The Xiaomi 15 is one of two new flagship phones from the Chinese phone maker, having been announced at Mobile World Congress 2025 in Barcelona earlier in March. While it may not be quite so visually appealing as the Xiaomi 15 Ultra, it still offers a lot of the same great features. In ways, you could even argue that it exceeds its Ultra sibling.
On paper we’ve got a phone with some incredible specs, which include a large bright display, Leica-optimized cameras, a large 5,240 mAh battery and all the benefits of the new Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset. The phone runs on Android 15, with Xiaomi’s own HyperOS 2 skin over the top, which makes it a little less recognizable as Google software.
As you’ll read in my full Xiaomi 15 review below, this is a very good phone, even if it doesn’t have the Ultra moniker. It’s just a shame that it’s not more widely available, especially in the U.S. and the rest of North America. And I wish it would do more to outshine the best Android phones that are more readily available.
Xiaomi 15 review: Specs
|
Price |
From £899 |
|
Display |
6.36-inch (1,200 x 2,670 / 1-120Hz) |
|
CPU |
Snapdragon 8 Elite |
|
RAM |
12GB / 16GB |
|
Storage |
256GB / 512GB / 1TB |
|
Rear cameras |
50MP (ƒ/1.6) main, 50MP (f/2.2) ultrawide, 50MP (f/2.0) telephoto (2.6x optical) |
|
Front cameras |
32MP (f/2.0) |
|
Video |
8k (30fps) / 4K (60fps) / 1080p (120 fps) |
|
Battery |
5,240 mAh |
|
Charging |
90W (wired) / 80W (wireless |
|
Qi2 |
No |
|
Colors |
Black, White, Liquid Silver, Green, Lilac |
|
Dimensions |
6.0 x 2.8 x 0.33 inches |
|
Weight |
6.67 ounces |
Xiaomi 15 review: Price & availability
The Xiaomi 15 isn’t available in the U.S., as is tradition with Xiaomi handsets. The company hasn’t officially sold any of its previous models in the U.S., and it’s not about to start now. That said the phone is officially on sale in the U.K., and you can buy it right now.
Prices start at £899 for 256GB of storage, while a larger 512GB storage option will cost at least £999. That’s actually slightly more expensive than the Xiaomi 14, which started at £849, and comes in slightly higher than the likes of the Samsung Galaxy S25 and iPhone 16.
However since those phones all feature 128GB in their cheaper base models, the Xiaomi 15 is pretty evenly priced considering the 256GB storage you get.
Xiaomi 15 review: Design & display
The Xiaomi 15 has a 6.36-inch AMOLED display offering 1200 x 2670 resolution and a dynamic 1-120Hz refresh rate. Like the Xiaomi 15 Ultra, the screen on this model is rated for up to 3,200 nits of brightness, and includes support for HDR10+ and Dolby Vision. There’s an ultrasonic fingerprint sensor under the bottom of the screen as well.
Sadly, the Xiaomi 15 comes with the first generation Shield Glass, which debuted on the Xiaomi 14 series last year. That means the screen isn’t quite as durable as the Ultra, which offers a newer generation of screen protection. That said the Xiaomi 15 does still come with a High-Strength Aluminum frame and IP68 water and dust resistance.
At 191 grams (6.73 ounces), this model is also noticeably lighter than its 8-ounce Ultra counterpart. The 0.31-inch thickness also makes it slightly slimmer than the Ultra. While not the slimmest phone you can buy, the Xiaomi 15 features the same thickness as the iPhone 16. So clearly Xiaomi must be doing something right.
The screen on the Xiaomi 15 is nice enough, and plenty bright, but it’s not quite as captivating as the one on the Xiaomi 15 Ultra. That said, I have absolutely no complaints about the screen or the viewing experience, especially when streaming movies on Disney Plus.
The design of the Xiaomi 15 isn’t quite as impressive as the Ultra, either. While the matte glass back is very nice in itself, the fact that Xiaomi has the enlarged square camera bump doesn’t look quite as impressive.
I’m glad that the Xiaomi 15’s camera array is smaller, and not that much bigger than an iPhone 16 Pro Max’s camera. But the Xiaomi 15 Ultra’s Silver Chrome edition offers a retro-camera-inspired design that makes everything else look poorer by comparison.
Xiaomi 15 review: Cameras
The Xiaomi 15 has three rear cameras, each offering 50MP resolution and tuned with Leica optics. They include a standard main lens, an ultrawide angle shooter and a telephoto lens sporting 2.6x optical magnification. A 32MP selfie camera is up front on the phone.
