Xiaomi 15 Review: 3 Weeks Against iPhone 16 Pro & S25 Ultra

Xiaomi has finally launched its new flagship globally today, though it has been available in China for some time. I have extensively tested the global version of the Xiaomi 15 for three weeks. For this, I spent hours playing Fortnite, took hundreds of photos with the cameras, and compared it against the iPhone 16 Pro and the Galaxy S25 Ultra.

The latter two are a bit more expensive, which might seem unfair, yes. But in reality, the Xiaomi 15 is actually better than Samsung and Apple’s flagships in some aspects.

Design and Build Quality

Xiaomi is certainly not better than Apple in design, but at least equally good—they seem to be huge fans of the iPhone 16 Pro. The two devices look very similar, with the Xiaomi being only slightly larger. Both have a metal frame with rounded corners and a glass back, and when we swipe down the quick settings on both, they look even more alike.

I like the iPhone design, so, I also like the design of the Xiaomi 15. I also find this softly saturated green color quite stylish.

At least the camera module looks different. The back is made of so-called Dragon Crystal Glass, which is supposed to be particularly shatter-resistant. I also really appreciate that it is IP68-rated for water and dust resistance.

It is 8.1mm thin, and on the sides, we get a power button and a volume rocker on the right, while at the bottom, there is a dual SIM slot, speakers, and a USB-C 3.2 port. There is no space for a microSD card.

While I was able to wirelessly charge it using Qi2 without any issues, it does not support MagSafe out of the box. However, I changed that with a protective case, and now those cool magnetic battery packs work and charge it wirelessly.

By the way, links to all the accessories I recommend for the Xiaomi 15 are in the description of our review on YouTube.

The ultrasonic fingerprint scanner under the screen works very quickly and reliably.

Display and Speakers

The display is exactly 6.36 inches in size, and as you can see, the bezels are very thin. We get an OLED panel with a resolution of 2670 x 1200 pixels, making it beautifully high-resolution and sharp. A screen protector is pre-installed out of the box.

Thanks to the OLED, colors look fantastic, and blacks are truly deep black.

It supports up to 120Hz and can reach a peak brightness of 3,200 nits. That applies to HDR content, of course; standard brightness is likely around 1,000 nits. However, it’s noticeably brighter than the iPhone 16 Pro and even brighter than the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra. And that’s without a sunlight mode. If you enable that, it gets even brighter.

So, in terms of the display, the Xiaomi 15 is perfect for watching movies, TV shows, and YouTube—even when the sun is shining directly onto it.

The speakers are actually quite good, but not as good as those from Apple and Samsung. In a direct comparison, the iPhone 16 Pro has more volume, more bass, and the sound feels more pleasant. The S25 Ultra is even slightly louder than the iPhone.

Hardware and Performance

Inside the Xiaomi 15 sits a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset with 12GB of RAM and either 256GB or 512GB of internal storage. These are the models that should be available globally initially. In China, there are additional versions, which may eventually be released elsewhere as well.

My Geekbench 6 comparison is quite interesting, as the single-core performance is on par with the S25 Ultra, which has a slightly higher-clocked Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy. In multi-core tests, the Samsung is marginally faster, and in GPU tests, it also has a slight edge.

The iPhone 16 Pro is weaker in the multi-core test but stronger in single-core performance. It’s fascinating to see how much Qualcomm is catching up here.

To test real-world performance, I played a whole range of demanding games, including a bit of Leo’s Fortune—which runs even on weak phones, but I think it’s a cool game.

In Fortnite, I maxed out all settings—90 FPS, epic graphics, and 100% 3D resolution. It runs very smoothly with a stable 60 FPS and is a lot of fun.

For some reason, Fortnite is capped at a maximum of 60 FPS on the Xiaomi 15. The Snapdragon 8 Elite can actually handle more. And since the FPS counter never fluctuates significantly from 60, I suspect this is artificially limited. On the S25 Ultra, it easily reaches 90 FPS. It could be that something still needs to be optimized.

