Xiaomi 15 review: Get a Samsung Galaxy S25 instead
The Xiaomi 15 is a sleek, powerful and capable smartphone – but the Samsung Galaxy S25 does better for less money
Pros
- Great performance and stamina
- Sharp, colour-accurate display
- Cameras are as good as ever
Cons
- More expensive than last year
- Relatively few hardware upgrades
- HyperOS just isn’t for me
It’s already been a busy year in the smartphone game but things show no sign of slowing down just yet. Next up on the docket is the Xiaomi 15. This pocket rocket of a smartphone follows one of my favourite compact options from last year, the Xiaomi 14, and is the latest in a string of flagships to make use of the blisteringly powerful Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset.
The problem with that parade of powerhouses is that everything the Xiaomi 15 does well, another phone does just as well for similar money – or sometimes even less. There’s never a good time to bump up prices but it feels like a misstep for Xiaomi to charge more while making relatively few hardware improvements. The Xiaomi 15 is a good phone but, in the context of the wider smartphone market, it doesn’t feel particularly special.
Xiaomi 15 review: What you need to know
The Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset is backed up here by 12GB of RAM and either 256GB or 512GB of storage space. The battery also gets a big upgrade, swapping to a silicon-carbon cell with a capacity of 5,400mAh – quite the increase over the Xiaomi 14’s 4,610mAh Li-Po battery. Charging is the same as before, with 90W wired and 50W wireless.
Otherwise, not much is different from the Xiaomi 14. The display is the same 6.36in LTPO OLED unit with a resolution of 2,670 x 1,200 and a dynamic refresh rate up to 120Hz. A hole-punch notch near the top houses the same 32-megapixel (f/2) selfie camera as before, too.
The rear cameras are organised into a chunky, rounded square module in the top-left corner. Once again, the array comprises three 50-megapixel lenses, with the main shooter joined by a 2.6x telephoto camera and an ultrawide lens.
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Xiaomi 15 review: Price and competition
Despite a relatively modest selection of hardware upgrades, the Xiaomi 15 is more expensive than its predecessor. The 256GB model is now £899 (£50 up from last year) and the 512GB variant is £999 (£100 more than last year).
The most notable competition here comes from the Samsung Galaxy S25, which starts at £799 for the 128GB model, with the 256GB at £859 and the 512GB going for £949. As well as undercutting the Xiaomi 15, the Galaxy S25 has a more compact build, faster performance and longer software support.
Also around this price are the Google Pixel 9 (£899 for the 256GB model) and the iPhone 16 (£849 for the 256GB model, £1,049 for 512GB), though both lack telephoto cameras and neither is as fast as the Xiaomi 15.
Finally, we have a large-screened alternative in the OnePlus 13. Also powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite and wielding a telephoto camera, this is a great alternative for anyone looking for a bigger display. The 256GB model with 12GB of RAM is currently £885 and the 16GB/512GB variant is £999.
Xiaomi 15 review: Design and key features
Put them side by side and you’ll struggle to tell the difference between the Xiaomi 15 and the Xiaomi 14. The build is mostly the same as before, measuring 71 x 8.1 x 152mm (WDH) and weighing 191g. The 2.5D rear has been dropped in favour of completely flat glass and the aluminium frame is now matte, as opposed to polished, but otherwise, it’s business as usual.
IP68 dust and water resistance returns but the glass covering the display is now Xiaomi’s own Shield Glass, replacing the Gorilla Glass Victus used last year. There’s also no rear protection, whereas the Samsung Galaxy S25 is sandwiched between layers of Gorilla Glass Victus 2.
The Xiaomi 15 launches with Android 15 and the brand’s own HyperOS 2 launcher on top. I wasn’t a fan of this software when it debuted on the Xiaomi 14 and the second generation has done little to assuage my concerns. There’s still far too much bloatware, the split notification bar continues to irk me and the cluttered control centre is a mess.
New for this version is HyperAI, which adds the usual grab bag of features like writing assistance, audio transcribing and language translations, as well as an AI-based object eraser and reflection removal for the cameras. It’s nothing we haven’t seen before but it does at least mean that Xiaomi is roughly on par with the competition.
The same can’t be said for software support, however. Xiaomi has upped the security patches to six year’s worth but is again committing to only four years of OS updates. That’s fine enough, but both Samsung and Google offer seven years apiece.
