’s a 120Hz refresh rate here, and then we have 3500nits peak brightness. It goes down all the way to 1 nit. The selfie cam is in a small punch hole, though its resolution is only 8MP (vs. Note 15 Pro’s 20MP).
The camera set on the back no longer has an ultrawide shooter, so it only takes photos from a 50MP main sensor, and because the Note 17 Pro has a weak SoC, the recording peaks at 1080p. 2MP depth mapper tags along, but that’s only for assistance.
Of course, this newcomer has a fingerprint on the screen, and there are two speakers for stereo output with an IP69K rating for water ingress and 3-meter drop safety on a marble floor. The OS it boots to is Android 16 Hyper OS 3.1. The Note 17 Pro sits at a base 1,599 Yuan (~PKR 65,000) MSRP for the 8/128GB trim.
Xiaomi Redmi Note 17
The phone cuts back the resolution to 1080p, but the Note 17 has a big 7” Samsung E4 Pro OLED. Yes, the refresh rate is still 120Hz, but they did level up the brightness to 1800nits here. Of course, you get thin bezels, a fingerprint sensor on the screen, and we have an 8MP selfie snapper in a punch hole.
The phone can do 45W charging and 22.5W reverse output. The battery size has gone way up from 5800mAh to 8000mAh on the Note 17, but they had to cut too many corners in other places. The durability has gone down to IP65, so it’s not fully waterproof like the older Note 15.
The chipset has been a huge disappointment, since they chose an SD 4 series chip for the Note 17, a Snapdragon 4 Gen 4 to be specific. This has a 2.3 GHz CPU and Adreno 613 for the GPU. Xiaomi has blatantly cut corners on performance to save production costs.
The RAM on this handset is LPDDR4X, and the storage is UFS 2.2, which will cripple the camera performance. Note 17 has a single 50MP main camera, which can only do 1080p recording. This phone also has Hyper OS 3.1 and Android 16 by default.
There’s an infrared remote on this huge device and NFC payment options. An SD card can be used here. There are tons of AI tools on the phone. Redmi Note 17 starts at the very bottom with 6GB RAM and 128GB storage, and its base MSRP is 1,299 yuan (~PKR 53,000).
