Xiaomi’s new Redmi phone lasts for three days on a single charge

The 9,210mAh dual-cell battery in the new Redmi Note 17 Pro Max is the biggest that Xiaomi has fit in any phone it’s sold in Europe — and remarkably, in some other markets the phone comes with an even larger 10,000mAh single-cell design.

As you can probably guess, this is a silicon-carbon battery either way, one with a high 16 percent silicon content, meaning it’s more energy-dense than most. It’s allowed Xiaomi to fit this huge battery into a phone that’s basically the same size as an iPhone 17 Pro Max, but 8g lighter and fractionally thinner too.

Xiaomi says the Redmi Note 17 Pro Max should give you “worry-free use” for up to three days, or up to 37 hours of continuous video playback. I haven’t been able to put the phone’s battery to the test just yet, but based on the battery life I’ve seen on other recent Android phones, I believe it.

Silicon-carbon cells come with some longevity worries, but the company says this battery should retain 80 percent of its capacity over 1600 charging cycles, which it estimates to be around six years of use. The 100W wired charging should take just over an hour to top the phone up to full, or 20 minutes to get about a day’s worth of power.

Elsewhere, the specs are a mixed bag: a basic Snapdragon 6 Gen 5 chipset, up to 12GB of RAM and 256GB storage, a 6.83-inch OLED display protected by Gorilla Glass Victus 2, and an IP69K rating. As with many Redmi phones, the cameras are the main compromise: a 50-megapixel main with a relatively small sensor, plus an 8-megapixel ultrawide and 32-megapixel selfie camera.

The Note 17 Pro Max is going on sale in Europe, Australia, Latin America, and other global markets, though not the US, at the local equivalent of $499. It’s the top handset in a series of four new Redmi Note 17 models. They share big batteries in common: even the $249, 4G-only Note 17 has a 7,700mAh capacity, which it combines with a mammoth 6.99-inch OLED screen and IP65 protection.

Photography by Dominic Preston / The Verge