Tired of iPhones? The Xiaomi 17T and 17T Pro might offer the closest thing on Android — and they could land months before the iPhone 18

• The Xiaomi 17T and Xiaomi 17T Pro could launch four months earlier than expected
• That would mean an announcement in or around May
• These phones may have similar designs and cameras to iPhones

You get a lot more choice of features and specs with Android phones than with iPhones — but if you want something that’s actually quite a lot like an iPhone, but running Android, you could soon have a new option.

According to Chinese leaker Experience more (via GSMArena), the Xiaomi 17T and Xiaomi 17T Pro will launch around four months earlier than their predecessors did last year, which would mean a launch sometime around May.

Why is that relevant to iPhones? Well, Xiaomi’s recent T-series phones have had a fair few similarities to Apple’s handsets. Last year’s Xiaomi 15T (Xiaomi is skipping the number 16) has a very similar design to the iPhone 16 Pro, especially when it comes to the camera block, and the camera specs are somewhat similar too.

Those similarities may extend to the Xiaomi 17T line, which according to this leak won’t have significant camera upgrades.

That means for the Xiaomi 17T itself we can probably expect something similar to the 50MP wide, 12MP ultra-wide, and 50MP 2x telephoto of the Xiaomi 15T, while the Xiaomi 17T Pro might inherit its predecessor’s 50MP wide, 12MP ultra-wide, and 50MP 5x zoom cameras — giving it the same number of cameras and the same zoom power as the iPhone 17 Pro.

Bigger batteries and faster chipsets

The main upgrades this time around will apparently be to performance and battery life. The Xiaomi 17T will apparently have a MediaTek Dimensity 8500 chipset, while the Xiaomi 17T Pro is said to have a MediaTek Dimensity 9500 chip. The latter of those only falls slightly behind the iPhone 17 Pro’s A19 Pro chipset in some benchmarks, so these should be powerful phones.

As for battery, this leak doesn’t get specific, but a previous leak (again via GSMArena) pointed to a 6,500mAh battery with 67W charging for both phones — specs which would actually have Apple's current phones beat.

Of course, we’d take all of this with a pinch of salt for now, but if these phones do indeed land in May we should learn all about them before too long — and long before we see the iPhone 18 series, as those phones likely won’t launch until September.

Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds. Make sure to click the Follow button!

And of course you can also follow TechRadar on TikTok for news, reviews, unboxings in video form, and get regular updates from us on WhatsApp too.