The Xiaomi 15 offers flagship-level performance and features at a significantly lower price point than top-tier competitors, with its primary "catch" lying in software optimizations and specific feature implementations rather than core hardware limitations.
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Eight months back, Xiaomi did something
that literally broke the internet. They
took the processor from the $1,300
Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra and packed it
in their cheapest compact flagship. This
is the Xiaomi 15. And for the past 8
months, I've been trying to find out
what is the catch behind that $800 price
tag. And I think I finally have it, and
it's something that even Xiaomi doesn't
want you to know. The design is the most
practical that I've ever used. The phone
might look topheavy. The cameras seem to
clearly shift the center of gravity, but
that is not true. This is a very
balanced phone, lightweight and durable
with no nonsense buttons all over the
place. Also, thanks to the pre-applied
screen protector and the case which
comes in the box that gladly takes all
of the problems. On the other side, you
get this gorgeous display. I absolutely
love it since it not only is a good
display, but also comes with a large
number of eye protection features. And
it does not stop there. It is a 10- bit
display. It is a 1 to 120 Hz fully
adaptive LTPO display. Uses DC dimming
at all brightness levels. Supports AODD
and the onscreen fingerprint scanner is
the fastest I have ever used and it is
very bright, very usable outdoors. Now
that we have two of the very basic
things covered, let's talk about the
serious stuff that is performance. When
the Xiaomi 15 launched, the H Elite was
the fastest chip on the planet and at
this price I know for a fact that it is
still a beast. But there is a catch and
I will get to it later. I won't talk
about day-to-day simple tasks because
yes they are fast, yes they are smooth
and Hyperos itself deserves a separate
chapter to talk about optimization. The
chip is built to handle some of the most
extreme use cases. I generally use it
while traveling especially for editing
short videos in 4K and that is because
of the chip of course along with the 12
GBs of RAMs extended by four more GBs
and the 512GB internal storage providing
ample space to store raw clips on the
phone itself. I did enter to benchmark
and it scored an impressive 2.5 million
points. The phone does heat up when
doing performance intensive tasks but so
does my iPhone 16. Though I do not think
that is a problem specific to Xiaomi
because performance intensive tasks
always imply that there will be heat.
The important part is dissipation and
this handles them very well. Playing a
midweight game while charging at 90 W
for a long time, easy for the Xiaomi 15.
But what is the catch? Well, Xiaomi
intentionally caps the maximum
performance. There is a way to turn on
high performance mode if you really want
to push the limits even further, but
whatever I shared is with the balanced
mode. So yes, it only gets even better.
Handinhand with the incredible hardware
goes the software. And this is the
infamous Hyper OS. While not the most
favorite among us Android users because
of the built-in ads, it is quite the
opposite for me. Yes, you will notice
ads, but you can turn them off very
easily and it is one of those set and
forget kind of things. Keeping that
aside, it is a very optimized piece of
software. There are so many things like
live blur, some of the fluidest
animations I have ever seen, and no bugs
that I have experienced till date. I
think the general idea in the market
about Xiaomi's system software is pretty
dated. It is fun and even carries its
own personality such that even if you
switch to other smartphones, you for
sure will start missing some of the
Hyper features. There is one still issue
though. You can't really blame Xiaomi
for that. The phone comes with really
good haptics. It is even better than the
iPhone 16. Hyper implements them and
uses them very well, but third party
apps don't really care about them. The
fan editions of Samsung even gets such
fine support for haptics but not the
Xiaomi flagships. Hyper also comes with
Hyper AI but there is a catch especially
in images related AI features you will
notice that generated images are not
really useful and often the stitch is
very visible. You can use them for small
edits but large areas when regenerated
just looks bad. But this is the current
reality with most AI erasers or image
generators. You get the latest Gemini
features though. You can share your
screen, share live video with Gemini,
and even circle to search some of the
premium features in Samsung. Now, one of
the most important topics of discussion
in long-term reviews is the battery. I
took this to some of the most remote
locations I have ever visited, and even
after shooting for the entire day, it
could even make it to the next day. You
see, the iPhone 16 in this review
already connected to a Xiaomi power
bank. In day-to-day minimal or normal
usage, it even lasts close to a day and
a half. And with the 90W fast charging
support, it is very quick to charge. You
also get support for wireless charging
and even reverse wireless charging, but
the speed is set to variable by default.
