The most powerful imaging flagship is absent! The Xiaomi 18 Ultra has been cancelled.

As expected, Xiaomi’s original plan for the 18 Ultra imaging flagship was cancelled. This year, the Xiaomi 18 series will no longer be the traditional four models, but will be streamlined into three models: Xiaomi 18, Xiaomi 18 Pro, and Xiaomi 18 Pro Max. So now it seems that the Xiaomi 18 Pro Max has officially taken over as the flagship of this generation of Xiaomi phones.

A blogger has released the full specifications of the 18 Ultra, and after seeing them, one can only marvel at the insane amount of hardware included. The original plan was to feature a 1mm-thick, four-sided symmetrical screen, paired with the top-of-the-line flagship chip, the sixth-generation Snapdragon 8 Ultra, achieving a benchmark score exceeding 5 million.

The imaging capabilities are top-notch, featuring three 200-megapixel lenses: a 1/1.12-inch LOFIC main camera, a 1/1.56-inch ultra-wide-angle lens, and a 1/1.28-inch LOFIC continuous optical zoom periscope telephoto lens.

In addition, it also features a multispectral lens, a magnetic external lens, a 0916 motor, and symmetrical dual speakers, packing in almost all the cutting-edge technologies that can be used in mobile phone imaging.

However, after internal evaluation, they decided to abandon the plan. The core reason was very practical: maximizing the configuration would bring high costs, and the price would be so high that it would affect sales, making it difficult for ordinary consumers to buy.

Many people may be curious about what exactly this repeatedly mentioned LOFIC technology is. In layman’s terms, LOFIC (Lateral Overflow Integrating Capacitor) technology can be understood as adding an extra “reservoir” to the sensor pixels.

Ordinary sensors are like buckets; in bright light, they overflow, resulting in blown-out highlights with no detail. LOFIC, on the other hand, stores excess photoelectrons in adjacent capacitors. In high-contrast scenes like backlighting, sunsets, and nighttime illuminated signs, bright areas are not overexposed, while dark areas retain detail, resulting in images with stronger tonal gradations.

Compared to its predecessor, the Xiaomi 17 Ultra, the Xiaomi 18 Ultra was originally planned to upgrade to a periscope telephoto sensor, while also featuring LOFIC + continuous optical zoom, resulting in a significant improvement in image quality. Unfortunately, this top-tier solution ultimately failed to materialize.

However, there’s no need to be completely disappointed. Xiaomi hasn’t completely abandoned the Ultra product line. Reports indicate that the Xiaomi 19 Ultra will still be iterated as usual, and this top-tier imaging technology will likely be rolled out later.

This year, the Xiaomi 18 Pro Max carries the banner of top-of-the-line specifications across the entire series. Cutting the costly Ultra version was actually a pragmatic choice. By no longer blindly piling on exorbitantly priced hardware, the price of the most powerful flagship is now more accessible to the average user.

Of course, this has also sparked considerable discussion: some argue that instead of creating an exorbitantly priced “ultra-large” model that’s difficult to find, allocating resources to the Pro Max would allow more people to experience flagship performance. So the question is, if this fully-equipped Xiaomi 18 Ultra were to actually be released, would you be willing to pay for its top-of-the-line specifications?