Video: Xiaomi 17 Pro Max with 7500 mAh almost lost the battery life showdown against iPhone 17 Pro Max with 4832 mAh

Xiaomi definitely knows its way around batteries—at least on paper. The new Xiaomi 17 Pro Max boasts a massive 7 500 mAh battery, which is almost half again as much as the competing iPhone 17 Pro Max. But as it often goes, reality is frequently different from the marketing promises.

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And now a new battery endurance test confirms it too—showing that capacity doesn’t automatically mean longer battery life, even though in the test this Xiaomi model finished at the top. As suggested by the well-known YouTube channel TechDroider, the story is different when you look at efficiency.

iPhone 17 Pro Max clearly wins over Xiaomi 17 Pro Max in efficiency

The YouTube channel TechDroider put several flagship phones through a solid test that simulates both everyday and more demanding smartphone use—YouTube video playback, 4K recording, scrolling through Instagram, gaming, and browsing over Wi‑Fi.

Result? Xiaomi 17 Pro Max lasted 13 hours and 36 minutes, and right after it came iPhone 17 Pro Max with time of 13 hours and 31 minutes—just 5 minutes less, and it has Apple battery with up to 36% less capacity (4 823 mAh). That sounds pretty thought-provoking…

It wasn’t just about comparing it with the iPhone. Xiaomi 17 Pro Max took first place, but the lead over the competition wasn’t anything mind-blowing. For example, Xiaomi 15 Pro from its own lineup, which comes with a 6 100 mAh battery, lasted 12 and a half hours. OnePlus 13 (6 000 mAh) just under 12 hours, and even the Google Pixel 10 Pro XL or Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra with smaller batteries performed very solidly. It means only one thing — efficiency and optimization play as big a role as the capacity itself. Apple is simply the master in this regard—no question about it.

Xiaomi on its 17 Pro Max has rolled out a new HyperOS 3 built on Android 16, but it looks like optimization still needs time. Everything can of course be fixed with updates, but the temperature readings don’t exactly make for flattering results either.

Xiaomi 17 Pro Max (47.6 °C) heated up significantly more during the test than iPhone 17 Pro Max (43.1 °C), which the Chinese giant is trying to compete with directly. So the competition currently shows that you can get more out of the battery even with a smaller capacity.

Yes, of course, many other variables also come into play in the test—stronger or weaker signal, different app versions, and so on. But the message is clear: it’s not enough to just put a huge battery into your phone and expect miracles. If the software and performance can’t properly make use of that energy, frustration follows. To be clear, Xiaomi 17 Pro Max certainly didn’t disappoint—though it also didn’t wow us as much as we might have hoped.

We believe that over time, updates will further improve this battery life. For now, however, it’s true that the iPhone maintains its position even without a mega-premium battery, and Xiaomi still has some catching up to do—it's not the hardware, which is definitely top-tier, but rather the software and its optimization.

This is how all the models performed in the test:

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