A year ago, the Xiaomi 14 Ultra was officially launched in China with a massive camera module on the rear featuring four cameras. The phone had a large 1-inch sensor for the primary camera and two zoom cameras. Today, the company launched its successor in China, the Xiaomi 15 Ultra. This phone brings some notable upgrades to the camera setup, which probably make it the best camera phone in the market today.
Since the camera setup is the main highlight of this device, let’s start with that first. The Xiaomi 15 Ultra gets a quad camera setup on the rear, and it has a similar circular camera module as its predecessor, only that the size has increased. The layout of the cameras is also different than last year, and there is a good reason for it.
The primary camera still uses the same 1-inch Sony LYT-900 sensor with OIS. One downgrade from last year is that the phone no longer has a variable aperture lens for the primary camera. The Xiaomi 14 Ultra’s primary camera had a variable aperture lens, which could switch between f/1.63 and f/4.0. But on the Xiaomi 15 Ultra, there is a static f/1.63 aperture lens.
The secondary camera takes ultrawide photos, and it uses a 50MP sensor with an f/2.2 lens with autofocus. The ultrawide camera can take macro shots. The ultrawide camera on the Xiaomi 14 Ultra has an f/1.8 lens with a 12mm focal length, but the one on the Xiaomi 15 Ultra has an f/2.2 lens with a 14mm focal length. In short, the ultrawide camera is slightly downgraded from last year.
The third camera is a floating telephoto camera with a 50MP Sony IMX858 sensor and OIS. While it sounds like the same camera as last year, the Xiaomi 15 Ultra has a 70mm lens for the telephoto camera, compared to a 75mm lens on the Xiaomi 14 Ultra.
But the star of the show is the periscope telephoto camera. The Xiaomi 15 Ultra uses a massive 1/1.4″ 200MP Samsung HP9 sensor for the periscope telephoto camera, which is paired with a 100mm lens. Yes, the focal length has gone down this year (versus 120mm), but the sensor size has increased by a huge margin (1/2.51″ vs 1/1.4″) and so has the megapixel count. Xiaomi says the new sensor can capture 2.36 times more light than the one on the Xiaomi 14 Ultra.
Finally, there is a 32MP sensor for the selfie camera. Speaking of video recording, the Xiaomi 15 Ultra can shoot 8K videos at up to 30fps from all four rear cameras. The selfie camera can shoot 4K videos at up to 60fps. There is also support for 4K videos at 120fps for the primary and the periscope telephoto cameras.
Design-wise, the Xiaomi 15 Ultra comes in four colors. Two of the four colors have a two-tone design with a premium leather finish. There is Xiaomi’s Dragon Crystal Glass 2.0 on the front. The phone has a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C port, stereo speakers with Dolby Atmos support, and an IP68 rating.
On the front, the Xiaomi 15 Ultra has a 6.73-inch Quad-HD+ LTPO OLED panel with 3200 nits peak brightness, a 12-bit color depth, Dolby Vision support, and 1920Hz PWM dimming. There is an ultrasonic under-display fingerprint scanner.
The phone has a massive 6,000mAh battery with 90W wired and 80W wireless charging. There is a Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset with LPDDR5X RAM and UFS 4.1 storage. Finally, the phone runs on HyperOS 2 out of the box.
Here is the pricing for the Chinese market –
- 12GB + 256GB – ¥6499 (~$895)
- 12GB + 512GB – ¥6999 (~$965)
- 16GB + 1TB – ¥7799 (~$1075)