Specs only tell us so much about what a camera is capable of, though. So to see what the Xiaomi 15 is capable of, I put it head to head against the Google Pixel 9 Pro. While this is one of the best camera phones on sale, it couldn’t quite keep up with the Xiaomi 15 Ultra when shooting photos. So let’s see how the standard model from Xiaomi compares.
Testing the main camera lens, a photo shot by the Xiaomi 15 comes out a lot cooler than the Pixel 9 Pro did — which has a warmer, more orange-like look to it. That said, you can still see the effect of the setting sun in both images. In this instance the Xiaomi photo looks a little more true-to-life, but it does look slightly more washed out in the process.
However, the fact the coloring looks more realistic gives Xiaomi’s photo the edge, as does the fact the overall photo is a little crisper than what Google has to offer, so that smaller details appear a little more clearly in the Xiaomi 15 shot.
Taking the action indoors, you can see how much of an impact these cameras have had on my Lego space shuttle. Xiaomi’s attempt is brighter and slightly sharper, but it hasn’t quite got the colors of the scene quite right. It’s making the shuttle look a little more yellow than it is, while failing to capture the gloss finish of the parks.
The Pixel 9 Pro not only looks white, you can actually see some semblance of my office windows reflected in the shiny plastic finish. The Pixel even managed to pick up all the stray dust particles as well as the Xiaomi 15 (don’t judge my cleanliness from this), even if the picture is a little blurrier up close.
Both ultrawide lenses produced photos that came out a lot darker than they should have, blanketing the tower in shadow that wasn’t nearly as prominent in real life.
The Xiaomi 15 produced lighter images, which works in its favor here, but not by much, and it’s actually difficult to differentiate between the two shots. That said, zoom in far enough and you can see that the Pixel is significantly blurred and pixelated around the edge of the tower — while the Xiaomi 15 is not.
The telephoto shots don’t look all that dissimilar at first glance, The Pixel’s shot is warmer, once again capturing more of the glow of the setting sun, but not by a whole lot. However it seems that the Xiaomi 15 loses the quality battle this time, and you only need to zoom in a little bit to start seeing evidence of that.
The tracks in the dirt aren’t quite as obvious in Xiaomi’s shot, and the tower in the distance is a lot blurrier when you look a little closer. Not that the Pixel’s tower is crystal clear, of course, but it is a little crisper and lets you pick out a few more of the details — especially the surrounding plant life.
Jumping up to 2x magnification, and the story is more of the same. The Pixel’s shot is warmer and brighter, which works out in its favor compared to the gloomier Xiaomi attempt. Once again, the tower in the distance is sharper on the Pixel 9 Pro photo.
The differences are even more apparent when you jump up to 5x magnification. Again, the Pixel 9 Pro’s shot is brighter and clearer, and it’s even possible to start picking out the smaller details in the tower without zooming in first.
But once you do zoom in, the Pixel 9 Pro’s photo looks significantly better than what the Xiaomi 15 produces. You can pick out individual bricks in the tower itself, something the Xiaomi hasn’t managed, while also getting a sharper image of the plants on the very top.
Selfies are something of a mixed bag here. The Xiaomi 15’s photo is brighter, letting you see more of me and minimizing lens flare from the sun behind me. However the image looks incredibly washed out, and doesn’t look all that great.
To top it all off, I feel as though the camera may have smoothed out my skin – not to the same extent as the Xiaomi Mix Fold 4 did, but it’s still rather noticeable.
The Pixel faces different issues. While the coloring looks OK, the whole photo is far too dark, and the sun looks like it’s just gone supernova. Plus, while the camera hasn’t tried to apply any beautifying effects to my face, everything is just a little bit grainy and that’s far from ideal.
A lot of the same issues seem to have happened with Portrait mode. But without the sun at my back, things are a little different. The Pixel 9 Pro portrait photo isn’t nearly as noisy, while the Xiaomi 15’s attempt is more washed out than a hotel room towel.
As for the bokeh effect, results are a little mixed. Xiaomi’s bokeh is certainly more consistent, but I feel as though Google’s might actually look better, aside from the fact the Pixel 9 Pro blurred out the left cuff of my jacket along with the background. Interestingly, both phones seemed to struggle with the material around my right arm, and you can easily see a ripple where it hasn’t quite got the lines right.
The Pixel 9 Pro image is also a little grainier, compared to the sharper quality of the Xiaomi 15 photo. Unfortunately it’s been messing with my complexion again, making me look far pastier than I really am and wiping out the majority of my freckles. Plus in both portrait and regular selfie mode, the Xiaomi 15 decided I have gray eyes, which I do not. What’s that about?