And yes, I'm talking about the wired
charging. It only charges at 90 W based
on the environmental temperature. Inside
an air conditioned cool room, it mostly
will charge at the top speed. You can
also explicitly set it to charge at 90
watt from the settings. And of course,
you also get many of the battery
protection features just like other
phones. Okay, time to talk about
connectivity. This thing is reliable. 5G
is super fast and the network is very
reliable too. Calls sound very clear,
but recently I started experiencing a
lot of call drops after the Android 16
update. I am sure it is a software issue
since it never happened before. Hope
they will fix it soon. Wi-Fi is also
very fast since this comes with Wi-Fi 7,
but I only have a Wi-Fi 6 router. Other
than these, you need to remember two
things. One, this has got a Qualcomm
Snapdragon flagship chipset, and two, it
is not a Samsung. So, with Bluetooth
5.4, Four, you get support for very
specific Qualcomm codecs. There is
support for AIX adaptive, support for
AXIX lossless, and even bits per sample
and sampling rate support up to
ridiculous 32 bits and 192 kHz, which
means it is already overqualified for
even the highest resolution supported by
premium audio products like the
Sennheiser Momentum 4 TWWs. And by the
way, not even the S25 Ultra have these
features. No, not even the Snapdragon
variants. They are intentionally removed
by Samsung in order to promote their own
Samsung seamless codec. Now the only
catch here is you need to manually set
the higher sampling rate and bits per
sample supported by the audio device
you're using. It is not adaptive. So you
need to enable developer options then
dig in quite a bit. Then you also get
the option to set them to adaptive which
I guess also works. So that is literally
the catch in the audio. And talking
about audio, the phone has great
speakers. You also get support for Dolby
Atmos. I love it. It is very immersive.
There is also support for equalizers,
but the lack of a reset button is very
strange over here. Next are the cameras.
I love every bit of it. The resolution
is insanely good, but the processing is
honestly not that great. So, I mostly
use manual mode. Most of the images are
overexposed, which Xiaomi tries to
compensate by reducing the highlights.
Yeah, basically just doing this. Notice
how the images start to look similar.
The colors are also not very great,
especially indoors, since it gets way
too contrasty. Now, I get a lot of
criticism whenever I call something out
that is not so great on the Xiaomi. If
you like this kind of processing, go for
it, man. No one's stopping you. In very
specific cases, I can see such
processing to shine, but I prefer a more
neutral approach because leave the
editing to me. Just give me a raw
picture. Next is the Dolby Vision
feature. Just look at this. How ugly it
looks. There is a lot of noise and the
color is completely off. Now, I can't
really criticize Xiaomi on this. If
you're turning on Dolby Vision, you are
expected to know how to process those
footages since they are not in
broadcastable color space. But over the
internet, it is very difficult to find
even one tutorial on how to do it. Dolby
Vision boosts the dynamic range, but
make sure to watch this video to know
how to properly color grade such
footages to make the most of your Xiaomi
15. There is also a HDR mode on the
Xiaomi. If you want to focus on dynamic
range only, then you can turn this on.
But it doesn't really have much of a
difference I think between the normal
mode and the HDR mode. Also, it is
capped at 4K 30 fps. And I can also
notice a bit of noise on my face. Yeah,
there is a fair bit of noise on my face.
The phone really shines in nighttography
and night video. It is the best
performing phone I have ever used in
this category. Other than these, there
are a ton of things to like in the
cameras not possible to cover in this
video. So, a full dedicated photography
review or camera review will be posted
in this month itself. and after posting
I'll add the link over here. So that
also brings us to the end of this video.
Thank you so much for watching. Hope you
liked this long-term review and do let
me know if you are looking forward to
purchase the Xiaomi 15. I also guess
there is a 15T coming up. So also let me
know if you're going to wait or get the
Xiaomi 15 instead. Thank you so much for
watching. Do like, share, and subscribe
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