Xiaomi Really Wanted: Latest Updates and Analysis

I really wanted the Xiaomi 15 to be a clear Samsung Galaxy S25 beater, but it’s not quite there

Xiaomi 15 The Xiaomi 15 is a smaller flagship that doesn't compromise on battery life or screen quality. You'll have to contend with a messy Android skin, overheating concerns under stress, and a mediocre ultrawide camera, which makes more obvious picks like the Galaxy S25 a bit safer for most buyers, but the Xiaomi 15 is still one of 2025's best pocket-friendly phones.

Samsung in recent times launched the Galaxy S25. And it’s one of the few reasonably sized Android flagship phones on the market. However, I’m not alone in thinking it’s a safe, boring, albeit competent upgrade over previous generations. But what if you could get a similarly sized flagship Android device with more exciting elements?

That’s where the €999 (~$1,037) Xiaomi 15 comes in. The Chinese manufacturer just launched the phone globally in Barcelona at Mobile World Congress, coming several months after the Chinese release. Can it excite me in ways the Galaxy S25 didn’t? Well, yes… but sadly, I still don’t think it’s enough.

Looking more like a Pixel 9 than Galaxy S25.

When you unbox the Xiaomi 15. The first thing you might notice is its small size relative to most other flagship phones. Unfortunately, it’s by no means a Compact or Mini device, but it’s roughly as large as the standard Pixel 9. Holding it, nevertheless, makes for a refreshing change compared to the beasts I’ve been using in recent months. It sports a OLED screen (, LTPO) that’s thankfully flat. Xiaomi says the display has a peak brightness of 3,200 nits, but that’s not relevant for 99% of customers who won’t ever see those peaks. Thankfully, in real-world terms, I had no issues using this phone in the sun.

The Xiaomi 15 isn't as small as the compact phones of yore, but this is still a pocket-friendly handset.

Due to the rounded corners and. Flat aluminum edges, you’d also be forgiven for thinking it’s a Samsung or Apple phone. But you only need to look at the back to see it stands out from those rival handsets, largely due to a prominent. Square camera housing protruding from the rest of the rear cover. It’s not a huge bump, though, nor does it attract dust. The phone also has a glass back, and I’m glad to analysis that it’s not a fingerprint magnet by any measure. Unlike its predecessor’s glass-clad variants. Still, I really wish we saw more imagination from manufacturers in 2025 instead of yet another phone with a glass back and flat edges.

Xiaomi is also promising its own Dragon Crystal Glass protection. Claiming its strength has improved tenfold over conventional tempered glass. But brands with their own protective glass solutions don’t usually make comparisons to Gorilla Glass. So it’s hard to tell how tough this is compared to other top Android phones. Toss in an IP68 rating, and you’ve got a device that should be durable in the long run. However, there is one major omission here as Xiaomi told us that the rear cover only has “standard” glass rather than Gorilla Glass or its own protective solution. That doesn’t make me confident that the rear cover will survive any drops, and it’s particularly disappointing when the Galaxy S25 has Gorilla Glass Victus 2 on the back.

The Xiaomi 15 ships with a Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset. Which is the best Android phone processor on the market right now. Previous Snapdragon 8 Elite phones have been a hit-and-miss experience in testing, as a few phones have experienced heating issues during demanding stress tests. Unfortunately, the Xiaomi 15 is more of a miss.

We put the phone through our three preferred 3DMark GPU stress tests (Wild Life, Wild Life Extreme, and. Solar Bay) and it failed to complete any of them while being uncomfortably hot, particularly along the top of the frame. This implies that the combination of the Snapdragon 8 Elite and a smaller frame makes for very poor thermal management. It’s also not the first or even second time we’ve seen Snapdragon 8 Elite phones failing to complete a stress test. In fact, we encountered similar issues when testing the premium Xiaomi 15 Ultra that launched globally alongside the Xiaomi 15. The difference here is that the Xiaomi 15 is the first to outright fail to complete any 3DMark GPU stress test despite repeated attempts.

CPU testing via Geekbench 6 reveals some very interesting results. Too. The stock app offered scores that were generally in line with rival Snapdragon 8 Elite phones, while a stealth version of the app offered scores that were way off Samsung and. HONOR’s flagship phones. The OPPO Find X8 Pro (running a Dimensity 9400 SoC) had significantly higher single-core scores than the Xiaomi 15 running the disguised Geekbench 6 app. These results suggest benchmark manipulation of some kind. However, the disguised PC Mark app yielded a slightly higher score than the stock result. Weird.

