Xiaomi 18 Ultra cancelled: what the price leak claims

Is the Xiaomi 18 Ultra cancelled? That's the claim circulating this week after leaker Digital Chat Station posted on Weibo, relayed via Abhishek Yadav, saying Xiaomi scrapped the phone because the planned price made sales unsustainable, according to Tech Advisor. Xiaomi has issued no public comment on the device, its specs, or any cancellation.

That claim rests on a single post, and the post itself is reportedly no longer accessible, according to Particle, which also found that coverage has mixed up the Xiaomi 17 Ultra and the 18 Ultra in places. What's circulating is one leak amplified across several outlets, all working from secondhand summaries of a post none of them link to directly.

The price figure driving the story: Xiaomi reportedly planned a CNY 10,000 starting point, about $1,500 converted, for a base 12GB/256GB configuration, per PhoneWorld. That compares with CNY 7,000 for the Xiaomi 17 Ultra's 12GB/512GB model, according to the same report.

What's confirmed about the Xiaomi 18 Ultra cancellation

Xiaomi has not confirmed that an 18 Ultra was ever in development, that it was cancelled, or any of the specs and pricing attached to it. Particle reports that Xiaomi has issued no public comment, and PhoneWorld likewise treats the cancellation as unconfirmed. The reported Xiaomi 18 Ultra release cancellation remains a claim, not a settled fact.

The available reporting traces the claim primarily to one tipster, but the story around that tipster has shifted for months. PhoneWorld reports that a separate tipster, Kartikey Singh, said two months ago that the Ultra project had been cancelled.

An earlier report had Digital Chat Station himself saying the Ultra wasn't dead and that its 200MP sensor was still in development, according to PhoneWorld. Those conflicting reports don't reconcile cleanly, and nothing in the available coverage explains what changed in between.

An official Xiaomi statement, or a report from a tipster with no apparent connection to Digital Chat Station's claim, would carry more weight than what's circulating now. A launch event that omits an Ultra model wouldn't settle it alone, since that could reflect a delay or a rename just as easily as a cancellation. Until then, treat every spec and price figure below as reported, not established.

Why was the Xiaomi 18 Ultra reportedly cancelled over price?

The core of the leak: Xiaomi planned to launch the phone at CNY 10,000, per PhoneWorld, then pulled it because leadership judged sales "wouldn't be sustainable" at that price, via machine translation cited by Tech Advisor.

That number would mark roughly a 43% jump over the 17 Ultra's CNY 7,000 base price. The reported comparison also lists base storage dropping from 512GB to 256GB, per PhoneWorld, a configuration cut layered on top of the price increase.

The CNY figures reflect China-market pricing specifically. None of the cited reports establish that this device was ever planned for release outside China at any price.

The leaked Xiaomi 18 Ultra camera specs behind the price tag

The accessible reports attribute a triple-200MP rear camera system to the leak: a 200MP main sensor, a 200MP periscope telephoto, and a 200MP ultra-wide, according to Tech Advisor and PhoneWorld.

Per the leak, two of those three sensors reportedly use LOFIC technology: the 1/1.12-inch main camera and the 1/1.28-inch periscope, the latter also described with continuous optical zoom. LOFIC, short for lateral overflow integration capacitor, is a sensor design that lets each pixel hold more light before it saturates, helping preserve detail in bright highlights, per PhoneWorld. The leak doesn't describe LOFIC for the 1/1.56-inch ultra-wide.

Tech Advisor also describes a flat display with minimal 1mm bezels as part of the same leak.

PhoneWorld's own read is that a fairly ordinary 12GB/256GB base configuration, paired with that camera list, suggests most of the budget went toward the cameras rather than memory or storage. That's the outlet's interpretation of the leak, not a verified cost breakdown. No source here quantifies what any individual sensor or component actually cost Xiaomi.

What Xiaomi has actually announced for shoppers right now

PhoneWorld reports that Xiaomi has announced an 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max for global release. The outlet argues this gives the cancellation claim "some weight," since no Ultra model appears alongside those two. No Xiaomi press release is linked in the available reporting, so that absence supports PhoneWorld's reading without confirming it independently.

Neither the 18 Pro nor the 18 Pro Max has a confirmed price in any market yet, per PhoneWorld.

PhoneWorld also notes that earlier reports claimed the vivo X500 Ultra and Oppo Find X10 Ultra would stay China-only, suggesting other brands might be rethinking globally sold Ultra-tier phones, too. That's a separate rumor thread about different companies, not evidence of what Xiaomi specifically decided for the 18 Ultra.

None of the cited reports say whether the leaked 200MP LOFIC sensors or the continuous zoom periscope camera will show up on the 18 Pro Max or any other Xiaomi device. That's a gap in the available reporting, not confirmation that those features are shelved.

The cited reporting still contains no Xiaomi confirmation of the 18 Ultra or its cancellation. Anyone shopping Xiaomi's current lineup shouldn't delay a purchase waiting on a phone that isn't confirmed to exist in the first place. For the 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max, official Xiaomi regional product pages would be needed to verify pricing and availability before buying.