Both phones are fairly evenly matched in the low light department, offering things that the other does not. The Xiaomi 15 shot fails on its daffodil itself, with the yellow flower coming up looking washed out and a little blurrier than the Pixel’s attempt. That said, the Xiaomi camera does seem to have picked up on a lot more of the surrounding details, especially in the background. Unfortunately, the Pixel 9 Pro struggles to pick out some of the finer details in the dark.
Overall the Xiaomi 15 has a solid set of cameras, though the performance isn’t quite as impressive as what I found back when I tested the Xiaomi 15 Ultra. Still, the phone offers great quality photos on its lenses, and despite its faults, the final images do look pretty good.
That said, I wish Xiaomi hadn’t switched on facial smoothing features by default. Not only does it ruin a perfectly good picture, the fact it smoothened out and whitened my complexion was just straight up weird, unnecessary and honestly, a little disturbing.
Xiaomi 15 review: Performance
Like its Ultra counterpart — not to mention most other Android flagships released this year — the Xiaomi 15 is powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset. Memory differs depending on which storage model you get. The 256GB model features 12GB of RAM, as do some 512GB options. Other 512GB and all 1TB models come with 16GB of RAM. The model I tested was the 512GB Xiaomi 15 with 16GB of RAM.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite has already proven itself to be a performance powerhouse, and the Xiaomi 15 Ultra posted some excellent (if not record-breaking) benchmark results. So how does the Xiaomi 15 compare?
| Row 0 – Cell 0 |
Xiaomi 15 |
Xiaomi 15 Ultra |
Samsung Galaxy S25 |
iPhone 16 Pro |
OnePlus 13 |
|
Chipset |
Snapdragon 8 Elite |
Snapdragon 8 Elite |
Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy |
A18 Pro |
Snapdragon 8 Elite |
|
Geekbench 6 score (single-core / multi-core) |
2,972 / 9,330 |
2,986 / 9,064 |
2,916 / 9,886 |
3,400 / 8,391 |
2,893 / 9,058 |
|
3DMark Solar Bay Unlimited (score / fps) |
11,565 / 43.9 fps |
10,100 / 38.4 fps |
11,412 / 43.4 fps |
7,519 / 28.6 fps |
10,741 / 40.84 fps |
|
Adobe Premier Rush time to transcode (mins:secs) |
0:40 |
0:48 |
0:53 |
0:21 |
1:01 |
The Xiaomi 15 finishes slightly behind the 15 Ultra in Geekbench 6’s single-core benchmarking test with an average score of 2,972, but posted the better imulti-core score of 9,330 to the Ultra’s 9,064. The same was true, when comparing Xiaomi’s results to the Samsung Galaxy S25, though the iPhone 16 Pro had its fortunes flipped — with higher single-core scores and weaker multi-core performance.
The Xiaomi 15’s graphics performance was far greater than I expected, beating out the majority of its contenders in 3DMark’s Solar Bay Unlimited benchmark. Not only did its 43.9 average frame rate some out on top, it also had the highest overall scores of the phones I compared it to. Only the Galaxy S25 came close, with a score of 11,412 and 43.4fps frame rate to Xiaomi’s 11,565 and 43.9 fps.
The Xiaomi 15 also did pretty well in our video transcoding test, which saw the phone convert a 4K video into 1080p in 40 seconds. That’s 8 seconds faster than the Xiaomi 15 Ultra required, and noticeably faster than the times for the Galaxy S25 (53 seconds) and the OnePlus 13 (1 minute and 1 second). However this test always seems to do well on Apple Silicon, so the iPhone 16 Pro dwarfed all 4 contenders with a 21 second conversion time.
Mobile gaming was pretty smooth in my testing, even at the highest graphics and frame rate I was able to set. Using the Xiaomi 15, I didn’t notice excess heat mid-game, even with brightness turned to maximum.
Most notably, even at a distance, the other characters and motion stayed pretty consistent on screen — something the Xiaomi 15 Ultra did have some issues with. So it seems that extra graphical performance doesn’t just come out in benchmarking tests — it’s put to good use in practice on the Xiaomi 15.
Xiaomi 15 review: Battery & charging
The Xiaomi 15 has a 5,240 mAh battery, a pretty sizable power pack when you consider that a lot of premium flagships top out at 5,000 mAh. Battery capacity is important, but it’s not the only thing that affects battery longevity. Thankfully the Xiaomi 15’s battery does seem to have some considerable staying power.
Our battery test involves playing a YouTube video at 50% brightness and 1080p resolution for 3 hours. At the end of those 3 hours the Xiaomi 15 had lost just 10% of its battery, compared to 11% lost by the Xiaomi 15 Ultra — a phone with a larger battery, but also a larger screen. In comparison, the Xiaomi Mix Fold 4 dropped by 14% in the same test, while Google’s Pixel 9 Pro suffered a 21% loss.
