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The Good
- Has an insane battery life
- Impressive camera system
- Design looks and feels premium
The Not So Good
- Not for everyone
Need-to-knows
- Versatile and characterful camera
- Design feels similar to iPhone 13 Mini
- Only slightly more expensive than the iPhone 16e
- Base model (256GB) costs $899 and $999 for 512GB version
It’s been quite a year for smartphones, and 2025 is only two months old.
The latest one to hit my desk a couple of weeks ago was the Xiaomi 15, which arrived not long after Apple announced a rather expensive and frustratingly crippled iPhone 16e.
Spoiler: things are about to get even tougher for Apple.
How I reviewed the Xiaomi 15
As with all of my Android smartphone reviews, I popped my secondary SIM card into the Xiaomi 15 and used it as my second phone. However, there were several occasions when it was the only phone I carried with me.
My use case for smartphones is pretty standard – communication, photos, and media consumption. I don’t game or run benchmarks (although I made an exception with the latter for this review), so my thoughts about the Xiaomi 15 are based entirely on what I consider to be normal use cases for most people.
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Specs and pricing
The Xiaomi 15 is powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite chip and sports 12GB of RAM. There’s a 5,240mAh battery powering proceedings with 90W wired HyperCharge capabilities and 50W wireless charging.
The display is a 6.36-inch AMOLED unit with 3,200 nits of peak brightness, a 120Hz refresh rate, Dolby Vision support, and a whole bunch of certified eye care stuff.
Water resistance is rated at IP68, and there’s Wi-Fi 7 and dual sim support, to boot.
At the heart of everything is Xiaomi’s HyperOS 2.
Price-wise, you’ll pay £899 for the 256GB version and £999 for the 512GB version. That makes the Xiaomi 15 only a fraction more expensive than the iPhone 16e. Which is interesting when you take into account that rather impressive spec. And I haven’t even got to the camera system yet.
Oh, and I should note that there’s a Xiaomi 15 Ultra, too, which I haven’t got my hands on yet, but which comes at a higher price and includes an upgraded camera system, larger display, more storage options, and a bigger battery.
What about the
Design and display
The Xiaomi 15 felt great in the hand, immediately, out of the box. I can’t remember the last time that happened to this degree with a smartphone. I loved the form factor straight away; the size is an absolute masterclass in a world of smartphones which are, let’s be honest, way too big.
I also think it looks super nice in the black version I was sent to review, although it also comes in white, Liquid Silver, and a very nice-looking green.
The Xiaomi 15 looks and feels incredibly premium – like a mini flagship phone. The fact they’ve also packed in such a lovely display caps off one of the nicest looking and handling phones I can remember.
Dare I say that it almost has iPhone 13 mini vibes?
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Camera performance
There are three cameras on the rear of the Xiaomi 15 which offer three optical focal lengths – 14mm, 23mm, and 60mm. It’s quite a nice selection, and while I’d love an optical length beyond 2.6x (the 60mm equivalent), the Xiaomi 15 Ultra does the flagship thing of offering that.
All of the rear cameras are 50MP, and the selfie camera is 32MP.
Xiaomi has retained its partnership with Leica for the 15 series and, trust me, that’s good news. There are two profiles to choose from – Leica Authentic and Leica Vibrant. I prefer the latter, personally, as it predictably makes photos ‘pop’ more, which is why most of my test shots are taken with that profile.
The photos taken by the Xiaomi 15 have a tonne of character. They’re very contrasty and a little over-sharpened in places – and colours can be slightly oversaturated sometimes, but that’s probably why they’re so immediately pleasing. I’m not against this kind of thing at all when it comes to smartphone camera systems.
The Xiaomi 15 also deals with challenging shooting conditions very well. Point the lenses into the sun, and the rest of the image is exposed pretty well. The dynamic range is very impressive, too.
The aforementioned 2.6x optical, while not offering huge reach, does provide some great results. Even 10x does a pretty good job if you want to go further, but beyond that we’re into classic AI-assisted territory and some fairly rough results.
The wide-angle lens produces some great results too, in the right settings, even if the corners are a little soft at times.
Portraits are where the Xiaomi 15 really shines, though. They are stunning. I encountered some misses here and there in terms of focusing, but the composition was nailed more often than not.
The selfie camera is great, too, although it struggled occasionally to keep up with my fast-moving two-year-old son. Like most smartphone camera systems I’ve tested.
That telephoto lens also doubles as a macro, and I was able to get some great shots with it. It was also nice to have to manually switch to a lens for that purpose rather than have the phone decide when I wanted to take a macro photo (the bane of every iPhone user’s life).
Low light? The Xiaomi performs brilliantly in most dark settings. It struggled a bit beyond 1x, but at the standard 23mm focal length, you can achieve some beautiful results when the lights go down.
Video-wise, the Xiaomi 15 shoots at up to 8K. No, really. I’m personally far more interested in 4K video performance and I’m happy to report that this is one of the best Android phones I’ve tested in that regard; the footage looks great and there’s no evidence of the weird Android jitteriness.
Interested in the iPhone 17?
Performance and battery life
The fact the Xiaomi 15 is powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite chip with a healthy amount of RAM is all you need to know – this is a brilliant performer.
Although the numbers are utterly meaningless, I did decide to run a Geekbench benchmark and these were the results:
- 2,942 single-core
- 8,902 multi-core
I have no idea what any of that means, but it’s up there with the current flagships which, once again, is all you need to know.
Battery life on the Xiaomi 15 has been superb and typically bonkers in standby mode. To give you an idea of its stamina, the battery is currently at 87% and HyperOS believes there are at least another 24 hours remaining. I’d wager there’s more than that.
Conclusion
I love the size, build quality, spec, and camera system on the Xiaomi 15. And the price. For what you get, this is a stunning phone.
But it really is that form factor that is the winning element here. It won’t be for everyone, but if you’re fed up with massive smartphones, yet don’t want to compromise on anything, the Xiaomi 15 has set a new standard.
