Xiaomi 15 Review: Have I seen you before?

The Xiaomi 15 is now global, and we have another compact Snapdragon 8 Elite flagship to go head-to-head with other popular models such as the Galaxy S25 and the iPhone 16. However, there’s one modern smartphone disease this model has contracted, and it might ruin it for all Xiaomi fans out there. Let’s put it this way: if you place the Xiaomi 15 next to the Xiaomi 14, you’d have a hard time telling one from the other.And looking at the specs sheet, the anamnesis becomes even clearer. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We’re here to give you the detailed review of this cute little flagship, with all the tests, benchmarks, scores, and insights. Sometimes the offspring looks too much alike to its parents, and this could be a good thing. Let’s find out.

Xiaomi 15 Design and Display

Have I seen you before?

To say that the Xiaomi 15 follows the same design language as its predecessor would be an understatement. There are bits and pieces that are different, but the two phones look almost identical. The new model features a completely flat back, and the display is also flat. The camera housing is the same substantial square bump in the top left corner, but now the dual LED flash is taken out of it and positioned inside the body.
There are four camera circles inside the aforementioned camera housing, but only three of them are home to actual sensors; the fourth, which used to be reserved for the LED flash on the previous model, now houses the laser autofocus system and the color sensor.The aluminum frame has a matte finish and ever so gently curved sides. The phone feels quite good in the hand; it’s compact enough so you can reach all parts of the screen with minimal hand gymnastics. The Xiaomi 15 is available in a slew of colors, including Black, White, Silver, Green, and Lilac. The white variant we have feels and looks premium; the proprietary Xiaomi Shield Glass has a frosted finish that fends off fingerprints quite well.

Around the frame, there’s not a whole lot going on. We have the volume rocker and the power button on the right side, the USB-C port, the loudspeaker, and the SIM tray on the bottom, and that’s pretty much it.

Moving to the display part of the equation, we find a 6.36-inch OLED display with a 1-120Hz dynamic display refresh rate, a 2670 x 1200 pixel resolution (resulting in around 460 PPI), up to a 300Hz touch sampling rate, DC dimming, HDR10+ support, and a bunch of TÜV Rheinland eye protection certifications (Low Blue Light, Flicker Free, etc.). Xiaomi calls this display a “custom M9 display panel,” but in reality, it’s not much different than the “custom C8 display panel” inside the Xiaomi 14.

This doesn’t mean it’s not a good display, quite the contrary. There are improvements to the touch sampling rate (300 Hz vs. 240 Hz) and the overall brightness (3200 nits peak vs 3000 nits peak on the previous model). Subjectively, it’s a bright and crisp screen that’s a joy to look at even under direct sunlight, and last but not least, the bezels are super-thin. But let’s see some hard numbers from our display test.

The Xiaomi 15 managed to impress in the brightness department, shining with more than 1000 nits at APL 100% and a really high 3175-nit result at 20% APL (quite in line with the specs on paper). Compared to the previous model, there’s just a little bump in brightness, and other specs such as color accuracy, minimum brightness, and color temperature are almost identical between the two models.If we throw the main rivals into the mix, namely the Samsung Galaxy S25 and the Apple iPhone 16, it becomes clear that the Xiaomi 15 is more than capable of going head-to-head with those and even beating them in some key areas (let’s not forget that the iPhone 16‘s display is still locked to 60Hz).

When it comes to biometrics, the Xiaomi 15 uses an under-display fingerprint scanner, which works quite fast and accurately. In fact, this is not an optical one, but an ultrasonic scanner much like the one used inside the Galaxy S series. Good job, Xiaomi.

Xiaomi 15 Camera

A revised telephoto

Our composite camera score is a result of a pretty sophisticated measuring procedure and aims to give you an objective representation of what a phone is capable of in the camera department. The Xiaomi 15 scored a respectable 146 overall (158 is our current max), with a photo score of 153 and a main camera score of 53. The main camera score is a tad higher than the scores of both the Galaxy S25 and the iPhone 16. Where the Xiaomi loses momentum and the reason for the slightly lower final score, compared to the aforementioned competitors, is the video score and the ultra-wide camera.

It offers the focal equivalent of 60 mm, which equals to 2.6x native optical zoom when we take into account the main camera of the phone (these magnification numbers are always in relation to the main camera, which is the default 1x). But enough specs, let’s check out the samples.

Photos taken with the main camera look really good, both in bright sunlight and in dimmer lighting conditions. There’s plenty of detail, the dynamic range is quite wide, and the white balance is pretty spot on. The sensor and post algorithms are, in fact, pretty conservative with color saturation and produce nice, natural, and balanced images.

We might argue that a 2x crop mode from the main sensor is a bit redundant, given there’s a 2.6x optical camera on the phone, but it’s better to have it and not use it than vice versa, right? That said, the native 2.6x samples look noticeably better than the aforementioned crops, so we recommend using the dedicated telephoto camera. As far as magnification goes, 60mm isn’t that powerful; we would say this camera excels at portraits primarily, but the extra flexibility in framing your shot is welcome.

