Xiaomi 15 review
Android 15-based HyperOS 2
The Xiaomi 15 comes pre-loaded with Xiaomi's still relatively new HyperOS 2 (2.0.7.0 on our review unit), running on top of the latest Android 15. This is not the case with many recent Redmi devices, which are still stuck on HyperOS 1 and Android 14, so credit where credit is due.
The Xiaomi 15 has a four-year major OS update and six-year security update promise. This is a solid support window and much better than what your typical Redmi offers (2-3 Android updates and 3-4 years of security patches on average).
If you come from an older MIUI-powered Xiaomi, you will feel right at home with HyperOS. The software isn't very different from the last few MIUI iterations, but it appears to be more polished. It features some neat AI tricks, and Xiaomi claims some under-the-hood optimizations as well.
The Xiaomi 15 has an app drawer enabled by default, but you can disable it from the come screen settings menu. There is also a third "light" UX option that makes icons bigger and things a bit more accessible.
HyperOS UI
HyperOS 2 is quite familiar - it has different Notifications and Control pages, the homescreens support apps and widgets, the -1 homescreen can only be Google Discover. App Vault by Xiaomi seems to be gone in this version of the OS.
The multi-tasking options include split-screen apps and pop-up windows.
The AI functionality is quite rich on the Xiaomi 15.
It all starts with Google Gemini. You can ask Gemini a lot of stuff to do, even make entire conversations. It can give you ideas on what to cook based on a photo of your fridge contents, or you can ask for book or painting ideas.
Google Gemini
Gemini can also create images for you, which is neat. Circle to Search is available system-wide as well.
Beyond Gemini, there are plenty of AI features. Xiaomi does a good job of organizing these in a menu in Settings for explanation purposes. You still have to access the features themselves from their respective apps and locations, but it is very convenient to actually have a central location where everything is nicely laid out.
AI functionality
The Notes app can transform text in many ways. You can do translation, proofreading, summary and AI layout. The gallery app can do object deletion as well as generation for the sake of background expansion and similar tasks. You can even generate a short video from a static image. The Recorder app can do automatic transcription with speaker detection and separation, and you can translate the transcriptions. You can enable system-wide AI subtitles for multimedia consumption. There is also an AI interpreter that can do both face-to-face translation and call translation.
It is worth noting that despite the vast power available from the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, many of Xiaomi's AI features are still cloud-based. Xiaomi isn't charging for anything, at least for now.
Performance and benchmarks
The Xiaomi 15 runs Qualcomm's latest and greatest Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset. It is also the "full-featured" eight-core version, which is noteworthy since a variant with seven CPU cores also exists. Here, you get two "big" 4.32 GHz Oryon V2 Phoenix L cores and six "small" 3.53 GHz Oryon V2 Phoenix M ones. The onboard GPU is a powerful Adreno 830.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite is accompanied by 12GB of LPDDR5X RAM and 256GB or 512GB of non-expandable UFS 4.0 storage. Unfortunately, the global version of the phone doesn't get 16GB of RAM or a 1TB storage variant.
We expected nothing short of excellent burst performance from the Xiaomi 15 going into testing and were not disappointed.
GeekBench 6
- Multi-core
- Single-core
Galaxy S25
Galaxy S25 Ultra
Galaxy S25+
Realme GT 7 Pro
Xiaomi 15 Ultra
Xiaomi 15
Honor Magic7 Pro
AnTuTu 10
Honor Magic7 Pro
Oppo Find X8 Pro
OnePlus 13
Xiaomi 15 Ultra
vivo X200 Pro
Xiaomi 15
Galaxy S25 Ultra
3DMark
- Wild Life Extreme (2160p)
- Solar Bay (1440p)
Galaxy S25
Oppo Find X8 Pro
Realme GT 7 Pro
Xiaomi 15 Ultra
vivo X200 Pro
Xiaomi 15
iPhone 16 Pro
However, that said, the relatively compact Xiaomi 15 does have some cooling difficulties. So much so, in fact, that our review unit consistently fails to go through a standard 20-iteration run of 3Dmark's stress testing and overheats at around iteration 18, popping up an error message in the process. We successfully ran an hour-long CPU stress test, which ended up very choppy with plenty of sudden dips in performance, which is not what you want to see.
Thermal-throttling
Overall, the Xiaomi 15 throttles badly under prolonged loads. Its cooling is less than ideal.
Reader comments
- Anonymous
- 2 hours ago
- KAm
Is selfie better than Mi14? How about the ulttrawide camera ? And is there any fogging issue?
- runt-granny-tiger
- 2 hours ago
- 3pu
OK so the phone is finally out for the rest of the world and I have it in my hands. Overall, the bloat is annoying, as expected, but it's not dealbreakingly bad. The only thing that *really* sucks, is that if you use a third party laun...
- Aierlan
- 8 hours ago
- Eaj
Yeah. 5x can be seen as a disadvantage or advantage. From 2x-4.9x the Xiaomi 15 is far superior but from 5x upwards the Xiaomi 15 pro is far superior. It depends on what level of zoom you use more. If using for portraits, standard photos of people ...