Xiaomi launches Xiaomi 15 Series and I’ve been testing the new compact flagship

Xiaomi has taken the Xiaomi 15 Series global after it first launched in China in October 2024. At the time of its announcement, it was one of the first phones available with the Snapdragon 8 Elite. The global phone landscape is slighty different now, with notable launches from the OnePlus 13 to the Samsung Galaxy S25 using Qualcomm’s latest hardware.

There are two phones to know about, the Xiaomi 15 Ultra, which offers a larger 6.73-inch display, but also because it ramps up the camera on the back, with a quad-lens system, featuring a 200-megapixel telephoto camera, offering 4.3x optical zoom, sitting alongside three 50-megapixel cameras. The Xiaomi 15 Ultra is very much a follow-up to the Xiaomi 14 Ultra, with high-end photography at its core.

I’ll be reviewing the Xiaomi 15 Ultra soon, but first, the Xiaomi 15.

I’ve been testing the Xiaomi 15

That’s the story for the Xiaomi 15 too, the company’s compact flagship. This model has a 6.36-inch display with a triple camera on the back. Again, it’s very much like the Xiaomi 14 from 2024, with a few nips and tucks to bring it up to date.

That results in a telephoto camera that gets some new skills, capable of focusing on closer objects, making it more versatile, but stepping down from 3x optical zoom to 2.6x optical. The Xiaomi 15 has three 50-megapixel cameras, making for a versatile package.

I’ve been testing the camera out in New York and around Barcelona over the past week and I’ve found that it offers great performance in daylight from that main sensor. Some of the images look a little warm, especially as the light drops. One advantage this has is that colours can come out a little more intense than you expect and when it comes to sunset or sunrises, that might make for a better photo.

It’s a trick that Samsung has been pulling for a number of years, where the focus seems to be on getting a photo that looks great, rather than looking exactly like real life. If you’re the sort of person who bumps the saturation or applies a filter to your photos, you might find you don’t need it.

The new 2.6x zoom runs out to 60x, with AI support for longer zooms to sharpen them up. That has its pros and cons: it will sharpen edges and bring back lost colour, reducing the soft haze that often impacts zoom photos, but the AI can replace textures and lose detail, so you can lose accuracy.

A pocket powerhouse

Many of the phones that we see with flagship hardware are pretty big. The Xiaomi 15 offers something a little different, because it’s smaller, but you still get a complete photography package. It’s a natural rival of the Samsung Galaxy S25, although I immediately found one distinct advantage: battery life and charging speeds.

Supporting 90W charging, the Xiaomi 15 can recharge in a flash. You’ll get from 0-50% in just over 20 minutes – and that 50% charge will last you most of the day. Admittedly, the second 50% of the battery charges slower (as a measure to preserve battery health), but this sort of speed is something that Google, Apple and Samsung don’t offer. I’ve also been really impressed with the battery.

I’ve found the Xiaomi 15 to be fast and smooth, boosted by that Snapdragon 8 Elite hardware. It’s a little small as a gaming phone, but the performance is great.

That’s hampered slightly by the user interface: Xiaomi’s HyperOS 2 is an extensive reworking of Android 15, but there’s a fair number of apps that are preinstalled, with some tweaks that make the interface a little more removed from a stock Android experience.

There’s a slight downside here compared to big rivals: there’s only four OS updates and 6-years of security, which is behind the 7-years that you get from Samsung and Google.

A premium compact flagship

It’s the little details that really stand out with the Xiaomi 15 and I particularly like the way that the frame curves just a tiny bit into the rear of the device. It removes the sharp edges that you get from rival models, making this a one-handed master. With aircraft-grade aluminium for that frame, the Xiaomi 15 feels solid. That’s backed up by IP68 water and dust protection.

The display offers 3,200 nits and I found it great when watching movies on long flights, with support for Dolby Vision, HDR10 and HDR10+. There’s plenty of vibrancy from the 120Hz OLED panel too, although I found that tweaking it up to the vivid setting made things a little more luscious.

But then we come to the prices: the Xiaomi 15 Ultra costs £1299, which is more expensive than the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra (although you get double the storage from Xiaomi. The same applies to the Xiaomi 15: starting at £899 (256GB), this phone is £100 more than the Galaxy S25 or the iPhone 16 which both start with 128GB storage and a cheaper asking price.

Xiaomi is aiming high with the Xiaomi 15 Series: this is no longer about offering really affordable devices, it’s about competing with big name brands. You definitely can’t knock Xiaomi’s ambition.

What else is Xiaomi launch at Mobile World Congress?

If you thought that Xiaomi was going to stop at launching two phones then you’d be wrong. The company has also announced the Xiaomi Pad 7 and Pad 7 Pro, Xiaomi Watch S4, Xiaomi Smart Band 9 Pro,  Xiaomi Bids 5 Pro and the Buds 5 Pro (Wi-Fi).