It’s been a long time waiting, but Xiaomi 15 and Xiaomi 15 Pro have finally gone official, and they are hands down the best flagship releases of this month. They used Qualcomm’s fresh Snapdragon 8 Elite chip here, supposedly the fastest consumer SoC for Android handsets yet. This is everything about Xiaomi’s 15 Series.
Xiaomi 15 Pro
It’s all about the Snapdragon 8 Elite here. Put side-by-side with the old 8 Gen 3, the 8 Elite will get you a 45% uptick in performance and about a 44% boost in efficiency. There’s also a big 40% gain in GPU clocks and energy-saving, all because of the Oryon cores of the SoC.
It even smokes the iPhone 16 Pro’s A18 Pro (4.05GHz) chip in comparison, the 8 Elite’s Oryon cores can push it to 4.32GHz. Xiaomi 15 Pro with this new chip is its most prominent upgrade. The next best thing about it is the 6.73” semi-curve OLED that gets you 2K 1440p resolution.
That screen is a TCL-made CSOT M9, about 24% brighter than 14 Pro’s screen at 3200nits and 120Hz LTPO refresh rates will help it save a bit of energy. 300Hz touch sampling and Dragon Crystal Glass 2.0 are also noted qualities of this panel.
Now, let’s talk camera on the Xiaomi 15 Pro. There’s a three-lens module on the rear side, all with 50 MP sensors: 50 MP OIS main camera + 50 MP macro telephoto + 50 MP ultrawide. It’s all a Leica-optimized system, and they used Sony’s LYT-900 for the main shooter. It can do 8K at 24 fps and even 30 fps, but for the front, there’s only a 32MP snapper for 4k 60 fps videos.
They used a 6100mAh cell for this one and added 90W wired and 50 wireless inputs feeding into it. Satellite connectivity is here, and so is WiFi 7, IP68, IR blaster, ultrasonic fingerprint reader, etc., everything’s bleeding edge. Xiaomi 15 Pro starts at ~$742 (~PKR 205,000) for the 12/256 GB option.
Xiaomi 15
It’s a 6.36” phone, so it skews on the compact side of phones, but it’s just as good as the 15 Pro. Base Xiaomi 15 is also an OLED, 1.5K resolution 1-120Hz LTPO refresh rate handset that should hit 3200nits brightness. Its bezels are 1.38 mm thin and barely visible.
It’s the same Snapdragon 8 Elite engine inside Xiaomi 15, with all the bells and whistles of their Hyper OS 2 system to back it up. But you get some optimizations geared for compact size. There’s the same tri-50 MP lens config as we saw with 15 Pro, but the 50 MP zoomer is a standard telephoto, not the periscope.
Battery size here is 5400mAh due to its compactness but 90W wired and 50W wireless charging are still here. Standard 15 doesn’t have satellite connectivity, probably a compromise for that lower price, though things like Ultrasonic fingerprint ID, WiFi 7, or IP68 rating are present across the board. Xiaomi 15 starter price is ~$630 (~PKR 175,000) for 12/256 GB.