0:01 Eight months back, Xiaomi did something
0:03 that literally broke the internet. They
0:05 took the processor from the $1,300
0:07 Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra and packed it
0:10 in their cheapest compact flagship. This
0:12 is the Xiaomi 15. And for the past 8
0:13 months, I've been trying to find out
0:16 what is the catch behind that $800 price
0:18 tag. And I think I finally have it, and
0:19 it's something that even Xiaomi doesn't
0:21 want you to know. The design is the most
0:23 practical that I've ever used. The phone
0:26 might look topheavy. The cameras seem to
0:28 clearly shift the center of gravity, but
0:30 that is not true. This is a very
0:32 balanced phone, lightweight and durable
0:33 with no nonsense buttons all over the
0:35 place. Also, thanks to the pre-applied
0:37 screen protector and the case which
0:39 comes in the box that gladly takes all
0:41 of the problems. On the other side, you
0:43 get this gorgeous display. I absolutely
0:45 love it since it not only is a good
0:46 display, but also comes with a large
0:48 number of eye protection features. And
0:50 it does not stop there. It is a 10- bit
0:53 display. It is a 1 to 120 Hz fully
0:56 adaptive LTPO display. Uses DC dimming
0:58 at all brightness levels. Supports AODD
1:00 and the onscreen fingerprint scanner is
1:03 the fastest I have ever used and it is
1:05 very bright, very usable outdoors. Now
1:07 that we have two of the very basic
1:08 things covered, let's talk about the
1:10 serious stuff that is performance. When
1:13 the Xiaomi 15 launched, the H Elite was
1:15 the fastest chip on the planet and at
1:18 this price I know for a fact that it is
1:21 still a beast. But there is a catch and
1:23 I will get to it later. I won't talk
1:25 about day-to-day simple tasks because
1:27 yes they are fast, yes they are smooth
1:29 and Hyperos itself deserves a separate
1:31 chapter to talk about optimization. The
1:33 chip is built to handle some of the most
1:35 extreme use cases. I generally use it
1:37 while traveling especially for editing
1:39 short videos in 4K and that is because
1:41 of the chip of course along with the 12
1:44 GBs of RAMs extended by four more GBs
1:47 and the 512GB internal storage providing
1:49 ample space to store raw clips on the
1:51 phone itself. I did enter to benchmark
1:54 and it scored an impressive 2.5 million
1:55 points. The phone does heat up when
1:58 doing performance intensive tasks but so
2:00 does my iPhone 16. Though I do not think
2:02 that is a problem specific to Xiaomi
2:04 because performance intensive tasks
2:06 always imply that there will be heat.
2:09 The important part is dissipation and
2:10 this handles them very well. Playing a
2:13 midweight game while charging at 90 W
2:15 for a long time, easy for the Xiaomi 15.
2:18 But what is the catch? Well, Xiaomi
2:19 intentionally caps the maximum
2:21 performance. There is a way to turn on
2:23 high performance mode if you really want
2:24 to push the limits even further, but
2:27 whatever I shared is with the balanced
2:29 mode. So yes, it only gets even better.
2:31 Handinhand with the incredible hardware
2:33 goes the software. And this is the
2:35 infamous Hyper OS. While not the most
2:37 favorite among us Android users because
2:39 of the built-in ads, it is quite the
2:41 opposite for me. Yes, you will notice
2:42 ads, but you can turn them off very
2:44 easily and it is one of those set and
2:46 forget kind of things. Keeping that
2:48 aside, it is a very optimized piece of
2:49 software. There are so many things like
2:51 live blur, some of the fluidest
2:54 animations I have ever seen, and no bugs
2:55 that I have experienced till date. I
2:57 think the general idea in the market
2:59 about Xiaomi's system software is pretty
3:01 dated. It is fun and even carries its
3:03 own personality such that even if you
3:06 switch to other smartphones, you for
3:07 sure will start missing some of the
3:09 Hyper features. There is one still issue
3:11 though. You can't really blame Xiaomi
3:13 for that. The phone comes with really
3:14 good haptics. It is even better than the
3:17 iPhone 16. Hyper implements them and
3:19 uses them very well, but third party
3:20 apps don't really care about them. The
3:23 fan editions of Samsung even gets such
3:25 fine support for haptics but not the
3:27 Xiaomi flagships. Hyper also comes with
3:29 Hyper AI but there is a catch especially
3:32 in images related AI features you will
3:33 notice that generated images are not
3:35 really useful and often the stitch is
3:37 very visible. You can use them for small
3:39 edits but large areas when regenerated
3:42 just looks bad. But this is the current
3:44 reality with most AI erasers or image
3:46 generators. You get the latest Gemini
3:47 features though. You can share your
3:49 screen, share live video with Gemini,
3:51 and even circle to search some of the
3:54 premium features in Samsung. Now, one of
3:55 the most important topics of discussion
3:58 in long-term reviews is the battery. I
3:59 took this to some of the most remote
4:01 locations I have ever visited, and even
4:03 after shooting for the entire day, it
4:05 could even make it to the next day. You
4:07 see, the iPhone 16 in this review
4:08 already connected to a Xiaomi power
4:11 bank. In day-to-day minimal or normal
4:13 usage, it even lasts close to a day and
4:15 a half. And with the 90W fast charging
4:17 support, it is very quick to charge. You
4:19 also get support for wireless charging
4:21 and even reverse wireless charging, but
4:23 the speed is set to variable by default.