Xiaomi 15 review: Display
The OLED display is just as impressive as last year, with strong contrast and inky blacks. Brightness was decent in manual mode, hitting 562cd/m2 at its peak. With auto brightness enabled, the peak is a bit down from last year, however; shining a torch on the light sensor only got the display to 955cd/m2, whereas the Xiaomi 14 hit 1,070cd/m2. It won me back with HDR content, however, where it peaked at an impressive 1,654cd/m2.
You’re absolutely spoilt for choice on the colour profile front, with something for everyone. The default Original Pro targets sRGB relatively well, with Saturated and Vivid aiming for DCI-P3. And then you’ve got the Advanced settings, with further granular options for Original, sRGB and P3.
I generally stuck with the Original Pro setting, as it dynamically shifts based on the content on screen, but I found the greatest sRGB colour accuracy in the Advanced Original setting, with an average Delta E colour variance score of 0.9 – anything around 1 is right in the pocket here.
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Xiaomi 15 review: Performance and battery life
The Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset has consistently impressed me in every phone using it thus far and the Xiaomi 15 is no different. As you can see below, it broadly matches other 8 Elite users and pulls ahead of the Xiaomi 14 by 44% in the single-core benchmarks and 47% in the multi-core.
Xiaomi’s pre-launch software is notoriously fickle with our GPU benchmarking software, so I haven’t yet been able to get exact figures for the Xiaomi 15. Given the shared hardware, however, I’d be surprised if it didn’t land in the same neck of the woods as the Galaxy S25.
In practice, I ran Genshin: Impact at high graphical settings without any major stuttering or dips in framerate. I did get an overheating warning when I dialled the settings to maximum and though the phone warmed up a little, it never reached fingertip-scorching territory.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite also consistently excels in power efficiency, so it comes as no surprise to see the Xiaomi 15 doing well in our battery life test. Its result of 27hrs 6mins is only around an hour better than the Xiaomi 14 but it’s still enough to see you through a couple of days’ moderate use without breaking a sweat.
The 90W charging is something of a secret weapon, meaning that the Xiaomi 15 recharges faster than the likes of the Samsung Galaxy S25 (25W) or iPhone 16 (20W). There’s no plug included in the box, but using my 100W charger I got the Xiaomi 15 back to 50% in 21 minutes and fully charged in 45 minutes.
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Xiaomi 15 review: Cameras
The cameras are mostly the same as the Xiaomi 14’s, with the exception of the telephoto lens. It’s still a 50-megapixel sensor with an f/2 aperture and optical image stabilisation but it now captures 2.6x shots, as opposed to the 3.2x on the Xiaomi 14. That’s no real loss and image quality is still fantastic, with strong contrast and natural colours.
Hybrid zooming has been bumped up from 30x last year to 60x but this feels more pointless to me. Shots past 10x (below) still look incrementally more smudged so there’s little point to increasing the magnification.
Shooting by itself, the 50-megapixel (f/1.6) main camera is just as good as last year. You again get the choice of Leica Authentic or Leica Vibrant colour profile – I stuck with the former for the most part. Here, colours are suitably true to life and there’s plenty of finer detail, even further in the background.
Things continue to look good after dark: there was barely any natural light for the image below, so artificial brightening does a great job of illuminating the scene without muddying it with too much visual noise.
I found the colour tone of the 50-megapixel (f/2.2) ultrawide camera was slightly washed out last year but it’s much more in line with the main lens’ colouring this time around. Detail is decent enough too, excusing those tricky corner areas.
Video adds a 30fps option to the 8K recording, alongside last year’s 24fps, but otherwise the offering is the same. You can capture in 4K at up to 60fps in Dolby Vision or LOG formats, with electronic stabilisation taming the worst of your shaky hands.
Xiaomi 15 review: Verdict
This time last year, I was saying that the Xiaomi 14 was neck and neck with the Samsung Galaxy S24. While the Xiaomi 15 is roughly as good as its predecessor, the relative sparsity of hardware upgrades paired with the price bump means that it’s just not as competitive now.
The Xiaomi 15 has its perks – the display is bright, sharp and colour-accurate, performance is up there with the best and the cameras are just as good as last year – but the simple fact is that the Samsung Galaxy S25 is the superior compact flagship. The build is tighter and lighter, software support is more extensive, the OS is more user-friendly and battery life is better, all for a lower starting price.
