Xiaomi 18 series transparent back version teased as “one more thing” hours before big reveal

Xiaomi is ramping up the hype for today’s flagship launch with a pretty cryptic teaser. In an official Weibo post, the company said: “Tonight is a little special because the last time we met was 6 years ago…” (machine translated). The image that came with it shows a transparent body on what appears to be the Xiaomi 18 Pro or the Xiaomi 18 Pro Max.

That strongly suggests Xiaomi is bringing back a clear back cover variant, something we haven’t seen on a Xiaomi flagship in years.

The last transparent model from Xiaomi was the Mi 10 Ultra (Transparent Edition). The Mi 9 and Mi 8 series also included similar transparent versions. Since then, no Xiaomi flagship has had that see-through look, so this teaser is bound to get fans of those older experimental designs pretty excited.

So we’ll see a total of three devices this evening: the Xiaomi 18 Pro, Xiaomi 18 Pro Max, and this transparent edition model. It’s still unclear whether this is just a minor cosmetic tweak on one of the two Pro models or something with different core specifications.

At the 2026 Snapdragon Summit earlier, Zeng Xuezhong (Senior Vice President of Xiaomi Group and President of the International Department) confirmed the series will be the first in the world to use Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 series chips: the standard version on the Pro model and the “Extreme” edition on the Pro Max. This dual-chip approach allows the company to offer a more tailored and differentiated flagship experience to a wider range of users.

Xiaomi only dropped this “one more thing” teaser a few hours before the official reveal and is still keeping almost everything about the phone under wraps. Whether the transparent version ends up as a limited commemorative model or something more widely available is also still up in the air.

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(Source: Lu Weibing on Weibo)