A new leak says Xiaomi Air was much closer to release than most people realized before the company decided to kill the project at the last minute. According to Chinese tipster Digital Chat Station, the ultra thin flagship prototype had already reached a near production ready stage before Xiaomi pulled the plug.
The leaked hardware outline suggests the phone would have used a 6.59 inch 1.5K display, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip, and a rear camera system built around a 200MP large sensor main camera. The prototype was also said to have both its battery capacity and body thickness starting with the number five, pointing to a device that tried to stay slim without giving up flagship class specs entirely.
Xiaomi executive Lu Weibing addressed the broader question in a livestream when he was asked why the company never released a product built around an iPhone Air style form factor. He said the team had done the planning and early development work and had even pushed the device close to mass production.
In the end, though, Xiaomi concluded that the design required too many compromises. Lu said battery life and performance would both take a hit once the phone was compressed to that extreme level of thinness, and the resulting tradeoffs no longer met the experience standard the team wanted. Rather than force the idea into production, Xiaomi decided not to release it.
That explanation also helps clarify why Xiaomi is leaning toward larger Max branded devices instead. In Xiaomi’s view, a phone like the Xiaomi 17 Max leaves more room to improve imaging, endurance, and overall flagship performance, while the canceled Xiaomi Air concept would have asked users to accept too many daily compromises just to get a thinner body.
