Xiaomi's 18 Pro series phones have the latest Snapdragon chip and a Samsung-like privacy screen

You’ll have to wait a bit if you’re outside China though. Xiaomi’s 18 Pro series phones have the latest Snapdragon chip and a Samsung-like privacy screen. News Mobile Smartphones Xiaomi’s 18 Pro series phones have the latest Snapdragon chip and a Samsung-like privacy screen The 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max are now available in China ahead of a global release later this year.

They’re among the first handsets to use Qualcomm’s latest mobile chipset, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6, with the Xiaomi 18 Pro Max running on the higher-end version. (As it happens, Xiaomi showed off the devices at the Snapdragon Summit in Hawaii.) Perhaps the most interesting thing about these phones is that Xiaomi equipped them with privacy-focused screens, similar to the tech that Samsung employed in the Galaxy S26 Ultra. The idea is to make it harder to see what’s on the screen from an off angle and stop other people from catching a glimpse of what you’re looking at.

Xiaomi’s take on the privacy screen offers more granular settings than Samsung, as things stand. If you enable the feature for a specific app (to shield your banking details from prying eyes, perhaps), it won’t just switch on when you open said app — the phones will make it difficult for anyone to see notifications, split-screen views and floating windows for the app from an acute angle. There are location-based triggers for the privacy mode.

Split-screen display dimming could make it to the early 2027 Samsung flagship. Privacy Display on the Galaxy S27 Ultra could pick up this handy new trick.

Galaxy S27 Ultra’s Privacy Display may takes cues from this phone. This feature can cleverly dim just one app window in split-screen view, even when it’s resized.

While Xiaomi appears to have more features tied to this privacy feature, the leaker notes that Samsung still has the upper hand in overall dimming capacity. Samsung set the industry standard by introducing Privacy Display on the Galaxy S26 Ultra, which enables hardware-level screen dimming to shake off shoulder surfers.

While some brands have already revealed their own take on this feature, the freshly announced Xiaomi 18 Pro series takes it to another level with Smart Privacy Display. We’re now learning that Samsung may introduce at least one of the Xiaomi flagship’s privacy-oriented features in its early 2027 smartphone.

Writing on X, leaker Ice Universe claims the Xiaomi 18 Pro’s unique split-screen privacy protection system will make its way to the Galaxy S27 Ultra.

The phones can also detect potential snoops via the front-facing camera and suggest that you enable the feature.