Thankfully, I had no issues with real-world performance. The Xiaomi 15 flew through system menus and multitasking, while games like Genshin Impact and. Heavyweight console port GRID Legends all ran at a fluid pace. The phone did get quite warm after a while of playing these games, but it never got hot. Either way, the heating issues do make me wonder about demanding games a few years from now and how it’ll fare when put under stress by the increasingly more advanced crop of retro emulators.

The Xiaomi 15 has a huge. 5,400mAh silicon-carbon battery stuffed into its compact frame. That’s a welcome upgrade over the Xiaomi 14 (4,610mAh) and a little larger than even the Galaxy S25 Ultra (5,000mAh). I was usually able to get around seven to eight hours of screen-on time with usage that consisted of WhatsApp, Reddit, and. Plenty of time playing my new obsession, Bomber Ace. That’s not spectacular in light of the screen and battery combo, but it’s good nonetheless. I generally found that I had to charge the phone after work on day two with this kind of usage.

The Snapdragon 8 Elite and smaller form factor is a recipe for overheating with the Xiaomi 15.

Xiaomi offers some impressive charging speeds on paper thanks to 90W wired and. 50W wireless charging. This review unit didn’t come with a charger, ostensibly reflecting the EU model. Unfortunately, it took over 75 minutes to get a full charge via my 65W USB-PPS charger. Suggesting limited USB Power Delivery PPS support (this is backed up by ChargerLab’s test results which showed a maximum of ~26W for some Power Delivery PPS chargers). That’s still in the same ballpark as the base Galaxy S25 with its 25W speeds and much smaller battery, but I’m still disappointed you need a Xiaomi charger to hit anywhere close to the 90W wired charging points to.

The phone ships with HyperOS 2 on top of Android 15. And it’s not my preferred Android skin. That’s largely due to the split notification shade/control center, incessant notifications from system apps, and the ads in revealed system apps. In fact, I even found that the Game Turbo overlay menu could be taken over by an ad overlay in some games. I’ve only found it in one game so far, but it’s annoying nonetheless. Check out the screenshot below. I’m also not a fan of the phone automatically offering a persistent Mi Video player widget in the control center. Who thought that was a good idea? At least this can be disabled.

It’s not all bad on the software front. Xiaomi continues to excel when it comes to the sheer number of attributes at your disposal. It’s also kept abreast of the AI trend and offers attributes like recorder transcription and article summaries. Though a lot of it feels underbaked at launch (our Xiaomi 15 Ultra review goes into more detail on this). The Xiaomi 15 will receive four major OS updates and six years of security patches, which isn’t the best improvement policy in the business but is respectable nonetheless.

While it doesn’t challenge the very best camera phones like its Ultra sibling, the Xiaomi 15 does bring a respectable triple rear camera system, consisting of a 50MP 1/ main camera. A 50MP ultrawide lens, and a 50MP telephoto lens. Photos taken with the main camera during the day generally offer plenty of detail, little noise, and accurate white balance. I found colors to be way too saturated at times with the Leica Vivid color profile, but. Switching to the Leica Authentic profile made a huge difference. The primary camera generally delivers the goods at night, too, thanks to bright, detailed snaps that don’t look like a daytime photo.

The telephoto camera is a slight downgrade on paper compared to the Xiaomi 14’s 3x 50MP snapper. However, it’s worth noting that the older phone actually offered optical zoom as well rather than 3x. In any event, photos taken at and 5X look good during the day while maintaining consistency with the main shooter. You can sometimes get decent 10x snaps in ideal conditions thanks to the AI Zoom feature, but. I often found that punching up to this zoom level yielded blurry, blown-out shots (particularly with scenes featuring people). The telephoto camera also captures sharp portrait mode images, although the depth effect isn’t always completely accurate.

Ultrawide 1x 5x Macro 5x 10x Selfie 1x portrait mode.

In relation to this, the telephoto camera is capable of snapping some great shots when the sun goes down, although. 5x images generally don’t look good at all. I also noticed that this camera occasionally took downright blurry snaps at night. That’s in contrast to the main camera, which reliably takes sharp low-light snaps. In any case, I’m glad to see that the telephoto camera offers macro focusing, allowing you to get as close as 10cm to a subject before losing focus.

