- Hey!
Finally, my order
of Xiaomi 15 Ultra has arrived.
This is the most premium smartphone
for 2025 from Xiaomi.
And personally,
my daily driver
is the Xiaomi 14 Ultra.
And probably I might be able
to tell you the differences
and the improvements
from its predecessor.
Powered by the Qualcomm
Snapdragon 8 Elite,
together with a 6,000mAh
of battery,
a big 200MP periscope
telephoto lens,
and Bluetooth 6 capability.
More details
after this quick intro.
(introduction music)
This Xiaomi 15 Ultra
that has 12GB of RAM
and 256GB of storage
is currently priced
at around Php59,000
that you can buy
in UKDB Gadgets
which I'll link
on the description box below.
But if you're looking
for an online shop,
I'll also post it
on the description box below.
Honestly, my first impression
is that its camera
has become larger.
Its size has increased compared
to the Xiaomi 14 Ultra.
But one thing to like here
is that its two-tone color
looks really nice and refreshing.
The other two colors
that are available
are only black and white
which I think are kind of boring.
This is the only color
that's better since I think
it's being inspired
by the Leica Camera.
You'll see the Ultra logo here
which is something new
that's not present
in the 14 Ultra.
And this time around,
PU leather finish on one side
and I believe that this is
a plastic finish
on the other side.
They're both not
a fingerprint magnet
so it's okay for me.
It also has side aluminum frames
and a lot of antenna bands
all over the phone.
The protection of its front glass
is a Xiaomi Shield Glass 2.0
which is tougher than ever
compared to its predecessor
which is the Shield 1.
And this is also an IP68
dust and water resistant
which I think is kind
of lacking compared
to other flagship IP69-rated.
But of course, I always say
don't try to dunk it
to the water
if you don't need it,
because the worst thing
that can happen to your happen
once you dunk it on water
is that there might be fog
present on the camera lenses
which there are many
who complained about it
on the Redmi Note 13
and even on the Xiaomi 14 Ultra.
You can also buy a camera kit
for the Xiaomi 15 Ultra,
but for me, I don't really find
any practical usage
for me, personally,
on my daily usage.
It has really great capabilities
if you'll be able
to get the most out of it
as a photographer
but I have an alternative way
that I'll teach you.
Take a look.
Personally, I didn't buy
the camera kit
of the Xiaomi 15 Ultra. Why?
Because I don't really find
any day-to-day real life usage
that'll be practical for it.
For the 14 Ultra,
I bought a camera kit
and well, honestly,
I just used it twice
for the span of two months.
So you won't really bring it.
So I found some alternatives
that you can use
for the 15 Ultra.
If you're not the type of guy
who'll always use
the camera kit,
you can consider this option.
So I bought this from China.
It's a case where you can attach
your filters on
which comes in really handy.
I'm not sure when it's going
to be available
in the Philippines.
But if there's already one,
I'll just pop it
on the description box.
What this does is that
you can attach your filters
like what I bought from SmallRig.
I have here a CPL filter,
black mist filter,
and also the VND filter
that has 1-5 stop.
Now, what I can do here
is just simply attach it here.
And it gets the job done.
So any time I want to use this,
I'll just adjust
the variable as you can see.
So it does its job
being a filter.
And another attachment
that you can buy is this one
from Ulanzi, the CG01
smartphone cap grip.
It also has a Bluetooth
shutter button here
which also can be a shutter.
And you can use it
as a grip to mount it
as a camera.
So what you can do is...
It'll look like this
after you attach everything.
Honestly, I don't really find
the practical usage
of the camera kit of Xiaomi.
If you want to spend Php12,000,
if you have the money,
and you find
any practical usage, okay,
but if you're like me
where you'll just use it
once a month,
I'd rather buy something
like this one, from Ulanzi
and a case like this one
so you can attach your filters
and you spend your money
on the filters of SmallRig instead
which I think
it's more practical.
And when you grip it,
it looks something like this,
it has almost the same feel
as the camera kit of Xiaomi.
What do you think?
So if you want to know
where you can buy these kits,
I'll pop it on
the description box below.
One of the best things here
is that this has
a really powerful processor,
Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite.
It's the best for this year.
And another good news for you
is that Xiaomi gave
the full potential of the chipset.
And I was surprised
that I was able to get
a 2.7 million score
on AnTuTu Benchmark,
rivalling the same
as the REDMAGIC 10 Pro
which is a gaming phone.
This is not a gaming phone
but Xiaomi gave everything to you.
You'd see on some
of our other reviews
that has the Snapdragon 8 Elite,
like the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra,
it's only got 2.1 million
AnTuTu Benchmark score.
The Samsung S25+
only got 1.9 million AnTuTu score.
And if I remember it correctly,
the realme GT 7 Pro
only got 2.2 million AnTuTu score.
And this is the breakdown score.
Good job, Xiaomi.
This is the benchmark score
we got on Geekbench
for its CPU benchmarking
and GPU benchmarking.
Its loop score is 5,700
on Wild Life Extreme
with 76% stability.
Honestly, its thermals are okay
except that it's kind
of rocky when it's about
to finish,
and it throttled to 79%
of its best performance.
Let's talk about battery.
It's a huge jump
from its predecessor,
the Xiaomi 14 Ultra
only has 5,000mAh of battery.
This China ROM variant
of the Xiaomi 15 Ultra comes
with a 6,000mAh
of silicon-carbon battery already.
But when you buy
the global ROM,
it's only 5,410mAh
which is still an upgrade
from the predecessor.
And what's good
with the China ROM is that
it comes together
with a charging brick
that's 90W HyperCharge of Xiaomi
which is missing
on the global variant.
But they're both supported
by 80W wireless charging
and 10W reverse wireless charging.
For my experience using this
for a week already,
I would say its battery
is fine.
Personally speaking,
I think it is better
than the Xiaomi 14 Ultra
which I think drains the battery
a lot faster.
Especially when I upgraded
to the HyperOS 2,
I noticed my battery
drains even faster throughout the day.