Xiaomi 18 Pro Max is first phone with 5 GHz processor as it packs giant 8,500 mAh battery

Xiaomi kicked off its autumn launch event today with two new flagship phones, the Xiaomi 18 Pro and Xiaomi 18 Pro Max, and the big story around them this time around is the chipset rather than the cameras or the signature screen on their backs.

Both phones' processing power is built on Qualcomm's newest 2 nm process, and both claim the highest clock speed ever seen on a mobile platform, at the piercing 5 GHz.

Xiaomi 18 Pro/Max specs and processing power

The standard Xiaomi 18 Pro ships with the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6, a chip Xiaomi says peaks at 5 GHz in a first for any smartphone processor. Alongside the clock bump, Xiaomi quotes a 35% GPU performance gain, a 40% drop in GPU power draw, and an 80% jump in NPU inference speed, with overall computing power up 15%, just as Qualcomm promised at launch.

The Pro Max steps things up with the Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6, a beefier bin of the same silicon family. It also tops out at 5 GHz, but Geekbench data points to a slightly different core layout underneath, with two primary cores running at 5.11 GHz, three performance cores at 4.03 GHz, and three efficiency cores at 2.74 GHz, paired with an Adreno 850 GPU. Qualcomm and Xiaomi frame this as the true flagship bin, complete with a new GPU and NPU architecture, an OFFSET PoP chip package for better heat transfer, and a fresh vapor chamber loop cooling system. Xiaomi was bold enough to promise a full hour of sustained maximum frame rates in demanding games, something that would have sounded unrealistic on last year's hardware.

The rest of the spec sheet scales accordingly, as Xiaomi bills the 18 Pro and its 6.4-inch flat display as "a small-sized flagship imaging technology product," while the 18 Pro Max is referred to as the "large-screen flagship" in the same vein. Rather explicable, given that both share Xiaomi's new M11 emitting material with a full RGB subpixel arrangement and peak brightness up to 4,000 nits. The panels gain a hardware-level privacy mode that Xiaomi says keeps the picture sharp when privacy mode is on and looks completely normal when it's off, with no loss of clarity when viewed directly.

The 18 Pro packs a big 7,000 mAh battery in its compact body, while the Pro Max carries an even larger 8,500 mAh cell.

Camera

Both phones share the same full focal length Leica triple camera setup with a 200 MP main sensor with a 1/1.28 inch size, titled the Light Hunter 960. The Pro Max, however, uses the 960L with LOFIC tech that Xiaomi says helps preserve detail in very bright and very dark parts of a scene, so it could perform slightly better in high contrast scenarios. 

Next to it sits a second 200 MP Leica 3x periscope telephoto, a 1/1.56 inch unit offering a 75 mm equivalent focal length and macro focusing down to 12 cm. Unlike the Oppo Find X10 Pro Max, which became the world's first phone with a triple 200 MP camera, the ultrawide snapper on the Xiaomi 18 Pro models is equipped with a 50 MP Leica camera.

Both phones also debut Xiaomi's new "Legendary Moment" AI imaging mode, which keeps raw sensor data on the device itself and offers three classic camera looks locally, while a cloud pipeline reconstructs a more authentic optical rendering after the fact. Both handsets run HyperOS 4 out of the box and lean heavily on Xiaomi's on-device AI features for photography and system control.

Xiaomi 18 Pro Max price and release date

The Xiaomi 18 Pro starts at 5,999 CNY ($839) for the 12GB/256GB base model, rising to 6,999 CNY (~$979) for 12GB/512GB, 7,999 CNY (~$1,119) for 16GB/512GB, and 8,999 CNY (~$1,259) for the top 16GB/1TB configuration.

The Xiaomi 18 Pro Max starts higher, at 6,999 CNY (~$979) for 12GB/256GB, climbing to 7,999 CNY (~$1,119) for 12GB/512GB, 8,999 CNY (~$1,259) for 16GB/512GB, and 9,999 CNY (~$1,399) for the top-shelf 16GB/1TB model.

Both phones went on sale in China immediately after their announcement in four colors—Galaxy Blue, Ice Peach Pink, and classic black or white—and there have been hints of a global release as well.