Best Of MWC 2025: Xiaomi 15 Ultra
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A camera-centric phone, or a camera with a phone attached to it?
The Xiaomi 15 Ultra is the most powerful smartphone Xiaomi has ever announced. It was announced during MWC 2025 in Barcelona, along with the smaller Xiaomi 15 high-end handset. With that being said, the Xiaomi 15 Ultra is one of the devices who received one of our Best of MWC 2025 awards. This was a major MWC announcement, and the phone managed to attract a lot of interest, for a good reason. It is a camera-centric flagship with powerful internals and an interesting design.
The Xiaomi 15 Ultra really does look like a camera-centric smartphone
The Xiaomi is made either out of metal and glass, or metal, glass and vegan leather. Xiaomi has options, and that goes for the global version too. That variant with the vegan leather back is a true statement design as far as the design is concerned. It reminds us of some Leica cameras, and it definitely looks like a camera-centric phones. The large camera oreo on the back is there for a reason, four powerful camera sensors are included on the inside, along with Leica lenses on top of them. More on that later.
The Xiaomi 15 Ultra features a flat display but with slightly curved glass on all sides. The bezels are quite thin, and overall, it does look quite interesting. There are a lot of small details here that you’ll notice if you take a closer look. The Xiaomi 15 Ultra does look notably different than its smaller sibling, mainly due to that camera oreo on the back. If you peek under the hood, you’ll notice how powerful this handset truly is.
All the high-end hardware you’d expect is included here, pretty much
All the high-end components you’d expect here are included, and then some. The Snapdragon 8 Elite fuels the phone, that is Qualcomm’s most powerful chip. The global version of the phone comes with 16GB of RAM and UFS 4.0 flash storage. A large, sharp display is used here, and it also gets very bright when needed. Xiaomi opted to use an ultrasonic fingerprint scanner too, and placed it under the display. Stereo speakers with Hi-Res audio are also on board, and so is a 5,410mAh battery, globally. In China, the phone has a 6,000mAh unit. 90W wired and 80W wireless charging are also included, and more.
Then there are the phone’s cameras. There are four of them on the back, three 50-megapixel ones, and one 200-megapixel camera. The focus is on the main and periscope telephoto cameras, which include truly large sensors. The main sensor is a 1-inch type sensor, while the periscope telephoto camera includes a 1/1.4-inch camera sensor. That, in combination with some proper camera processing and Leica expertise… well, let’s just say it’s a powerful camera smartphone.
