Xiaomi 15 Ultra Review - Everything-But-The-Kitchen-Sink Ultra Flagship
Xiaomi's latest everything-but-the-kitchen-sink uber-flagship impresses with a stunning display, top-tier performance and useful AI tools. But underwhelming battery longevity and a confusing user experience lag behind rivals.
The Leica-backed camera remains a standout, with the new telephoto lens delivering solid 4.3x optical zoom. However, the lack of a variable aperture limits tinkering options.
The Xiaomi 15 Ultra Review shows that while this smartphone has everything it takes to succeed, it still needs to make strides in AI to maintain its leadership.
Display
Xiaomi's latest everything-but-the-kitchen-sink uber flagship carries over the impressive features of its predecessor with a Leica-backed camera array, an outstanding display, top-tier performance and a long battery life. However, it must further explore AI — especially generative AI features – to really stand out in the crowded flagship market.
The smartphone's cameras excel at capturing detail at every level, from ultra-wide to telephoto. The new 50MP main sensor and 200MP periscope telephoto module deliver some of the best zoom performance in our tests to date.
On the software front, Xiaomi's HyperOS 2.0 still feels a little bit like Android but with lots of first party suite features. However, bloatware such as the App Mall and Mi Browser cannot be uninstalled. Xiaomi promises four years of Android version updates and six years of security patches. This is a little short of what Google, Samsung and Honor now offer but is moving in the right direction.
Camera
The Xiaomi 15 Ultra is one of the best cameracentric phones around. A high-resolution sensor, a wide f/1.8 aperture, and the Leica-tuned camera software deliver excellent image quality. RAW photos exhibit excellent dynamic range and capture plenty of shadow detail. On the other hand, it won’t subdue light sources like a Pixel or OnePlus, and its periscope telephoto lacks the deceptive long-distance zoom of many competing smartphones.
The LTPO display on the Xiaomi 15 Ultra is also superb, with an HDR mode and peak brightness up to 3200 nits. It’s also more energy efficient than last year’s 14 Ultra.
Performance
With a powerful Snapdragon 8 Elite chip, 16GB of RAM and either 512GB or 1TB of the fastest UFS 4.1 storage on the market, the 15 Ultra can handle pretty much anything you throw at it. It's no surprise that it performs so well on our benchmark tests.
Xiaomi continues to push hard with a suite of AI tools across HyperOS 2.0, with language and writing features (transcription and summarizing), as well as image editing (HD enhance, generative expand and auto-focus), all very effective.
On the software front, the 15 Ultra promises four generations of Android updates and six years of security support. That's still less than what Apple, Samsung and Google offer, but is still a good level of support.
Battery
Xiaomi's own-brand software, dubbed HyperOS 2 in this case, is a significant departure from Android (although the Discover bar does give it Google flair). But the 15 Ultra also offers a stunning screen and a powerful Si-C battery that lasts a day or two with light use.
The Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset powers the phone. It supports up to 16GB LPDDR5X RAM and 1TB UFS 4.0 storage.
Single core testing gave the 15 Ultra middle-of-the-road results compared to other phones with the same 8 Elite chip, but I was still impressed by everyday performance and gaming performance. It also offers rapid charging, and it's supported by up to six years of security updates.
Design
As with the regular Xiaomi 15, the 15 Ultra offers a strong blend of compact and large smartphone worlds. There are plenty of buttons and ports to work with, an impressive symmetrical down and forward-firing speaker pair that sounds great and a highly responsive ultrasonic in-screen fingerprint sensor.
It's a big, heavy device that will probably not appeal to some users but it is durable and sturdy and it delivers solid benchmarking performance, a top-tier camera experience and impressive battery life. It also looks set to get 4 generations of Android system updates and 6 years of security updates.
Xiaomi has pushed hard on photography with the 15 Ultra, using its top-tier silicon to deliver a powerful mobile imaging experience. It has very high tele zoom performance from the main 50-megapixel sensor and 200MP periscope lens, although it still lags behind the best-in-class competition in this regard.