Robert Triggs / Android Authority

Buying a flagship phone next year might require a bigger budget than expected. A fresh leak out of China suggests Xiaomi’s upcoming premium flagship could jump to around 6,000 yuan (roughly $882), marking a noticeable jump over the current generation.

While tipster Digital Chat Station’s Weibo post doesn’t explicitly name the device, the timing and pricing make it pretty clear that it’s talking about the Xiaomi 18 Pro. If that’s true, Xiaomi could be in for one of its biggest flagship price hikes in years.

By comparison, the Xiaomi 17 Pro was introduced in China at 4,999 yuan ($734). A starting price of 6,000 yuan would be a 20% jump, making the next Pro model a lot more expensive right out of the gate.

The probable culprit is not hard to guess. Industry observers have been warning about rising memory costs, with DRAM and NAND prices expected to climb as suppliers shift production toward AI-focused hardware. Those increases eventually trickle down to consumer devices, particularly the high-end smartphones that come with large amounts of RAM and fast storage. If component costs keep rising, manufacturers might have little choice but to pass some of that cost on to buyers.

That doesn’t mean Xiaomi is just charging more for the same phone. Flagship generations tend to bring faster chipsets, camera improvements, battery upgrades, and new AI features. Still, a jump of a thousand yuan is hard for buyers to ignore, unless Xiaomi can deliver meaningful upgrades across the board.

There’s another reason this leak is significant. If this is the Xiaomi 18 Pro, it will likely be one of the first phones to use Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 Pro. Xiaomi has consistently been the first to adopt Qualcomm’s latest flagship mobile platform over the past two years, and it appears that this trend may continue. That would give Xiaomi a leg-up in showing off the next generation of Android flagship performance.

This is an early leak, of course, and pricing decisions could change before launch. Regional variants also tend to have different price points when they hit global markets.