It was the great Mark Twain who once wrote, “There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope; we give them a turn, and they make new and curious combinations”.
In the world of tech – and especially the smartphone industry in 2025 – that couldn’t ring truer.
The story of 2025 smartphones is one of homogeneity; no matter whether you opt for a Samsung, Xiaomi, Oppo, OnePlus, Honor, Motorola or even Apple smartphone, they offer the same broad look and feel.
They’re all rectangular combinations of metal and glass, and most even sport the same combination of flat edges and rounded corners – the ‘in’ design at the moment – that make them even harder to tell apart from a distance.
It’s not just the general design of smartphones either; it gets more specific than that.
Take Apple’s Action Button for example; it made its debut on the iPhone 15 Pro range in 2023, and was one of the first smartphones on the market to offer a truly customisable button. Some Android phones have let you remap existing hardware buttons in the past, but Apple took it to the next level.
Fast forward a couple of years and we’re now, unsurprisingly, seeing similar customisable buttons appearing on other phones. They, of course, have different branding – OnePlus calls it the Plus Key, Oppo calls it the Quick Button and Honor calls it the Smart Key – but they’re all functionally the same thing. A key that you can customise to run a specific action.
It’s not the only example; there’s a myriad of software and hardware innovations that were once exclusive to a specific smartphone before being shoved into Twain’s proverbial mental kaleidoscope and integrated into much of the competition.
What I’m trying to say is that smartphone manufacturers often copy good ideas. It’s just what happens. But Xiaomi’s launch of the Xiaomi 17 range proves that sometimes manufacturers can go a little too far into copycat territory.
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery – until it isn’t
The Xiaomi 17 series has been revealed in China, and it’s almost certainly going to make it to other regions sometime in early 2026 – but you’d be mistaken for thinking we’ve skipped a generation.
That’s because, following the release of the Xiaomi 15 range earlier this year, you’d expect the Xiaomi 16 range, but that isn’t the case.
Now we already know that some Chinese brands skip certain numbers due to local traditions and superstitions – but there’s nothing like that happening here. There are no negative connotations associated with the number 16 in China; none that I could find, anyway.
Xiaomi 17 Pro
Instead, the jump in numbering appears to be simply a result of trying to replicate the iPhone 17 branding.
I could swallow that pill if that were the only move Xiaomi was making, but it goes beyond a simple 17 branding dupe; it goes even further with the Pro models, dubbed Pro and Pro Max. You know which brand is synonymous with the Pro Max branding in particular? Yep, you’ve got it.
I can only imagine that Xiaomi is trying to do a sort of SEO grab here; when people search for iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max, the Xiaomi 17, Xiaomi 17 Pro and Xiaomi 17 Pro Max might also come up in the search results.
Incredibly, though, the copycat nature of the Xiaomi 17 series goes beyond branding; the Pro models look very similar to Apple’s recently released alternatives.
Not only do the phones sport a similar footprint to Apple’s alternatives, but they also almost exactly copy the look of Apple’s new camera housing.
With the iPhone 17 Pro models, the camera housing extends across the rear of the phone, with the trio of lenses in the same triangular position as previous iPhones in the top left. Apple’s reasoning behind this is clear: it provides extra space for components, allowing for a larger battery.
Xiaomi’s 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max feature the same wide camera housing, with a similar camera layout on the left-hand side. Granted, Xiaomi has differentiated itself by embedding a screen into the housing that’ll make it easier to take selfies with the rear lenses, see the time and notifications when the screen is down and more – but the base inspiration is clear.
You could argue that, with the Xiaomi 17 range appearing so soon after the iPhone 17 range, the company wouldn’t have had enough time to copy Apple’s new design – but let’s not forget that Apple’s redesigned chassis leaked quite some time ago. For anyone in the tech space, the iPhone 17 Pro redesign isn’t a big surprise.
My gut feeling is that Xiaomi took a risk; if the early renders were correct, Xiaomi would have its own iPhone 17 Pro with a second screen to make it look more advanced than Apple’s alternative. But if they were incorrect, Xiaomi would’ve had a totally unique design for this year’s flagship design. It’d be a win-win in Xiaomi’s eyes.
The Xiaomi 17 range is impressive, but lacks its own identity
There’s no denying that the Xiaomi 17 range – and the Pro and Pro Max models in particular – look incredible, and have a spec sheet to match.
Take the Xiaomi 17 Pro Max for example; the phone packs a top-end 6.9-inch LPTO-enabled AMOLED screen with a 120Hz refresh rate, a triple 50MP rear camera system with larger-than-usual sensors and even houses a frankly incredible 7500mAh battery within.
Oh, and did I mention that it’s the first Android phone to utilise the new top-end Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 that was only announced earlier this week by Qualcomm? Because, yep, it does, with up to 16GB of RAM and 1TB of storage to boot. The phone is shaping up to be a seriously powerful beast, and I’m quietly looking forward to its wider release in 2026.
However, with such obvious Apple copycatting this year, it feels like Xiaomi’s new flagship range lacks its own identity. It’ll just be known as the phone that looks a lot like the iPhone in techy circles – and that’s a bit of a shame considering the high-end tech on offer.
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