The Xiaomi 15 does support up to 90W wired charging, though you will need one of Xiaomi’s 90W HyperCharge power bricks to reach those speeds. Sadly, the phone does not come with one, and you’ll need to buy it separately. But if my 67W HyperCharge brick is anything to go by, the phone will still deliver some truly incredible recharge times.
The 67W brick managed to restore 46% of the phone’s battery in 15 minutes, and 81% by the 30 minute mark. The battery reached 100% 19 minutes later, with a full 0-100% recharge taking roughly 49 minutes.
Interestingly my USB-C multimeter showed that the charging speed never quite hit 60W, and leveled off at around 35-40W during that first half hour. However, that dropped down to below 20W after the 30-minute-mark, as is always the case with lithium batteries.
Xiaomi 15 review: Software
Like the Xiaomi 15 Ultra, the Xiaomi 15 runs on HyperOS 2, which is Xiaomi’s take on Android 15. Both Xiaomi phones are scheduled to get four generations of Android system updates, bringing us up to Android 19, as well as six years of Android security updates. While Google and Samsung offer seven years of both for their comparable flagship devices, Xiaomi is still being pretty generous compared to some Android phone makers, where support can top out at four years.
If you’re looking for a more Apple-ified take on Android, then HyperOS 2 is certainly the software to check out. While the software and UI are still clearly based on Android, a few little touches are very reminiscent of iOS — especially the split between the pull-down notification menu and Xiaomi’s Control Center clone.
Like most phone companies, Xiaomi has made a big push into the AI business, but in typical; smartphone fashion, it doesn’t give you much indication of where those features can be found. Some of them are obvious, like the AI-powered photo editing tools, but others are not.
AI subtitles and real-time translation stood out as interesting features to try, but on both the Xiaomi 15 and 15 Ultra I wasn’t able to figure out how to use them without help.
As with the Ultra model I found that the AI interpreter wasn’t all that different to other translation apps — to the point where AI’s involvement can’t really be felt. Maybe making AI run completely behind the scenes is a good thing, but Xiaomi certainly needs to offer something to differentiate its own translation software from rivals like Google.
AI subtitling worked well, at least when it actually worked. But it wasn’t able to treat all languages equally. Attempting to watch Squid Game in the native Korean was nearly impossible, and the subtitles I got weren’t close to those offered up by Netflix.
That said, the AI was able to translate a live-feed of Spanish news with minimal effort — which is no small feat considering how fast the presenter was speaking.
The AI editing tools on the Xiaomi 15 are something of a mixed bag. As on the Xiaomi 15 Ultra, I found that the Ai erase function was pretty hit and miss, often simply replacing a selected object with something slightly smaller. However, it seems that painting the object manually means there’s a much better chance it’ll be completely removed.
AI expansion was more impressive, though the quality of the final image all depends on what you’re trying to expand. Adding more background to a night-time photo of a daffodil in grass? Honestly I could barely tell that AI was involved. But seeing if HyperAI can expand my rather complicated Lego display, I found it produced very mediocre results.
So temper your expectations, especially if you’re trying to overcomplicate things on purpose.
Features for changing the view of the sky and removing reflections from the window in photos worked a lot better than I expected. Sky removal even altered the tone of the rest of the photograph to match what’s going on above. While I wasn’t fond of some of those changes, the editing tool offered a greater sense of realism to the altered photo than it otherwise would have had.
Overall, the AI features on board the Xiaomi 15 seem to work rather well, but it’s all hampered by the fact Xiaomi hasn’t made them easy to find. Sadly, that’s not a problem unique to Xiaomi phones or HyperOS.
Xiaomi 15 review: Verdict
The Xiaomi 15 is a great phone that’s overshadowed by the far superior Xiaomi 15 Ultra, which offers significantly better looks and performance even if it does cost considerably more. Despite this, there’s certainly nothing wrong with the non-Ultra model, with the Xiaomi 15 offering great battery life, benchmark results and solid camera performance.
The AI features are certainly interesting, though Xiaomi could do with making them a little easier to find — especially for AI that isn’t related to photo editing. Other phones don’t make their AI tools easy to find, but it’s still something Xiaomi will need to address if it wants users to adopt HyperAI.
The real problem is that the Xiaomi 15 isn’t quite as easy to get hold of compared to other big brands, with no official U.S. availability whatsoever. But if you do manage to get your hands on one, you should have a solid phone that does everything it needs to — and it does those things well.