Meanwhile. The ultrawide camera is clearly the weakest shooter of the lot. That’s largely due to the very noticeable softness on the edges of the frame in both daytime and night-time conditions. This camera also occasionally captures shots that simply aren’t consistent with the other cameras in terms of color, dynamic range, and white balance.

The Xiaomi 15's telephoto camera does a solid job. Although the ultrawide camera is clearly the weakest shooter of the lot.

The Xiaomi 15 also brings plenty more camera capabilities worth knowing. This includes a Master Cinema mode for 10-bit HDR video, a motion capture option for fast-moving subjects, a long exposure suite, various bokeh styles ( swirly. Bubbles) for portraits, and a Fastshot mode for street photography. I also quite like the ability to drag the shutter button around the viewfinder, allowing you to easily take snaps no matter how you’re holding the device.

I was generally happy with the video quality here too, but. The video options lag behind several rival devices. The Xiaomi 15 specifically misses out on 4K/120fps support and only has a 1080p/30fps ShootSteady mode when other brands are offering much higher resolutions and. Frame rates for their stabilized modes. You do still get options like 8K/30fps, Dolby Vision, and 4K night video capture, though.

Xiaomi 15 review verdict: Is it worth buying?

There’s a lot to like about the Xiaomi 15, especially if you’re looking for a smaller phone with some bells and. Whistles. It’s roughly the same size as the Pixel 9 Pro while offering a ton of performance, a huge battery, fast wired/wireless charging, and great durability. The addition of 256GB base storage, a bright, flat screen, and flexible camera hardware all sweeten the deal.

The phone isn’t without its flaws, though. It clearly struggles with thermals under sustained workloads, the 90W charging is only accessible with a Xiaomi adapter, and the ultrawide camera is unsurprisingly mediocre. It also doesn’t help that the highly customizable HyperOS is stymied by ads and annoying system notifications. The €999 (~$1,037) price tag is also slightly steep compared to rivals.

There’s no shortage of alternatives to the Xiaomi 15, either. Easily the most notable rival is the dull but ever-reliable Samsung Galaxy S25 ($ at Amazon). The S25 is a little smaller than the Xiaomi handset, has a longer enhancement policy, more effective USB-PD support, a more durable back cover. Much more palatable software, and wider availability. But Xiaomi’s device offers longer endurance, faster charging (if you’ve got a Xiaomi charger), and more impressive cameras. So it’s tough to choose one as the sure-fire more effective option here, which is surprising considering how little the Galaxy S25 did to upgrade over the Galaxy S24 (and even the Galaxy S23!).

The Xiaomi 15 is a competitive phone that's on the smaller size, but it lacks the finer polish of its rivals.

If you want a similarly priced phone that is pushing the envelope, the OnePlus 13 ($ at OnePlus) is a powerful. Long-lasting, and fast-charging smartphone with innovations like an IP68/69 rating and a dual-cell 6,000 mAh Silicon Carbon battery. It’s not as small as the Xiaomi 15 but offers similarly great cameras, a higher-quality screen, and the well-received OxygenOS skin.

Finally. You should consider the Google Pixel 9 ($799 at Amazon) and Pixel 9 Pro ($999 at Amazon). Both phones are pocket-friendly offerings with great cameras and bright screens. Google’s phones lag behind Xiaomi when it comes to horsepower, base storage, charging speed, and sheer battery capacity. However, Google offers a longer upgrade policy, more palatable software, , and a 5x camera on the Pro model.

Xiaomi 15 Xiaomi's pocket-friendly flagship The Xiaomi 15 is a reasonably-sized flagship that doesn't compromise on specs, with a OLED screen, Snapdragon 8 Elite processor. And an impressive camera suite. See price at Amazon Positives Great main camera.

Pocket-friendly size Flat, bright screen.

Flat, bright screen Plenty of base storage.

Plenty of base storage Good revision policy.

Good modification policy Solid zoom camera Cons Overheats under heavy load.

Overheats under heavy load No protective glass on the back.

No protective glass on the back HyperOS bloat and system ads.

HyperOS bloat and system ads 90W charging requires Xiaomi adapter.

90W charging requires Xiaomi adapter Middling ultrawide camera.

People use artificial intelligence (AI) for various reasons, such as summarizing documents, translating languages. Answering questions, and helping br...

– CTO CEO Charles Delfieux, Februa...

I swapped my Fuji for the amazing Xiaomi 15 Ultra — do I even need a mirrorless camera anymore?

