Tell it what you need and the app will be made for you automatically. This is how Xiaomi will change the rear display in the 18 Pro

The display on the back of the phone was mainly just a showpiece until now. A few days ago, Xiaomi confirmed that the 18 Pro series will arrive in September, and now it’s shown what that display is actually for. Suddenly, it makes perfect sense.

Updated: Xiaomi 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max have already been officially unveiled — you can find their final specs and prices in our article from the launch.

You’ll create the app yourself — AI will do the work for you

The main novelty is that you’ll be able to have a small custom app created for the rear display. Artificial intelligence will handle it — you tell it what you need, and on the back of your phone a tool will appear exactly for that one task.

In the teaser, Xiaomi showed four examples: a water-drinking reminder with a counter for the amount of milliliters you’ve had, an egg-cooking timer with options for soft, medium, or hard-boiled eggs, recipe suggestions, and learning English vocabulary. The Spanish site MundoXiaomi adds a classic pomodoro timer for focused work too.

It sounds like a small detail, but that’s exactly the point. A small display isn’t suitable for full-fledged apps — but it’s perfect for one specific task that you don’t want to unlock your phone for.

Compared to the seventeenth, it’s a whole different league

To make it clear why this is a novelty: on the Xiaomi 17 Pro, the rear display could show a wallpaper, a few selected widgets, and a set of pre-installed app card views. Nothing more. Users couldn’t add their own function — they could only choose from what Xiaomi gave them.

Xiaomi President Lu Weibing commented on it, saying people’s expectations for this display are very diverse, so the company went for a more advanced solution that significantly expands what it can do. And the numbers support it — according to Xiaomi, people clicked those app cards more than four million times every day.

Xiaomi 18 Pro has already shown up in Geekbench

Alongside the teaser, the Geekbench database also lists the phone itself. Under the code name M154FF, it confirmed a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 Pro clocked up to 5.01 GHz, 16 GB of RAM, and HyperOS 4 on Android 17. It scored 2,871 points in the single-core test and 8,836 in the multi-core test.

You need to be careful twice right away. First, this is Geekbench 7, so these numbers can’t be compared with results from the sixth generation. Second, the top-tier 18 Pro Max scored 3,582 and 12,247 points in the same test — so noticeably more. The gap between the Pro and Pro Max is bigger than you’d expect with the same chip, but the tested unit was a pre-production prototype with unfinished software, and final results are often higher.

When will we see it in person?

The Xiaomi 18 Pro lineup premiere in China is scheduled for later this month. For us, the key point is that based on previous leaks, the entire trio—Xiaomi 18, 18 Pro, and 18 Pro Max—should be heading to Europe—it would be the first generation where we also get the flagship model.

The question is whether AI-generated apps for the rear display will also make it into the global version—and in what language. Chinese software features roll out to international versions with delays, and sometimes not at all—so for now, treat this as a preview of what the phone can do at home.

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