Xiaomi 15 Pro Preview: Another strong Android contender

The overall design of the Xiaomi 15 Pro follows so closely the design of its predecessor that you would probably have a hard time telling which is which. The same flat sides, flat front and back, glass and metal sandwich design cues are here for yet another year, and the same square camera housing on the back is present as well.

The size and weight are almost the same as well, with just a millimeter difference here and there and a few grams spared compared to the previous model. One thing to mention here is that the Xiaomi 15 Pro doesn't have a titanium version, while the previous model offered such an option.

The colors shown during the Chinese launch were as follows:

• Bright Silver Edition
• Rock Gray
• White
• Spruce Green

Moving to the display, we find almost the same panel as the one on the previous model. It's a 6.73-inch 2K OLED curved display with a 3200 x 1440 resolution, utilizing TCL CSOT’s M9 luminous materials. The advertised brightness hence has been bumped up to 3,200 nits (peak), and the power consumption has been reduced by 24% compared to the Xiaomi 14 Pro.

Our display benchmarks will put these claims to the test, so stay tuned for some hard numbers one the phone lands in our lab.

Disclaimer: We measure smartphone brightness at 100% APL, meaning a pure bright image across the whole screen.
Finally, in terms of biometrics, the Xiaomi 15 Pro has one upgrade up its sleeve. The phone comes with an ultrasonic under-display fingerprint scanner, a clear upgrade over the optical one in the previous model.

This strange subheading concerns the telephoto camera, and yes, you've guessed it right, it's a periscope zoom system now. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Here's the triple camera system spec-wise:

• 50 MP sensor (main camera), f/1.44 aperture lens, 23mm equivalent focal length, OIS, 2.4μm quad-pixel
• 50 MP sensor (telephoto camera), f/2.5 aperture, 120mm equivalent focal length, OIS, 30 cm macro distance
• 50MP sensor (ultra-wide camera), f/2.2 aperture, 14mm equivalent focal length, 5 cm macro distance

This may look suspiciously similar to the Xiaomi 14 Pro, barring the aforementioned periscope zoom lens, and that's because… well, it is pretty much the same system.

There are some AI photography tricks marketed, but we'll have to snap some samples to pass a final judgment on the Xiaomi 15 Pro and its camera.

The Xiaomi 15 Pro joins the elite (pun intended) Android club of phones equipped with the much anticipated and hyped Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset. We saw many leaked benchmarks, analyses, and specifications prior to the official unveiling by Qualcomm, and what can we say? The chip looks like a beast.

For the first time in quite a while (or probably the first time ever), this Qualcomm silicon seems able to take on the best Apple has to offer. We need to run our own benchmarks to see if those predictions are true, but things look promising.

Just to spice things up a bit, the global version of the Xiaomi 15 Pro was spotted on Geekbench, managing a single-core performance score of 3180 points and a multi-core score of a whopping 10058 points. So stay tuned for our own benchmarks and comparisons.

On the RAM and storage front, there's nothing surprising. The base configuration features 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, which is pretty standard this year. There's a version with 16GB of RAM and 1TB of storage if you want to be future-proof.

We're starting to see huge battery capacities on not-that-big flagship phones, and the reason behind this is called silicon-carbon battery technology. We've already explained the tech in detail, but long story short, by imbuing the anode with silicon, engineers are able to increase the capacity by around 20% for the same volume.

Honor was the first Chinese company to bring the technology globally, and now more and more brands (using the same manufacturer) are putting such batteries inside their phones (OnePlus 13 is a prime example).

The Xiaomi 15 Pro is the latest to hop on that silicon-carbon train with a huge 6,100 mAh cell inside its sleek and slender body, a feat that previously required a huge chunk of phone, such as the ROG Phone 7 Ultimate.

The charging is also pretty fast, at least on paper, but this is not a surprise—Xiaomi phones are strong at fast charging, boasting wired and wireless speeds their western counterparts can only dream of. The advertised speeds are 90W wired and 50W wireless, and we will test how fast the Xiaomi 15 Pro charges (and how long it lasts) once we lay our hands on the test sample.

It's too early to say, but what we can say from the specs and the early previews is that the Xiaomi 15 Pro is a serious Android contender, up there with the OnePlus 13, the Honor Magic 7 Pro, and the upcoming Galaxy S25 series, as well.

The phone comes with a great package, now featuring a periscope zoom lens, keeping the great screen from its predecessor but utilizing new materials to make it brighter, and last but not least, featuring one of the largest batteries on a flagship.

The deciding factor here will be global pricing and availability, so we need to wait a bit more to stamp our final verdict on this one.