Xiaomi 15 Ultra If you want a well-rounded software experience, the best AI tools, or a gaming handset that stays cool under pressure, this isn't the phone for you, but if you can live with those flaws to enjoy the absolute best smartphone camera package money can buy, bar none, combined with amazing battery life and. Fast universal charging, I recommend the Xiaomi 15 without hesitation.

When it comes to photography, I’m one of those rare oddballs you’ll still see pointing a bulky mirrorless at things in a vain attempt to capture a snap that my smartphone still can’t. As much as I love them, the iPhone, Galaxy, and even the critically acclaimed Pixel can’t convince me to leave my Fuji at home for two key reasons — tasty natural bokeh and. Emotive color palettes. Still, the Pixel 9 Pro XL‘s reliable exposure and inoffensive color palette has earned it a place as my go-to when there’s simply no room on my hip for the mirrorless.

However, with the Xiaomi 15 Ultra in my pocket for the past couple of weeks, the Pixel has been relegated to my shelf. And a small layer of dust has started collecting on my overpriced lenses. Is this the smartphone that finally convinces me to ditch my mirrorless? Let’s find out.

Xiaomi’s latest super-premium flagship certainly elements a compelling camera package, so let’s give it its dues with a whole dedicated review — I’ll get back to the rest of the phone later.

The circular rear array capabilities a 50MP, ƒ/, 1-inch sensor, flanked by a 50MP, ƒ/, 115° ultrawide, a 50MP. Ƒ/, 3x telephoto (70mm), and a colossal 200MP, ƒ/, periscope zoom (100mm) that offers deceptively long-range capabilities. On top of that, Xiaomi throws in authentic and vivid Leica color profiles and twelve additional color filters. As you can see below, there’s plenty to get creative with here.

If you’re a pixel peeper, you can follow along with the full-res snaps in this Google Drive folder.

1x 1x 3x Ultrawide Ultrawide Leica Authentic Leica Vivid Scarlet Filter 1x 1x long exposure 3x short exposure.

In the round, the Xiaomi 15 Ultra’s cameras all nail dynamic range, noise. And white balance. The primary camera and 3x cameras, in particular, excel in challenging lighting conditions. The camera’s default color palette is quite reserved, but Xiaomi’s selection of filter flavors and. Pro-mode photography styles makes it effortless to take the camera in more expressionate directions. I don’t love the default vignette, though it’s not terrible, and the Fuji fan in me feels right at home with the Scarlet filter. Reminiscent of my beloved Classic Chrome. Even the more minor tweaks afforded by the Positive and Negative filters are enough to effortlessly elevate pictures from vanilla to triple choc chip.

Low light isn’t a problem for the phone’s larger sensors (the smaller ultrawide definitely struggles); color reproduction remains strong even if dynamic range takes a small hit. Inevitably, even these large sensors produce noise in some situations, but the 15 Ultra’s resemble a more filmic grain rather than smudgy digital noise (I wonder if Xiaomi applies this on top). At least until shooting virtually in the dark. With very little light at all, smudging is inevitable, even with very long exposure times. Still, in less ideal lighting, photographs retain the character and a natural softness that mirrorless lovers will feel at home with, all thanks to those big sensors and wide apertures.

The Xiaomi 15 Ultra nails photo fundamentals and. Makes it effortless to go well beyond.

However, Xiaomi’s ultra camera setup isn’t completely flawless. Really strong HDR backlighting, for example, can result in flatter images with poor contrast. Which is simply a side-effect of the strength of the multi-frame HDR algorithm. Despite metering set to faces by default, subject underexposure isn’t uncommon either, even when not shooting against bright backlighting, which is arguably the bigger issue.

As is all too common. The ultrawide camera is the weakest lens. I noticed much more noise and weaker exposure from this lens in low light, owing to the comparatively small 1/ size of the JN5 sensor. Thankfully, despite the wide aperture, the lens itself does not cause too much aberration (aside from the usual edge warping), and. The results still look fine in good lighting. That stated, I seldom use this lens off the cuff, as the ludicrous 14mm focal length has an obviously warped perspective yet isn’t much more helpful than the already wide 23mm main for anything other than perhaps photographing the Grand Canyon.

Using the primary camera up really close is often an unfocused mess, owing to the huge sensor and. Wide aperture. Thankfully, the 3x and telephoto cameras can focus within a few centimeters, making them very good for macro. You just need to remember to switch to them.

