A phone that lasts up to three days. It's not a brick with a display, but an \"ordinary\" Redmi

While younger people around me typically focus on how a smartphone looks, takes photos, and what performance it offers, the older generation is typically interested in battery life. You probably won’t achieve the same battery life with any modern phone during normal use as with a feature phone Nokia, but I completely understand the desire to get as close as possible. 

Smartphone reviews regularly discuss whether a given model can last a second day on a single charge. With lighter to moderate use, many devices can manage this, but the most demanding users will generally find that they will have to charge every evening, or carry power banks with them. Unless they intend to shorten their screen time.

Technological advancements in batteries, however, mean that newer smartphones last longer than we used to be accustomed to. Aside from improvements in processor efficiency or software overlay optimization, a way has been found to achieve higher battery capacity without phones having to gain weight. Manufacturers are using silicon-carbon composites, which allow them to offer much more than the previously standard 5,000 mAh. 

Redmi Note 17 Pro Max 5G: 9,210 mAh in a body less than 9 mm thick

An ideal example to illustrate the above is the new Redmi Note 17 Pro Max 5G. For 12,499 CZK, you can buy it on the Czech market, and it stands out precisely because it has a 9,210 mAh battery. It’s not a brick with a display – the construction thickness is only 8.57 mm (or 8.65 mm, depending on the color variant) and the weight is 225.1 g. The phone does weigh a bit more, but it’s roughly on par with the Google Pixel 11 Pro XL (226 g) and still significantly surpasses the Apple iPhone 18 Pro Max (249 g) in this regard.

So what does this mean? While until recently such large batteries were the exclusive domain of so-called ultra-rugged phones, which could weigh around 400 g, now you practically won’t even notice that you’re holding a phone with over 9,000 mAh. Purely from my subjective point of view, the Redmi Note 17 Pro Max 5G also looks good design-wise, although some might regret that it didn’t get a metal frame. 

Xiaomi promises up to three days of battery life. What’s the reality?

You might be asking yourself if a significantly larger battery will really help you in everyday life. Xiaomi assures that it definitely will. In the case of the Redmi Note 17 Pro Max 5G, it promises up to three days of battery life. 

A comparison with its predecessor is in order. While the Redmi Note 15 Pro+ 5G with its 6,500mAh battery was supposed to offer a maximum of 25 hours of video playback, the “seventeen” with the Pro Max moniker pushes this number to 37 hours. This represents almost a 50% improvement. 

It’s worth mentioning that the aforementioned older model also used a silicon admixture. However, it was only 10%, whereas with the Redmi Note 17 Pro Max 5G, we’re talking about 16%. How the battery will perform after long-term use is difficult to verify now, but Xiaomi is confident that thanks to the Surge G2 battery management chipset, you can achieve up to 6 years of durability. More precisely: According to the manufacturer, more than 80% of the capacity will be retained after 1,000 full charging cycles.

Theory is one thing, but it’s also useful to know how the Redmi Note 17 Pro Max 5G will perform in practice. Foreign reviewers indeed claim that the phone can achieve that 3-day battery life with lighter to moderate use. If you used the phone more actively, for example, frequently had GPS or a mobile hotspot running, watched more videos, and occasionally played some games, you would probably end up with closer to two days. But even that is great, because with such usage, I had to charge my flagship Pixel 11 Pro XL every evening, otherwise it would run out of battery by the middle of the next day.

The website GSMArena, which measured battery life very carefully, states that the Redmi Note 17 Pro Max 5G can indeed handle almost 40 hours of video playback. With continuous browser activity, the phone reportedly lasts slightly over 24 hours, and with non-stop gaming, only about nine and a half hours.

Charging doesn’t lag either

The phone’s advantage is not just its battery life, but also its charging speed. The Redmi Note 17 Pro Max 5G supports up to 100W wired charging, which, according to Xiaomi, will provide up to 7 hours of video playback after 10 minutes on the charger.

Another advantage is the support for 27W reverse charging (again, wired only), which allows you to charge headphones, watches, or other accessories from your phone. It’s more useful as a last resort when a device is completely drained, but if you have no other option, you’ll appreciate it.

How about the rest of the features?

The Redmi Note 17 Pro Max 5G is not just a paperweight with a gigantic battery. The remaining specifications are certainly not offensive, but they won’t particularly impress this year either. On the front, it features a large 6.83” AMOLED display with a solid resolution of 2772×1280 pixels and a peak brightness of up to 3,500 nits, making content easily readable even in sunlight. Furthermore, it is protected by durable Corning Gorilla Glass Victus 2. When watching movies, the display is perfectly complemented by stereo speakers with Dolby Atmos and Hi-Res.

Unfortunately, this year the main camera uses a smaller 1/1.95″ sensor with a resolution of only 50 Mpx instead of the former 200 Mpx. It is also accompanied by only an 8Mpx ultrawide camera, so once again, we don’t get a telephoto lens on the top-tier Redmi. Under the hood, the Snapdragon 6 Gen 5 Mobile chipset is at work, which is rather average. However, the LPDDR5X RAM and UFS 4.1 storage will be pleasing.

We must not forget the HyperOS 3 system with support for the HyperIsland feature, which mimics the dynamic island of iPhones, and a range of AI functions within the HyperAI suite. Last but not least, Xiaomi promises that the software will feel as smooth as it did at the beginning even after 6 years of use (and guarantees 6 years of security updates).

Would you buy the Redmi Note 17 Pro Max for its battery?