I was also able to play Diablo Immortal smoothly at maximum settings, though it, too, is capped at 60 FPS.

The Xiaomi 15 really reaches its limits with Call of Duty Warzone Mobile. The game runs very smoothly, but at maximum graphics settings, it gets extremely warm. The metal frame becomes uncomfortably hot. Not so hot that you’d burn yourself, of course, but still quite warm.

At first, it runs between 90 and 100 FPS at maximum settings. But then it quickly heats up and apparently throttles the frame rate to 60. Even at 60 FPS, it remains very warm.

So, I lowered the graphics settings, putting most things on “Medium.” In this case, it held 90 to 100 FPS a bit longer, but eventually, it also got quite warm and was automatically throttled to 60. I think this smartphone has a real heat issue.

With the same settings, the Galaxy S25 Ultra also gets very warm, but not as uncomfortably so. It starts at 110 FPS and stabilizes at around 70 FPS. It also maintains between 80 and 110 FPS significantly longer than the Xiaomi. The S25 Ultra manages its temperature noticeably better.

Despite the heat issue, the Xiaomi 15 is, of course, one of the most powerful smartphones on the market and is a performance beast—especially outside of gaming. It handles fast multitasking effortlessly, and I was able to edit and export 50-megapixel RAW photos in Adobe Lightroom without any problems. The Snapdragon 8 Elite is really an excellent chip.

Read: Samsung Galaxy Tab S10+ Review And Comparison With Tab S9+

Camera

I always look forward to testing smartphone cameras because photography is my biggest hobby. The Xiaomi 15 has a total of four cameras, one of which is the 32-megapixel front camera with an f/2 aperture.

It has a focal length of 21mm, making it nicely wide-angle. Selfies turn out well, and you can also record 4K videos at 60 FPS, which looks great. I just find it a shame that you can’t control the front camera in Pro mode or shoot in RAW format.

In a direct comparison with the iPhone 16 Pro and Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, I noticed that the two competitors have significantly sharper front cameras.

On the back, there are three cameras with LEICA branding, all offering 50 megapixels. By default, photos are taken at 12 megapixels, meaning multiple pixels are combined into one. Every manufacturer does this. Next to the camera module, there’s also an LED flash.

The main camera has a focal length of 23mm, optical image stabilization, and an f/1.62 aperture. I love that you can easily switch between the LEICA Vibrant and LEICA Authentic Look. The latter looks more realistic. I actually find the post-processing by LEICA and Xiaomi very nice. All the photos you see here are unedited and mostly taken with the LEICA Authentic Look.

Let’s move on to the ultra-wide-angle camera, which has a nicely wide focal length of 14mm and an f/2.2 aperture. Colors look just as nice as with the main camera, but photos taken with it are not as sharp in direct comparison.

The telephoto camera has a 60mm focal length, which is slightly less than its predecessor. However, I really like 60mm, as I also enjoy photographing with this focal length on my larger camera.

By the way, this is the 2.6x zoom in the camera app. I find this much more useful than the 5x zoom on the iPhone 16 Pro—although the latter is better if you want to get as close as possible. The 5x zoom on the Xiaomi doesn’t look that great anymore, but it’s still usable.

The camera app offers many useful features. Some less useful ones too, like a beauty mode, but the super macro mode and Leica filters are cool. A portrait mode is standard on all smartphones now, and here you can manually adjust the depth of field. I prefer to do that later in Lightroom.

The most exciting feature is the Pro Mode. Here, you can finally shoot in RAW format and, if you want, use the full 50 megapixels. The 50 MP make the most sense when shooting in good lighting conditions, meaning when the ISO is around 50, or if you use a tripod and set the ISO manually to a low value. This way, you can really capture more details, and I think the 50 MP photos look fantastic. Thanks to the RAW format, you also have a lot of flexibility in post-processing with Lightroom and similar tools.

In Pro Mode, you can manually adjust exposure time, ISO, and white balance or leave them on automatic.