Zoom marks a return to the camera’s strengths. I really like both cameras at their native optical levels; image quality is top-notch, with a high level of detail and. Robust capabilities in tricky lighting. The 3x lens quickly became my favorite lens to shoot with, as the reasonably wide aperture and pleasing focal length help create a lovely natural bokeh. But we’ll touch on portraits in a minute. For street shots and landscapes, colors hold up well compared to the primary lens, although I did notice a tad more saturation from the lens.

The phone can certainly push well out beyond its optical zoom, but. This is where my reservations creep back in. Xiaomi crops straight from the sensor for an “optical” long-distance zoom that offers a decent level of detail in outdoor light. However, the small pixel sizes require a longer shutter time, so you’ll spot blurring and smudging from moving subjects or even handshakes. Also, because it’s a crop from a relatively close 100mm, longer-range shots look rather flat, lacking that depth roll-off and. Superb dynamic range that makes its closer shots look so good. Still, the results are nothing to turn your nose up at; even at long range, this is still among the best I’ve seen from any camera phone and particularly impressive at this distance. Given the lack of optical zoom.

Beyond 10x, details start to look a bit messy. Xiaomi has options for both AI and traditional upscaling, neither of which really manage to reclaim anything like the natural look of the camera at shorter distances. Despite blending in data from that 200MP sensor. Contrast and noise begin to creep up, though, thankfully, it avoids the ugly smearing seen on rival handsets. Even so, I can’t help but feel that a native 6x lens would have made for a slightly more flexible package at a distance, though the phone is fine out to about 20x as long as you don’t look too closely.

Long-range zoom bests those with longer lenses while the shorter focal lengths produce pleasing portraits too.

Of course, the 70mm and. 100mm focal lengths lend themselves to portraits, too. The focal length is a little longer than ideal, but there’s no arguing about the quality of Xiaomi’s skin textures and tones. Last year’s model already performed brilliantly, and the series is still a length ahead of the competition here. The added software bokeh comes in a selection of variations, but it’s not always brilliant at nailing soft edges, such as hair. And even the occasional hard edge was accidentally blurred in some of the snaps I took. It’s the one minor blemish on an otherwise top-class portrait setup.

3x portrait portrait portrait Selfie Selfie HDR Selfie low-light.

Thankfully, the same accolades apply to the selfie camera. Albeit with narrower face shapes from a wide field of view and slightly sharper skin textures. Even in low light, selfies manage to dodge the smudging we so often see from small, noisy sensors. Though details definitely soften and the grain level creeds up. Xiaomi doesn’t outperform the competition for selfie noise, but it handles it advanced than most. However, the selfie camera is the weakest of the bunch when it comes to HDR, though Xiaomi’s multi-frame processing ensures decent exposure, even with the strongest backlights.

If you’re more of a videographer. The Xiaomi 15 Ultra has you equally well covered. There’s superb video stabilization, 4K/60fps and 8K/30fps available on all four lenses, and 120fps options for the primary and lenses. Xiaomi’s color filters follow over for 1080p video, aiding with those creative efforts, along with LOG support in the Pro camera mode and. Dolby Vision capture. We’re missing a cinematic mode, but the natural lens focal lengths and dedicated night and super-macro options perhaps make up for this omission. In any event, I was very happy with the short clips I took.

The Xiaomi 15 Ultra is the best camera phone I've used, bar none.

So. Does the Xiaomi 15 Ultra make me want to ditch my mirrorless? Well, not entirely — there’s no replacement for natural bokeh from expensive lenses, after all. However, I certainly didn’t feel anxious about missing out on a great photo as long as I had the 15 Ultra in my pocket. As it’s proven to be a very reliable shooter over the past couple of weeks. Compared to industry staples like the iPhone 16 Pro, Galaxy S25 Ultra, and even the beloved Pixel 9 Pro. The Xiaomi 15 Ultra is undoubtedly the camera phone I’d rather have in my pocket — whether it’s for a quick snap or dialing in something specific to scratch that creative itch. If you’re looking for the absolute best camera phone money can buy, completely isolated from any critique of the rest of the things a phone is meant to do, this is it.

Of course, I mentioned the same thing about the Xiaomi 14 Ultra, but ultimately it was let down by other parts of the experience that meant other phones with a more well-rounded setup and competitive cameras were advanced overall picks for most buyers….

