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[Music] The Xiaomi 15 has gone global, and it's here to take on the likes of the Galaxy S25. I'm Will from GSM Marina, and let's see what the Xiaomi 15 has in store in our full review. [Music]
Just like last year's Xiaomi 14, the Xiaomi 15 is a relatively compact flagship phone that packs some nice features, including a solid set of cameras. There are some improvements this time around, too, like a better chipset and a larger battery. The design is pretty straightforward; nothing too flashy here. But this year, the back is made of aerospace-grade fiberglass; it's resistant to fingerprint smudges, scratches, and bumps. The aluminum frame curves toward the glass instead of the other way around, and the phone feels quite comfy in hand. And like last year's model, the Xiaomi 15 has IP68-rated ingress protection against dust and water submersion.
The display is a 6.36-inch high-refresh LTPO OLED with a 120 Hz refresh rate and is protected by drop-resistance Xiaomi Shield glass. The screen brightness has improved since last year; we measured a maximum of around 550 nits with the manual slider, and this could boost to over 1500 nits in auto mode, compared to 1200 on the previous model. The display is sharp, with a pixel density of 460 PPI. It has 10-bit color depth and supports the HDR10+ and Dolby Vision video standards. And with this LTPO, the screen's high refresh rate is extra-adaptive, dialing down as low as 1 Hz while the phone is idling to save energy.
For audio, the Xiaomi 15 has a pair of stereo speakers with very good loudness, while the bass leaves more to be desired. Mids are crisp, and vocals sound good. Awake, you're the fingerprint reader is ultrasonic this time around, rather than optical; it's more responsive in general, except if you're using a glass screen protector. The phone has an IR blaster, so you can use it to control other appliances.
With the global version of the Xiaomi 15 comes 256 or 512 GB of storage onboard, and that's not expandable through microSD. Out of the box, the Xiaomi 15 runs the new HyperOS 2 interface on top of Android 15. Compared to the previous version, it's very similar, just with some more refined aesthetics and under-the-hood optimizations. You get Google's Gemini assistant onboard with plenty of functionality and the useful Circle to search feature. Also, AI comes baked in, and not only that, there are plenty of other AI features, too. You can find a list of them in settings. For example, within the Notes app, there are a bunch of AI functions for transforming text; these include summaries, proofreading, translation, and changing the layout. There are AI-based tools in the gallery as well. AI Sky can turn the sky in your photo into something completely different, changing the whole mood. Other AI features include an interpreter which can translate in real time and also produce subtitles within supported apps. For software support, Xiaomi promises 4 years of major OS updates and 6 years of security patches—here, just like the more expensive Ultra model and many other current flagships.
The Xiaomi 15 packs the latest high-powered Qualcomm chipset, the Snapdragon 8 Elite. In benchmarks, the Xiaomi 15 performs notably better than the previous model. The scores are great, as expected, with the phone holding up well against the competition. The thermal management here isn't too impressive, though; we observed significant thermal throttling during our prolonged stress tests, and it wasn't smooth either, with plenty of dips and spikes.
Xiaomi has upgraded the battery capacity this year from 4610 mAh hours to 5240, and the Chinese model even gets 5400. With the global Xiaomi 15, the battery life is excellent—some of the best in class—with an overall active use score of 16 hours and 28 minutes. There's again support for 90W charging, but there's no charger included in the box. With a proper adapter, we were able to charge the phone from 0 to 83% in 30 minutes, and a full charge took 45 minutes—pretty fast for a large battery. There's also support for 50W wireless charging.
Now the cameras. There's a 50MP main cam, a 50MP zoom camera, and a 50MP ultrawide camera with fixed focus. There was a difference from last year; the telephoto cam has a different sensor and has a slightly shorter reach now at 2.6 times. Let's start off with the main cam, though. The main camera delivers flagship-great image quality during the day. The photos have good sharpness and fine detail, wide dynamic range, and accurate color reproduction. And the performance outdoors and even indoors is consistent. Unlike last year's Xiaomi 14, the main camera sensor now does quite well with 2x digital zoom. The photos have really good sharpness and contrast and no obvious artificial-looking processing. At night, the Xiaomi 15 prefers to use this automatic night mode. These shots from the main cam are clean, sharp, and detailed. The detail in the shadows is impressive, and the phone handles highlights and light sources adequately, too.
Now we have the telephoto camera. It now has a 60mm equivalent lens, and at 2.6x, it doesn't zoom as much as last year's model did. Still, these photos come out with superb detail and great contrast and dynamic range. The colors also look great and match the main camera well. This zoom camera is also capable of close focusing at around 10 cm, so it takes some excellent macro close-up shots. Photos of people also come out really well with the zoom camera, regardless of whether you're using the dedicated portrait mode or not. We have seen better skin rendition, though, not from a phone this compact. At night, the telephoto camera shoots photos with plenty of detail and good-looking colors. The dynamic range is nice and wide, and contrast is good. Some surfaces do come out a bit soft and artificial-looking, though, because of the noise reduction and sharpening.
Daylight photos from the ultrawide aren't spectacular; there is visible softness, especially near the corners, and there is more to be desired in terms of detail, contrast, and especially dynamic range. Colors look nice, but they're not really well-matched to the other cameras. The ultrawide camera doesn't shine in low light, but it still does all right as far as ultrawides go.
Selfies come out at the native resolution from a 32MP front-facing cam with fixed focus. These look good, with nice skin tones, good contrast, and wide dynamic range. But despite the high resolution, these photos aren't terribly sharp when pixel peeping. The phone supports 4K video recording with all of its cameras, and the main cam can now shoot 8K at 30 FPS, up from 24 FPS last year. In 4K, the main camera's videos are absolutely flagship-great; the footage has abundant detail, great colors, wide dynamic range, and practically no noise. The telephoto camera also captures great 4K videos; these are very detailed, with great colors and no noise. Even the ultrawide is quite solid when it comes to videos; they come out with plenty of detail and no noise. There is slight fringing on smaller details, but that's all. Here's a look at the video stabilization, which does a good job to smooth things out. And in low light, 4K video taken with the main camera is also very good, with above-average dynamic range and detail.
So that's the Xiaomi 15. It's a compact flagship with standout battery life and fast charging. You get an excellent camera experience all around, for both photos and videos, and there's a set of up-to-date AI features by Google and Xiaomi. While the thermals could be better, and so could the ultrawide cam, the Xiaomi 15 is a well-rounded high-end phone. It's actually one of our favorite compact devices right now, and it's worth recommending. Thanks for watching, guys. If you're looking for alternatives, here are a couple of options on our channel: the Samsung Galaxy S25 and the iPhone 16 Pro. Let us know what you think, and I'll see you on the next one.