We may never see it in South Africa, but the Chinese launch of the Xiaomi 15 Ultra has us hoping that will change. The Chinese company’s 14T smartphone was decent enough, but it hardly compares to the camera hardware Xiaomi has chucked at its premium headliner this year.
The big change for 2025 is the addition of a new 200MP periscope telephoto zoom, which uses Samsung’s HP9 1¼in image sensor. Xiaomi reckons it captures 136% more light than the Xiaomi 14 Pro’s 120mm 200MP lens, possible via its increased sensor size. A complicated arrangement allows the 100mm lens to live inside the 15 Ultra, facilitating an optical zoom of 4.3x before inferior digital technology takes over.
15 Ultra forever
Cameras are a large focus for the Xiaomi Ultra 15, with the other three in the rear array being a 50MP wide-angle with a 1in Sony LYT-900 image sensor, a 50MP telephoto (up to 3x optical zoom), and a 50MP ultrawide. The former two feature optical image stabiliation and, if you’re counting megapixels, the rear circle has a combined total of 350MP. Not that you’ll snap pictures at that resolution.
You will, however, record 8K video at up to 30fps with any of the camera sensors in the rear array, 4K at 60fps with any camera on the device (including the 32MP front-facer), and 4K at 120fps with the main wide-angle and 100mm telephoto lenses.
Elsewhere, the Xiaomi Ultra 15 advances in increments over its immediate predecessor. A 6.73in 1,440 x 3,200 LPTO AMOLED display is powered by a Snapdragon 8 Elite processor, RAM and storage start at 12GB/256GB and climb to 16GB/1TB, and Xiaomi’s 6,000mAh battery supports wired charging at up to 90W. Wireless charging, at 80W, is barely slower than that.
But, like we said at the beginning, we probably won’t see it here. Not officially, at any rate. The Xiaomi 15 Ultra starts at about R16,650 in China and goes up to R20,000 for the full-spec model. Here in South Africa, the Xiaomi 14 Ultra will cost between R25,000 and R37,000, depending on which importer you’re shopping from. Don’t expect the 15 Ultra to remain as affordable as current Chinese pricing suggests.