Xiaomi knows good hardware. As the camera package plainly exhibits, and there are scores more goodies packaged up here, too. The AMOLED display with increasingly rare WQHD+ resolution looks sublime even in bright daylight, thanks to its 3,200 nits of peak brightness (though I could only force the phone to output 625 nits when faced with a bright LED). You can check off an IP68 rating (not quite the new gold standard of IP68/69, but still great), aluminum frame, and Xiaomi Shield Glass in lieu of Gorilla Glass, along with Wi-Fi 7 and. Bluetooth 6 capabilities to round off a comprehensive hardware setup.

Battery life and charging are both impressive, too. The Xiaomi 15 Ultra takes longer to charge than its predecessor, taking 59 minutes to full from a 90W Xiaomi plug, which is actually a bit slower than Samsung’s 45W Galaxy S25 Ultra. But it’s far quicker to refill if you only need short top-ups. I could also obtain 60W from a 20V-compatible USB PD PPS plug and 45W from a more common 9V PPS charger. You can fast charge the 15 Ultra with a huge array of third-party adapters, which is good news as there isn’t one in the box. The phone also has a battery life similar to Samsung’s latest, providing a substantial upgrade on last year’s already quite impressive model. This phone easily took me through two days of lighter use and still had plenty left in the tank, even after a busy day snapping photos (you can shoot continuously for about five hours!).

However. The ultra-speedy Snapdragon 8 Elite dampens the proceedings. Yes, it scores very highly on the benchmarks that I could run and hands in effortless performance for daily tasks, but the overheating problems we’ve seen from other handsets are perhaps at their worst here.

Xiaomi blocked our usual 3DMark stress tests. And upon running a stealth app, I think I know why. The phone overheated and crashed the app during all three of our usual stress tests, but without providing a warning. I recorded the phone’s internal battery temperature, which reached °C. before closing the app. After about 50 attempts (I’m not joking) and starting the phone at a super-idle 21°C. I was finally able to complete the stress tests with temperatures again peaking at about 49°C. For comparison, last year’s Xiaomi 14 Ultra hit temps of °C, which is incredibly hot, yet didn’t close the stress test.

Xiaomi phones have always run hotter than most. But this year’s model is even more worrisome. Thankfully, the phone doesn’t get anywhere near this hot playing actual games. I recorded 33°C after 20 minutes of Call of Duty Mobile and 37°C during Genshin Impact. Still, the stress test overheating issue and abrupt shutdown is a concern for future games and hotter countries than the wintery UK (which is basically everywhere).

If you can look past that. All this is wrapped up in one of Xiaomi’s most unique-looking smartphones yet. The familiar circular camera housing looks sublime when paired up with the Silver Chrome colorway, which offers a textured back. Why anyone would pick the boring black or white colorways when this is on offer is beyond me. That revealed, I wouldn’t have minded a splash of color as an option.

You might have noticed that I haven’t prattled on about AI in this review yet. Which is a real oddity for 2025. The Xiaomi 15 Ultra has plenty of it (of course, it does) bundled into what it calls HyperAI, but I’ve pretty much chosen to gloss over it during my review period and have been all the happier for it.

The Xiaomi 15 Ultra excels at photography, but the software setup still leaves a lot to be desired.

Yes, there’s Gemini pre-installed. Circle to Search, subtitle generation, AI note summaries, and AI speaker transcriptions in the Recorder app. The last two require a Xiaomi account and internet connection to function, so there are no offline capabilities here. Mi Browser has an AI summary feature, but it fails every time I try it. The Gallery app also functions the obligatory object removal option, but the results are nearly always blurry and clumsy. It’s a passable suite but hardly groundbreaking.

Xiaomi says that more AI attributes will be added in a future Gallery enhancement. The list includes AI image expansion, Eraser Pro, Reflection Removal, and photo-to-video capabilities. Obviously, I can’t comment on how good they’ll be, but I’ve not been dazzled by the 15 Ultra’s AI tools that I did dabble in. But in all honesty, I rarely reach for equivalent tools, even on the Pixel, and making do without only reinforces how AI is almost always a solution in search of a problem rather than something I really value in a phone.