4:24 And yes, I'm talking about the wired
4:27 charging. It only charges at 90 W based
4:29 on the environmental temperature. Inside
4:31 an air conditioned cool room, it mostly
4:33 will charge at the top speed. You can
4:35 also explicitly set it to charge at 90
4:37 watt from the settings. And of course,
4:38 you also get many of the battery
4:40 protection features just like other
4:41 phones. Okay, time to talk about
4:44 connectivity. This thing is reliable. 5G
4:46 is super fast and the network is very
4:48 reliable too. Calls sound very clear,
4:50 but recently I started experiencing a
4:52 lot of call drops after the Android 16
4:55 update. I am sure it is a software issue
4:56 since it never happened before. Hope
4:58 they will fix it soon. Wi-Fi is also
5:01 very fast since this comes with Wi-Fi 7,
5:03 but I only have a Wi-Fi 6 router. Other
5:04 than these, you need to remember two
5:06 things. One, this has got a Qualcomm
5:09 Snapdragon flagship chipset, and two, it
5:11 is not a Samsung. So, with Bluetooth
5:13 5.4, Four, you get support for very
5:15 specific Qualcomm codecs. There is
5:17 support for AIX adaptive, support for
5:19 AXIX lossless, and even bits per sample
5:21 and sampling rate support up to
5:24 ridiculous 32 bits and 192 kHz, which
5:27 means it is already overqualified for
5:28 even the highest resolution supported by
5:30 premium audio products like the
5:32 Sennheiser Momentum 4 TWWs. And by the
5:34 way, not even the S25 Ultra have these
5:36 features. No, not even the Snapdragon
5:38 variants. They are intentionally removed
5:41 by Samsung in order to promote their own
5:43 Samsung seamless codec. Now the only
5:45 catch here is you need to manually set
5:46 the higher sampling rate and bits per
5:48 sample supported by the audio device
5:50 you're using. It is not adaptive. So you
5:52 need to enable developer options then
5:54 dig in quite a bit. Then you also get
5:56 the option to set them to adaptive which
5:58 I guess also works. So that is literally
5:59 the catch in the audio. And talking
6:01 about audio, the phone has great
6:03 speakers. You also get support for Dolby
6:06 Atmos. I love it. It is very immersive.
6:08 There is also support for equalizers,
6:10 but the lack of a reset button is very
6:12 strange over here. Next are the cameras.
6:15 I love every bit of it. The resolution
6:17 is insanely good, but the processing is
6:19 honestly not that great. So, I mostly
6:21 use manual mode. Most of the images are
6:23 overexposed, which Xiaomi tries to
6:25 compensate by reducing the highlights.
6:27 Yeah, basically just doing this. Notice
6:29 how the images start to look similar.
6:31 The colors are also not very great,
6:33 especially indoors, since it gets way
6:34 too contrasty. Now, I get a lot of
6:36 criticism whenever I call something out
6:38 that is not so great on the Xiaomi. If
6:40 you like this kind of processing, go for
6:41 it, man. No one's stopping you. In very
6:43 specific cases, I can see such
6:45 processing to shine, but I prefer a more
6:47 neutral approach because leave the
6:48 editing to me. Just give me a raw
6:50 picture. Next is the Dolby Vision
6:52 feature. Just look at this. How ugly it
6:54 looks. There is a lot of noise and the
6:56 color is completely off. Now, I can't
6:58 really criticize Xiaomi on this. If
7:00 you're turning on Dolby Vision, you are
7:02 expected to know how to process those
7:03 footages since they are not in
7:05 broadcastable color space. But over the
7:07 internet, it is very difficult to find
7:10 even one tutorial on how to do it. Dolby
7:12 Vision boosts the dynamic range, but
7:13 make sure to watch this video to know
7:15 how to properly color grade such
7:17 footages to make the most of your Xiaomi
7:19 15. There is also a HDR mode on the
7:21 Xiaomi. If you want to focus on dynamic
7:24 range only, then you can turn this on.
7:25 But it doesn't really have much of a
7:27 difference I think between the normal
7:29 mode and the HDR mode. Also, it is
7:31 capped at 4K 30 fps. And I can also
7:34 notice a bit of noise on my face. Yeah,
7:36 there is a fair bit of noise on my face.
7:38 The phone really shines in nighttography
7:40 and night video. It is the best
7:42 performing phone I have ever used in
7:43 this category. Other than these, there
7:45 are a ton of things to like in the
7:47 cameras not possible to cover in this
7:49 video. So, a full dedicated photography
7:51 review or camera review will be posted
7:53 in this month itself. and after posting
7:54 I'll add the link over here. So that
7:56 also brings us to the end of this video.
7:58 Thank you so much for watching. Hope you
8:00 liked this long-term review and do let
8:01 me know if you are looking forward to
8:03 purchase the Xiaomi 15. I also guess
8:06 there is a 15T coming up. So also let me
8:07 know if you're going to wait or get the
8:09 Xiaomi 15 instead. Thank you so much for
8:11 watching. Do like, share, and subscribe
