Xiaomi 15 Ultra Review: A Camera With a Phone Attached
The one-inch sensor is not a gimmick and the optional grip is not either. This is the closest a phone has come to replacing a compact camera.
Maya Okonkwo
The main sensor
A one-inch sensor gathers enough light that night mode is rarely needed at all. Depth falloff is genuinely optical rather than simulated, which no computational trick has yet matched.
The grip accessory
A physical shutter, a control dial and an extra battery. It is bulky and it makes the phone considerably more pleasant to shoot with.
Everything else
Fast, bright, huge battery. The software still ships with more preinstalled apps than we would like and the update policy trails Google and Samsung.
Specifications
| Spec | Detail |
|---|---|
| Display | 6.73in LTPO AMOLED, 120Hz |
| Chip | Snapdragon 8 Elite |
| Cameras | 50MP 1in main, 50MP ultrawide, 200MP 4.3x |
| Battery | 5410mAh, 90W wired |
| Weight | 226g |
How we tested
Every figure quoted above comes from the same protocol, run on every unit in this category. This one spent fourteen days as the reviewer’s only phone, SIM included. Screen at a metered 200 nits, adaptive refresh left on, the same twelve apps installed on every handset, and a fixed 5G network in the same building.
| What we measure | How |
|---|---|
| Screen-on time | A scripted day — four hours of mixed browsing, an hour of video, thirty minutes of camera, the rest idle — repeated three times and averaged. |
| Sustained performance | Twenty minutes of continuous load, reporting the figure at the end rather than the peak in the first ninety seconds. |
| Charging | From 2% to 100% with the fastest charger the manufacturer sells, at 22°C ambient, timed to the minute. |
| Camera | The same eighteen scenes on every phone — backlit portrait, indoor low light, moving subject — shot in the default mode with no editing. |
| Thermals | Surface temperature at the hottest point after the sustained run, measured with a contact probe. |
We deliberately do not report synthetic benchmark totals quoted in isolation, and any figure supplied by the manufacturer.
The honest caveat: Battery results are specific to our routine. A heavy camera user will see materially less screen-on time than these numbers suggest.
How it compares
The closest alternatives on price are Galaxy S25 Ultra and iPhone 16 Pro. All three have been through the same tests, so the figures below are directly comparable rather than collected from different reviews.
| Model | Price | Our score | Standout | Weak point |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Xiaomi 15 Ultra (this review) | £1299 | 4 / 5 | Best phone camera hardware available | Heavy |
| Galaxy S25 Ultra | £1249 | 4 / 5 | The best long telephoto on any phone | Heavy at 232g |
| iPhone 16 Pro | £1099 | 4 / 5 | The best sustained performance of any phone | Iterative to a fault |
Nothing at this price scored higher in our testing, which is the strongest argument for the Xiaomi 15 Ultra.
Is it worth the money?
At £1299 the Xiaomi 15 Ultra asks £374 more than the category average of £925, against an average score of 4.1 out of 5 across the smartphones we have tested. Its own 4 works out at roughly £325 per point. Paying above average for a below-average score only makes sense if readers who want best phone camera hardware available describes you precisely.
If the budget is the binding constraint, the Galaxy A56 at £399 is the floor we would still recommend — below that the compromises stop being ones you can live with.
Living with it
Two weeks in, the figure that stopped mattering was display — 6.73in LTPO AMOLED, 120Hz is more than adequate and you forget about it by the third day. What kept surfacing instead was that heavy, which is easy to shrug off in a spec comparison and harder to ignore at 6pm on a Friday. On the other side, best phone camera hardware available turns out to be the sort of detail you only appreciate after living with the alternative.
What we liked
- Best phone camera hardware available
- Optional grip is genuinely useful
- Very fast charging
What we did not
- Heavy
- Preinstalled software bloat
- Shorter update commitment than rivals
Verdict
If photography is the reason you pick a phone, this is the one to buy.
Score: 4 / 5 · £1,299 as reviewed
Behind this piece
Every product covered here was bought at retail and lived with for at least a fortnight before a word was written. Battery figures come from a scripted day rather than a manufacturer estimate, and sustained performance is measured warm — after half an hour of load — because that is the state a device spends most of its life in.
Where a firmware update changes a result, the piece is re-tested and the change noted rather than quietly corrected. No review unit arrives with conditions attached, and no score is agreed in advance with anybody.
Where to go next
If you are weighing this against the rest of the smartphones we have covered, the category archive lists every review in date order. The closest comparisons we have published are Xiaomi 15 Ultra Review: Strong but Not Perfect and Xiaomi 15 Ultra vs Galaxy A56: Is the Xiaomi 15 Ultra Worth £900 More?.
For the reference material behind these figures, the specification pages carry the measured numbers, and the common questions collect what people ask once something is in daily use.