Don’t let the software nonsense detract from the phone’s strengths. With HyperOS onboard (based on Android 15), there’s a ton of the usual bloat and overengineered apps to contend with anyway, which is just part and. Parcel of the Xiaomi experience, even after moving on from MIUI. In any case, the Xiaomi 15 Ultra remains a showcase for some of the best hardware money can buy, particularly in the camera department. Xiaomi’s software promise of four years of OS and six years of security updates is good too. It yearns to catch up on the AI front, but the quality is not all that brilliant. Which makes already apathetic clients like myself care even less about them. Would Xiaomi be chastised for bypassing the AI trend? Most likely, but given you should still probably pick up a Pixel 9 Pro XL ($1099 at Amazon) or Galaxy S25 Ultra ($ at Amazon) if you really care about the very best in mobile AI, the Ultra doesn’t do itself any favors here anyway.

Thankfully. The Xiaomi 15 Ultra does so much else so well that it doesn’t hinge its identity on this fad. Keep thinking of the 15 Ultra as a photography powerhouse first and foremost, and you won’t be disappointed. It’s definitely the best camera phone you can buy right now. However, dedicated snappers should also check out the brilliant OPPO Find X8 Pro (£1099 at Amazon) and the more affordable OnePlus 13 ($ at OnePlus) if you can’t quite justify the sky-high €1,499 (~$1,556) price Xiaomi is asking here.

Xiaomi 15 Ultra Brilliant cameras • Two-day battery life • Fast universal charging The best camera phone you can buy? The Xiaomi 15 Ultra is an elite camera phone with incredible photography hardware and processing. It also packs rapid charging, great battery life, and is supported by up to six years of security updates. See price at Amazon Positives Brilliant cameras.

Two-day battery life Fast universal charging.

Fast universal charging Solid upgrade policy Cons Snapdragon overheats under load.

Snapdragon overheats under load Questionable AI capabilities.

Questionable AI aspects HyperOS bloatware.

Building on these developments, the Xiaomi 15 Ultra’s standout feature is ...

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Xiaomi just made the Pad 7 Pro globally available. And we have the unit in for review alongside a helping of its official accessories.

The HONOR Pad V9 is a terrific tablet, but I don’t know who will buy it

The Android tablet market is a tough one. Generally, people only go for an Android tablet if they’re looking for something specific: say, a super-powerful processor so it can be used as a laptop replacement or, on the opposite end. Something incredibly cheap because they just need a device with a big screen to browse the web. But for higher-priority use — , the tablet you bring with you to school or use as part of your business — the overwhelming majority of people will use an iPad instead.

With that in mind. The HONOR Pad V9 — which just launched during Mobile World Congress 2025 — is in a precarious position. It doesn’t have one of 2025’s killer chipsets inside of it, but it’s not an ultra-cheap beater tablet, either. This puts it in direct competition with iPads, which is a tough spot to be in.

I got some hands-on time with the Pad V9, and here’s what I think.

The design of the HONOR Pad V9 is. In a word, beautiful. It’s very iPad-like, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It has flat sides all around, giving it the modern look and. Feel to which we’ve become accustomed with flagship smartphones over the past few years. Its metal unibody design makes it feel sturdy, sleek, and unmistakably like a premium product. Even with all that metal, the tablet isn’t too heavy, with a comfortable 475g weight (about one pound). I was able to use the tablet bouncing from one hand to the other for extended periods of time without worry.

The HONOR Pad V9 is a stunning piece of tech, even if it does look a lot like an iPad.

The tablet has an display, which. In my opinion, is a sweet spot. Tablets with screens in the 10-inch range feel too small but then feel too big if you go much above 12 inches. The size of the HONOR Pad V9 is the Goldilocks zone, where everything is just right. Of course, it’s disappointing that it’s LCD instead of OLED, but then again, even iPads only first got OLED displays last year, so that can be easily forgiven.

HONOR makes up for the lack of OLED with some very high-quality display specs here, including a 144Hz refresh rate and a 2,800 x 1,840 resolution. Which we would colloquially refer to as The display can also go as high as 500 nits of brightness, which isn’t too bad. It might not be great for watching a movie outside on a sunny day, but it has been more than adequate for all my use indoors.

This is a terrific display with a high refresh rate and resolution.

Building on these developments, the button placement is the same as that of an iPad. With the power button on the left side towards the top (when the tablet is in its horizontal position) and the volume rocker on the top side not too far from the power button. I realize Samsung, Google, and other Android brands put their tablet buttons in different spots, but I think HONOR is copying from the right source here, as I found it much easier to blindly find the proper button with this setup than any non-iPad tablet I’ve used.