Now, you have a 5x “composite” zoom that uses cropped images from the telephoto camera to achieve optic-quality magnification, but it’s not as good as the native 2.6x—there’s some loss of detail, the exposure suffers a bit, and the dynamic range gets narrower. That said, 5x shots are still pretty good and more than usable.

Samples from the ultrawide camera are okay; they do suffer from additional softness, and sometimes the shadows seem crushed, but as far as ultrawide cameras go, this one is on par with the competition.

Xiaomi 15 Performance & Benchmarks

Another member of the Elite club

The Xiaomi 15 is the latest member in the Elite silicon club, the Snapdragon 8 Elite club to be precise. Almost all high-end Android phones have opted for that chipset, and for a good reason. It’s a real powerhouse, delivering synthetic scores very close to the Apple A18 Pro in single-core tests and blowing everything out of the water in multicore benchmarks. 

The raw benchmark scores are not surprising at all; the Xiaomi 15 is absolutely up there with the main players on the scene, your regular Galaxies and iPhones. The 3D Mark score is interesting; Xiaomi has opted to disable the test on its latest flagships, but we found a workaround to make it run on the Xiaomi 15.

The first few passes, the phone couldn’t complete the test due to excessive heat. When we ran the test in cooler conditions, the phone managed to score one of the highest results we’ve had, and at room temperatures the stability was around 72% (high score of 6220 and low of 4475).

But to wrap things up in this category, the Xiaomi 15 is an absolute powerhouse, and kudos to Xiaomi for being able to pack all those hardware goodies in the compact body of this little flagship.

The phone comes with Android 15 out of the box snuggled under the HyperOS 2 UI skin. Xiaomi rebranded its MIUI interface to mirror the new AI era, and the Xiaomi 15 is the second iteration of that new UI, featuring quite a few AI tricks onboard.

There’s AI translation that’s interwoven in different parts of the interface. You can translate text that you’ve previously recorded and transcribed. You can also translate calls in real time and real-time conversations in AI Interpreter mode. There’s a neat AI Subtitles mode that, as the name suggests, can add subtitles in your preferred language to a video of your choice.

As far as writing aids go, there’s AI Notes. You get the same AI Summary that can summarize long text into a few short sentences. AI can also proofread your texts and suggest edits, the usual stuff. Finally, these AI tools can also help with your photos; there’s an AI Erase Pro tool, and we all know what that does, plus AI Image Expansion, which can improve the quality, remove reflections, and stuff like that. Oh, and one more thing: Circle to Search by Google is onboard as well.

Xiaomi 15 Battery

The silicon-carbon era is upon us

Xiaomi has upgraded the battery capacity inside the Xiaomi 15 to 5240 mAh. This is an increase of 630 mAh compared to the previous model, and it’s made possible by employing the latest silicon-carbon battery tech. We have a whole article explaining the technology, but long story short, silicon crystals are imbued in the anode of a conventional lithium-ion battery, increasing the capacity by around 20%.

Honor was the first company to bring this tech out of China, and now others, such as OnePlus with the OnePlus 13 and now Xiaomi, are following suit. Given the small footprint of the phone, slapping a 5240 mAh battery in, along with all the cameras and a flagship processor, is a feat in and of its own. The Xiaomi 15 also supports 90W wired charging and 50W wireless.

PhoneArena Battery Test Results:

PhoneArena Charging Test Results:

Xiaomi 15 Audio Quality and Haptics

The phone comes with stereo speakers, with one bottom-firing loudspeaker and a tiny earpiece slit completing the setup. The trouble is that the Xiaomi 15 lacks the acoustic space needed for a rich sound, and this is especially true for the top earpiece.The overall quality is decent, but the sound is compressed, and there is some distortion in the high frequencies. It’s nothing catastrophic, just not the best out of the bunch. Phones such as the iPhone 16 and Galaxy S25 outperform the Xiaomi in the audio department. The same goes for the haptic feedback. It’s there; it’s precise, but it lacks the punch of a bigger-body phone.

Finally, the phone doesn’t feature a 3.5 mm headphone jack, but this shouldn’t come as a surprise in 2025.

Should you buy it?

The Xiaomi 15 is an excellent compact flagship. It has a gorgeous OLED screen that’s bright, vivid, and can dynamically switch between 1 and 120Hz. The silicon-carbon battery inside comes with an impressive capacity given the compact footprint of the device, and the 90W charging support really helps to fill up that ample battery fast. Add the Snapdragon 8 Elite to the mix, and you end up with a very robust and capable phone.

Now for the downsides. The Xiaomi 15 starts at €999, and that’s not exactly cheap. We’re talking iPhone 16 Pro kind of money. Then there’s the design—the phone looks too similar to its predecessor, and more importantly, the hardware inside is almost identical to the last model. We have a new chip, a bigger battery, and a new sensor for the telephoto camera. And that’s pretty much it.

There’s little to no reason to upgrade to the new model if you already own the Xiaomi 14, and if you’re living in the US, getting this phone would require some extra effort. As far as compact flagships go, we have the usual suspects in the face of the popular guys on the smartphone scene—the Galaxy S25, the iPhone 16, and the Pixel 9 Pro. Those three are cheaper and easier to get, especially in the US, and considering this, recommending the Xiaomi 15 gets even harder.