This content provides a detailed, real-world comparison between the Xiaomi 15 and Samsung Galaxy S25 over a day of cycling, evaluating hardware, software, camera performance, and battery life to determine which phone offers a better overall user experience.
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Xiaomi 15 does have better hardware than the Galaxy S25, like a larger battery capacity,
but hardware is not always everything, and one can argue the more mature software of
Samsung can compensate for less of what you get on the S25. To put that to the test, I am going
to do a day-in-the-life comparison of the phones after seven months of their release while cycling
from Tulln, a city in lower Australia, to Vienna, capital of Australia. We started the day before 10
in the morning while both phones were connected to the same 5G network, and as you can clearly see,
the Xiaomi 15 is larger than the S25 but also heavier. The Xiaomi 15 screen, in my opinion,
looks better and sometimes brighter in adaptive brightness compared to the S25,
and I really wished that Samsung had used their better M14 display instead. We took
the bikes and started our journey in the center of Tulln. The Xiaomi 15 has a larger camera sensor,
but when there is enough light, you can hardly see a difference between the two phones. It also has
a larger telephoto sensor, but that also wouldn’t create a meaningful difference, at least in this
three-times zoom picture, even if we try to pixel peep—or just peep in this case. We arrived at a
very nice café in the center of the town to have breakfast, and we also decided to play a game of
Yatzi while the coffee was getting ready. Right now both phones are at 97%, and as you can see,
they are bright enough even under direct sunlight. The food picture taken with the Xiaomi 15 is more
vivid, even though it was taken with the Leica authentic mode. We finished the game too, and
I totally crushed my opponent as you can see: 297 to 183. As you know Yatzi is a game of skills not
chance! Now both phones are at 95% battery, and I put both of them to navigate our way to Vienna
using an app called Komoot. As a side note, the back of the devices could not look more different.
When my friend saw the Xiaomi, she was like, oh, is it really a Leica camera? To which I replied,
not really, it’s Leica branding. Which means the color science of the Xiaomi 15 is being
created with the Leica team, and it has its own unique color profile. If you don’t know,
Leica is a famous camera brand with very expensive cameras. The Samsung Galaxy S25,
on the other hand, has its own color science. After all, Samsung used to be a camera company
too. One problem I have with the S25 though is that sometimes you get these ugly flares, and
every single time I see a comment saying I should clean the lens—believe me, I do—it’s more to do
with the coating of the camera lens. We arrived at our next destination for another coffee. Overall,
I wouldn’t say there is a very obvious difference between the video here, and both also have
nice stabilization. There is a bit of a color difference though. Especially if you look at the
sky, the Galaxy appears to have a bit more green in the tone, while the Xiaomi looks more purple.
Also, Xiaomi is overall processing it a tad better in my opinion, but write down in the comments if
you agree with me. Right now both phones are around 91% battery left. While sitting to rest,
I also decided to play some YouTube in the background on 5G on both phones just to drain the
batteries a little bit. We took the bikes again and passed through these beautiful fields next
to the Danube River. The Galaxy still does suffer a bit from lens color and position shift when you
punch in. It’s better in OneUI 7, but still not perfect. As I said, the Xiaomi 15 has two main
camera modes: Leica Vibrant and Leica Authentic. Here I took the photo with the Leica Authentic,
which by default I use throughout the whole video. Because as you can see in the second picture,
the Leica Vibrant is just too vibrant for my taste and a bit saturated. Both phones can zoom up to
30 times into the subject. The Galaxy does more sharpening, while the Xiaomi does more smoothing.
The Xiaomi can go even further to 60 times, but at that level the picture is not looking that great.