As far as sound quality goes. The HONOR Pad V9 is quite surprising. It has an octo-speaker setup with two pairs on each of the two shorter sides. This creates a full and bright stereo sound with IMAX Enhanced and DTS:X certifications. Thanks to this setup, it also supports spatial audio. I watched a few YouTube concert videos on the Pad V9, and I was impressed with the audio quality. In fact, I had to turn it down at first because the speakers were far louder than I expected.

I was unprepared for how good this tablet sounds (and how loud it gets).

Finally, there are two colorway choices with the Pad V9: the professional-looking gray seen throughout this article and. A nice pearly white.

Powering the Pad V9 is the MediaTek Dimensity 8350 Elite, which makes its commercial debut in this tablet. The “Elite” nomenclature there is interesting because, spec-for-spec, there’s no difference between this and. The non-Elite version of the chip that launched at the tail end of 2024. It still is a 4nm build with eight cores, headlined by the Cortex-A715 with speeds as high as It’s possible that “Elite” was just tossed in there to make it sound superior, but. HONOR wouldn’t tell us anything else about the chip.

Regardless of marketing names, this is a terrific processor that should be able to handle any task with ease. Of course, it’s not as good as the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite — which is where the inspiration for the Dimensity’s new name came from, no doubt — but it should give you plenty of performance without necessitating the high price that would have been created if it included the Snapdragon model.

The specs for the Pad V9 are solid all around, including a fast processor, plenty of RAM, a huge battery. And fast 35W charging.

Paired with that processor is either 8GB or 12GB of RAM (depending on the model you choose) and up to 256GB of non-expandable storage. With all these specs combined, you have a truly capable machine that can power through work, gaming, streaming. And pretty much anything else you can think of. In my time with it, nothing I did seemed to slow the tablet down. I was zipping around the operating system with ease, streaming 4K videos, and browsing the web without a care.

To keep all that performance up, the Pad V9 has a 10,100mAh battery. Which is pretty big for a tablet with this small of a footprint. For the sake of comparison, the Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 Plus ($ at Samsung) has a battery of a similar capacity, and that’s a beast. The Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 ($799 at Amazon) was a more comparable model with an 11-inch display, and its battery was just 8,400mAh. In other words, there is plenty of battery to go around in the HONOR Pad V9, which is nice to see. Even superior, though, is that you can charge the battery at up to 35W, and the proper cable and charger come in the box. Nice moves, HONOR.

It's a shame the back design is tainted by a superfluous 'AI Camera' logo for pretty much no reason.

Most people don’t care much about tablet cameras, but. What’s here is fine. The front-facing camera (which is the one you’ll probably use the most for things like video calls) is an 8MP shooter. While the single rear camera is a 13MP lens. Both can shoot video at 4K/30fps and both have adequate quality for tablet purposes. Honestly, though, I barely used them because…it’s a tablet. Oh, and pay no attention to the “AI Camera” circle next to the rear lens — it’s just where the flash is, not a second sensor.

As far as software goes. The HONOR Pad V9 comes with Android 15 out of the box, skinned over with Magic OS 9. HONOR’s Android skin is pretty divisive, but it performed well enough in my limited time with the tablet. I much prefer the simplicity of something like Google’s Pixel UI or the everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach of Samsung’s One UI. But Magic OS 9 — and its superfluous AI tools that are basically all just gimmicks — didn’t get in my way while I was testing this, and. That’s about all you can ask for.

HONOR Pad V9 hands-on review: Pretty nice!

To be completely honest, there is almost nothing wrong with the HONOR Pad V9. It looks and feels great, has plenty of battery life that you can charge pretty quickly, and. Has a processor that can handle all your needs with ease. It costs €250 (~$, which is a very competitive price, further making it an ideal product.

The only flaw I see with the HONOR Pad V9 is that it's going up directly against the iPad. Which we've seen over the years is a losing battle.

The only thing that’s really wrong with this tablet is that it might not be distinctive enough to sway Android fans. It doesn’t have 2025’s most powerful processor, so it won’t be the tablet that gamers and those looking for a laptop replacement will adopt. Those consumers will happily wait until something with the Snapdragon 8 Elite lands. People who will likely buy iPads are definitely not going to pick up the Pad V9. As the years have proven that that’s a losing battle. That introduced, the Pad V9 is cheap enough for those who just want a tablet to toss in their backpack or leave around the house for their young kids to use.

Still, if you absolutely do not want any flavor of iPad. The HONOR Pad V9 is undoubtedly worth a look. I loved my short time with it and would definitely recommend it to someone who is looking for a no-frills but. Still fully capable Android-powered slate.

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