I have no idea how the Xiaomi 15 has room for such a big battery
Compact flagship arrives in China ahead of global launch
Fed up of having to pick between having a small smartphone, or one with a big enough battery? You won’t have to with Xiaomi’s new high-end hero. The firm has used silicon-carbon chemistry to give the Xiaomi 15 a simply giant capacity for its size, while keeping its dimensions perfectly pocket-friendly. The Xiaomi 15 Pro revealed at the same time doesn’t exactly skimp on its cell count, either.
Revealed in China ahead of an expected global rollout in early 2025, the Xiaomi 15 finds room for a 5400mAh battery. That’s significantly beefier than the ones found in many of today’s flagships, including the 6.8in Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra and Google Pixel 9 Pro XL, and a giant leap forward from the outgoing Xiaomi 14‘s 4610mAh cell.
A 6.36in screen makes the Xiaomi 15 only slightly larger than what counts for ‘compact’ phones these days, including the vanilla Samsung Galaxy S24. The flat OLED panel has a 2670×1200 resolution, 120Hz refresh rate and peak 3200nits brightness. There’s an ultrasonic fingerprint sensor underneath, and it’s protected by Xiaomi’s own Dragon Crystal glass. The firm reckons it’s ten times stronger than the Gorilla Glass Victus used on the outgoing Xiaomi 14.
It has the flat metal frame and flat front and rear glass that’s proving popular with all modern mobiles, and is IP68 rated against the elements.
The Xiaomi 15 will be arriving in White, Black, Green, and Purple colours, with prices starting at 4499 RMB (around £500/$640) for the 12GB+256GB version. There’s also a Liquid Silver Edition with a textured ripple effect at the rear, and a Diamond edition with an actual lab-grown diamond embedded in the frame. It’s also rocking vegan crocodile-grain leather on the rear, in White, Gray, or Orange colours. I’m betting this one doesn’t make its way outside of China.
Naturally the phone is packing Qualcomm’s hottest new silicon, the Snapdragon 8 Elite, and comes with 12GB of RAM as standard. Chinese shoppers can step up to 16GB of RAM, and choose between 256GB, 512GB and 1TB of on-board storage. All variants refuel at a rapid 90W over USB-C, and can also manage 50W wireless top-ups.
It’ll be running Xiaomi’s HyperOS 2.0 Android skin out of the box, complete with a growing selection of AI-accelerated apps and software.
Photography partner Leica is back again with lens and image processing assistance. The Xiaomi 15’s trio of 50MP rear snappers include an f/1.6 main lens with phase-detect autofocus and optical image stabilisation, and f/2.0 telephoto with PDAF, OIS and 3x optical zoom, and an f/2.2 ultrawide. There’s a 32MP, f/2.0 selfie cam up front, too.
The Xiaomi 15 Pro steps things up with a larger 6.73in LTPO OLED screen, with slimmer bezels and subtle curves on all four sides. The 3200×1440 resolution packs in considerably more pixels, and it too is protected by Dragon Crystal Glass 2.0.
It has the same lead camera and ultrawide as the regular Xiaomi 15, but its 50MP periscope telephoto is good for 5x optical zoom, and can also take macro shots.
Expect the same Snapdragon 8 Elite CPU, same 12GB or 16GB of RAM, and same 256GB, 512GB or 1TB of storage as its smaller brother. Battery capacity has grown even further, though, topping out at 6100mAh. Prices will start from 5299 RMB (about £580/$750). The Xiaomi 14 Pro never made it to Europe, though, so I’d be surprised if this actually saw a global launch.
There’s currently no word on the expected Xiaomi 15 Ultra, which will presumably land in early 2025 as a replacement for the photographer favourite Xiaomi 14 Ultra.
Tom Morgan-Freelander
Deputy Editor 