It’s a pity that the ultra-wide-angle and telephoto cameras cannot be set to 50 MP in RAW format. However, with the ultra-wide-angle camera, at least 50 MP JPEGs are possible.

I compared all of the Xiaomi 15 cameras in detail with the iPhone 16 Pro and Galaxy S25 Ultra. First, using the default settings—meaning all in JPEG or HEIC format at 12 MP.

Even on a large 4K monitor, it’s really hard to see a difference between the three. Only when zooming in to 200% can I spot slightly more details on the Xiaomi 15 and S25 Ultra than on the iPhone. The post-processing is also interesting—I think Xiaomi’s Leica Authentic Look is much nicer.

With the wide-angle cameras, again, it’s difficult to see a difference. The details are nearly identical, but the Xiaomi 15 looks softer than the iPhone and Samsung. I think this is due to strong sharpening applied by Samsung and Apple. The actual details are almost the same.

The 2.6x camera on the Xiaomi is significantly sharper than the 3x camera on the Samsung.

The RAW comparison is more interesting: Xiaomi shoots at 50 MP, the iPhone at 48 MP, and Samsung at 200 MP. And indeed, the S25 Ultra’s camera is noticeably sharper than the Xiaomi. If you want to print photos in large formats, the 200 MP do make sense. The Xiaomi is also slightly sharper than the iPhone.

With the ultra-wide-angle camera, RAW format on the Xiaomi is limited to 12 MP. But in reality, Samsung and iPhone offer hardly any more detail despite having around 50 MP. I think this is because ultra-wide-angle lenses simply aren’t sharp enough to fully utilize that resolution.

With the Xiaomi 15, you can record videos in up to 8K at 30 FPS or 4K at 60 FPS, and I find the video quality overall good—including from the front camera and in low-light conditions. In direct comparison with the iPhone, the Xiaomi also performs well, though the latter can record in 4K 120 FPS.

Software

The Xiaomi 15 comes with Android 15 and HyperOS 2 out of the box, which is Xiaomi’s own interface. They promise four years of major Android updates and six years of security updates.

HyperOS 2 doesn’t introduce many new features—it’s essentially the same software running on other recent Xiaomi devices. The interface always reminds me of a mix between Android and iOS. The quick settings, in particular, look exactly like Apple’s.

As with all manufacturers, many AI features are now built-in. Google Gemini is preinstalled and works great. Circle to Search is also included, allowing you to circle something on your screen and search for it with Google.

The audio recorder can automatically transcribe recordings, and it does this really well.

Many more AI features will be coming, including for the Gallery and Notes app. However, many of them are only being released today with an update, so they didn’t make it into this video.

Battery Life

The Xiaomi 15 has a 5,240 mAh battery, and in my battery test, it lasted a strong 24.75 hours. For this test, I always loop an HD YouTube video at max brightness.

With normal use, you can expect one to two days of battery life with the Xiaomi 15. But it depends on what you do. If you take a lot of photos, it’s closer to one day. And if you play Call of Duty Warzone Mobile at max settings, it’s only a few hours – that’s always the case.

Read: Motorola Edge 50 Neo Review: Budget Camera vs iPhone 16 Pro

Final Vercit

I really enjoyed reviewing the Xiaomi 15. I think it offers a pretty design, solid battery life, a beautifully bright display, and solid cameras. I especially like the Leica Authentic Look and the 60mm camera, and you’ve seen in my comparisons that it holds up quite well against the iPhone.

However, it’s not perfect. The Snapdragon 8 Elite is very powerful, but if you need sustained performance, such as for Call of Duty Warzone, it overheats or throttles performance. And while the 60mm lens is great, the main camera on the S25 Ultra is a bit sharper.

But the Xiaomi 15 is cheaper than its Samsung and Apple competitors, making the overall value really good. If you want a flagship phone without spending the crazy amounts you need for an S25 Ultra, the Xiaomi 15 might be perfect for you.