Also, Xiaomi does lots of denoising, which makes the sky look less bandy, but at the same time
everything looks like there is a halo around it. On the ultrawide lens, the quality is comparable,
just that the colors are again different, and here the Galaxy is again more towards green,
while the Xiaomi has a bit more yellow tint on it. For my taste, I do prefer the Galaxy
photo. It’s more neutral, I’m not a big fan of how I look on Xiaomi, especially since it makes
my face too orange. We arrived at the third café of the day, and this time we are going to have a
bit of a late lunch. Right now it’s around 3:00 PM, and the Galaxy is at 71 percent while Xiaomi
is at 72 percent battery left. The same story as last time: Xiaomi has more vibrant colors and is
more exposed, while the Galaxy is less exposed and has more accurate colors. On the 10-times zoom,
the Galaxy is sharpening the picture while Xiaomi is ironing things out. That also kind
of applies to the video here with 10-times zoom, and I should say I don’t necessarily see a huge
benefit of the larger sensor size of the Xiaomi telephoto lens here. Also, both phones are small,
so they tend to heat up more than the larger ones. Here, both of them got over 40 degrees Celsius,
which is 106 degrees Fahrenheit, after taking those pictures and videos. We also played another
round of Yatzi, which I lost and as you know Yatzi is a game of chance, not skills! We were getting
closer to the city of Vienna, so we encountered more and more cyclists along the way. We also
had to go through this nice but challenging gravel path. We arrived home, and after 32 km of cycling,
which is around 20 miles, at 5:00 PM the Galaxy is at 62% while the Xiaomi is at 63% battery left. I
took a selfie of myself, and I do look too orange on the Xiaomi again. And on this indoor shot,
I again look orange on the Xiaomi, but the quality of the photo is much better on the three-times
zoom. We can also test the selfie camera and mic next. Let's check the selfie camera and
also the microphone quality. Right now we are on the Xiaomi 15 on the right side. We are checking
the microphone quality of this Xiaomi 15 on the right side of the screen. Now we are switching
to the Galaxy S25. We are checking the sound quality of the Galaxy S25. Also, the sound is
echoing because the room is empty. Now at 7:40 PM, the Galaxy is at 47% and the Xiaomi is at
49%. Just a reminder that the Xiaomi battery capacity is 5240 for the global version, while
the Galaxy is 4000. Both phones are sporting the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, but the Galaxy has a
custom version of it with a higher clock rate. And it means if you run the Geekbench test, you get a
higher score with the Galaxy, but I doubt you will notice the difference in real life. The Galaxy S25
here is running OneUI 7, but we should get OneUI 8 soon. The Xiaomi is running Android 16 already.
Both of them go to the quick settings by swiping from the right side, and both have a transparent
background. There are a few differences between them here and there. For example, the recent apps
on the Galaxy are stacked on top of each other, while on the Xiaomi, by default, they are next to
each other. The other difference is that you have something similar to Dynamic Island on the Galaxy,
which pops up the music you are playing on the top left side of the screen. You also get more volume
settings on the Galaxy, at least in this quick settings way. On the other hand, one thing I like
about Xiaomi and HyperOS is that when you are on a video call, you can control the noise cancellation
settings. I put both phones to talk to each other via Google Meet, and I also ran the application
that I wrote to measure the temperature. The Galaxy S25 for sure raised the temperature much
faster than the Xiaomi 15, and one of the main reasons is that the phone is simply smaller. By
the end of this part of the test, the Galaxy S25 reached 28% and the Xiaomi 15 reached 35% battery
left. I then went outside to take some pictures at night from this pond. Both of them more or less
have a similar quality. The Xiaomi picture is a bit sharper, mostly because the sensor is larger,
so most likely the camera needed a higher shutter speed. If we use the telephoto lens, the Xiaomi
is also doing a better job here compared to the Galaxy, and the white balance is better. On this
picture, the color science is vastly different: the Galaxy has a very warm tone, and Xiaomi has
a very cold one. The reality was something in between, and neither really nailed it. Here at
the 10-times zoom in absolute darkness, again the style of the picture is different. The Galaxy is
more realistic, but in the Xiaomi one you can see more of the scene. I went back home, and now the
Galaxy is at only 6% battery left while the Xiaomi is at 16%. But if we consider that the Xiaomi has
31% more battery capacity than the Galaxy S25, the result is not that great. I mean yes, the Xiaomi
screen was usually a bit brighter than the Galaxy on adaptive brightness, but that doesn’t mean the
phone uses 30% more battery. Overall, I find the Xiaomi 15 a very decent phone. I recommended it
to one of my friends, and he is also happy using it. It has better hardware all around compared to
the Galaxy S25. But on the other hand, the Galaxy S25 is more compact, lighter, has a lot of useful
software features, and I personally prefer my skin tone on it more compared to what I get out of the
Leica colors from the Xiaomi 15. If you wanna see how the S25 compares to the iPhone 16,
you can watch this video next. Thanks for tuning in to Techmo, and I will see you in the next one!
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