Xiaomi has introduced its 15 Extremely flagship telephone at a launch occasion in China, the place it’s happening sale beginning at 6,499 yuan (round $893). The Android telephone joins the corporate’s Xiaomi 15 and 15 Professional, which went on sale there in October 2024. It’s a principally iterative improve on final 12 months’s mannequin, however the huge change is the addition of a 200-megapixel periscope digital camera that the corporate says excels in low gentle. The 15 sequence, together with the Extremely, is getting a global launch this Sunday, March 2nd, at Cellular World Congress in Barcelona. Precisely which markets it’s going to go on sale in stays to be seen, but it surely’s a secure guess that this one gained’t be coming to the US.
Xiaomi’s Extremely line has all the time been camera-centric, much more so than Samsung or Apple’s prime fashions, and the 15 Extremely is not any totally different. Like final 12 months’s 14 Extremely, the quad rear digital camera is arrayed in an infinite round module on the telephone’s rear. It’s designed to resemble pictures accomplice Leica’s devoted digital camera {hardware}, proper right down to the two-tone silver and black end, and compact “Extremely” nook emblem discovered on one of many telephone’s three variations. There are additionally easier black or white fashions.
The 200-megapixel 4.3x periscopic lens follows comparable periscopes in Vivo’s X100 Extremely and X200 Professional, and Honor’s Magic 7 Professional. This can be a shorter zoom than the 5x periscope on the 14 Extremely, however makes use of a bigger sensor, sooner aperture, and better decision, which Xiaomi says ends in higher gentle seize, bringing enhancements in zoom pictures, particularly in decrease gentle. Xiaomi even codenamed the telephone “Night time God” internally, so low gentle pictures is clearly a spotlight this 12 months.
The opposite three rear sensors are all 50-megapixel, and are arrange equally to final 12 months’s mannequin, albeit with small variations. Probably the most noteworthy change is to the primary digital camera, which has dropped the variable aperture tech featured on the earlier mannequin in favor of a hard and fast — however quick — f/1.63.
The pictures focus is enhanced by the discharge of Xiaomi’s third-generation Images Package, an optionally available further that features a case and a digital camera grip. Past a brand new purple end, not a lot has modified right here both: the interior battery is a bit of bigger at 2,000mAh (permitting this to double as a small energy financial institution for the telephone), and there’s a brand new thumb relaxation, however the core digital camera controls stay the identical: a shutter button, video button, zoom lever, and publicity dial.
Past the inevitable improve to the current-generation Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, there are few different upgrades or design modifications. The 6.73-inch show is once more 1-120Hz however a bit of brighter at 3,200 nits peak HDR brightness. An IP68 score returns, too. The 6,000mAh battery is considerably bigger, however the 90W wired charging and 80W wi-fi speeds are unchanged. As with different latest Android flagships, there’s nonetheless no signal of Qi2 adoption.
I assumed the 14 Extremely was final 12 months’s finest telephone digital camera by a ways, and my colleague Allison known as it “a pictures nerd’s dream,” so Xiaomi has set itself a excessive bar to dwell as much as. This was such a robust digital camera, it’s comprehensible that the corporate has stored modifications to a minimal this time round. However we’re wanting ahead to discovering out whether or not its one huge improve, the periscope, will ship.