- 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.
And another surprise that I got here is that
it was able to give me a 20 hours and 46 minutes
on the PCMark battery stress test
under 50% brightness and 60Hz of screen refresh rate.
For me, it's durable.
Let's talk about its display.
I noticed that one thing that it improved here
is probably the display compared to the 14 Ultra.
I feel like its screen is more vibrant
while browsing on socials.
Maybe because I'm also using the 14 Ultra
for exactly a year already.
But one thing I noticed is that its screen size
didn't change.
It still maintained a 6.73-inch LTPO AMOLED display
with 120Hz of screen refresh rate.
And of course, supporting Dolby Vision, HDR10+.
Its peak brightness also increased to 3,200 nits
to its predecessor which had 3,000 nits.
If you're only browsing on socials,
expect your experience to be good here.
Browsing on the Xiaomi 15 Ultra, be it on Facebook,
Instagram, or TikTok, swiping on the reels,
I think you won't have any problem here.
As long as your internet connection is good, I guarantee you
your experience will be very smooth here.
If you're watching HD content on this phone,
because it has Level 1 Widevine Security Level,
for sure that you'll be really surprised
with how great its display is here.
Very punchy, bright colors, and the black
is definitely blacker.
By the way guys, I tried Globe, Smart, and DITO,
they all were able to get 5G signal here.
And currently, this one is running HyperOS 2
inside Android 15.
And this one comes together with four Android major updates,
so you should be updated up to Android 19.
Now guys, let's talk about the audio.
It has seven holes on the bottom and the other one
is coming from its earpiece.
So I just want to show you how loud it is.
Would the sound blow my mind or not?
(Season of Memories by GFRIEND)
Honestly, its sound is loud,
almost the same with the Xiaomi 14 Ultra
but you'll feel its bass and it sounds really pleasing
to the ears.