The Xiaomi 18 Pro’s rear displays support Google apps, Spotify, and custom GenAI apps

The Xiaomi 18 Pro series’ rear displays might actually be useful, after all. Only a few companies have debuted phones with rear displays, and, quite frankly, most of them have been fairly useless. Xiaomi is hoping to turn all that around with the Xiaomi 18 Pro and Xiaomi 18 Pro Max’s rear display, which the company says supports Google Maps, YouTube Music, Spotify, and lots of additional apps via a nifty GenAI integration. The news comes via GSMArena and builds on the AMA videos Xu Fei, VP & CMO of the Xiaomi Group, has been posting on X. If you haven’t seen it yet, the camera island on the back of the Xiaomi 18 Pro series looks similar to the cover screen on a flip-style foldable like the Galaxy Z Flip 8 or Motorola Razr series. It’s a full-color touchscreen and has impressively high resolution. YouTube Music and Spotify will feature prominent play/pause and skip buttons, plus the artwork and name of the song playing. Google Maps will give you a navigation progress indicator, plus the next upcoming direction. In addition to official integration, Xiaomi is letting users create their own rear display apps using a built-in GenAI app creation tool. Just describe what you want, and the onboard AI will create the app for you. It looks quite handy and should help solve the “useless” problem that prior rear displays have faced. The Xiaomi 18 Pro series will debut globally. More on Xiaomi: Xiaomi 18 Pro gears up for global debut with battery, price leaks Xiaomi confirms Android 17 HyperOS 4 rollout schedule for these devices Xiaomi 18 Pro series goes official with ‘privacy screen,’ 8,500 mAh battery, and Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.