For months, the buzz around the Xiaomi 15T Pro has been all about one thing: its upgraded camera system. After all, the Leica co-engineering and a periscope-telephoto lens promised to finally elevate the T Series to a true imaging powerhouse.

But as soon as we unboxed it and got our hands on it, it became clear that the camera hardware was only part of a much bigger, more compelling story. What’s surprising, however, is that Xiaomi didn’t stop there. The Xiaomi 15T Pro is a device that, in every conceivable way, seeks to punch well above its category, from its stunning new design and flagship-level performance that rivals some of the most expensive smartphones on the market. It’s not just a camera phone; it’s a near-perfect package that effectively blurs the line between a top model and an affordable alternative.

SEE ALSO: Xiaomi 15T Series launched: All the specs and features that bring ‘masterpieces far closer’

In the Philippines, the Xiaomi 15T is priced at P28,999 (around $501), while the Xiaomi 15T Pro comes in at P39,999 ($690). Both models feature 12GB of RAM and 512GB of storage, and notably, the Pro’s price matches that of last year’s Xiaomi 14T Pro. If you’re ready to get your hands on one, preorders begin tomorrow, September 26, and run until October 9. Early birds who place a P1,000 ($17) down payment will receive a free Xiaomi Smart Band 9 Pro.

All in the details

The Xiaomi 15T Pro is, in a word, polished. It’s not just that it looks and feels premium — it’s that the handset is a masterclass in refinement, setting it apart from its predecessor and most other devices in its class. While the Pro uses the same glass back and 6M13 aluminum-alloy middle frame as the Xiaomi 14T Pro, the polish comes from the details.

@revuphilippines The star of today’s #XiaomiLaunch, (re)unboxed. 🙈 Meet the #Xiaomi15TPro. 💫 Full details at www.revu.com.ph. 🟠 #Xiaomi15TSeries #Xiaomi #RevuDotComDotPH @Xiaomi Philippines @Xiaomi @monch @Alora Uy Guerrero ♬ original sound – Revu Philippines

(Re)unboxing the Xiaomi 15T Pro

The new model is slightly more curved at the corners, giving it a subtle, iPhone-like aesthetic. The bezels on the front are likewise a visual treat. They’re so slim and symmetrical that the Xiaomi 15T Pro, despite packing a larger 6.83-inch screen, doesn’t feel noticeably bigger than the old model with its 6.67-inch display. At 210 grams, it’s still a substantial device that feels weighty, which might be a struggle for those with smaller hands. However, the excellent weight distribution shows that Xiaomi is paying attention to the little things.

The camera module itself is a bold statement. The lenses are arranged in a square formation, but rather than being covered by a single glass panel, they’re separated by a metallic bezel with rounded corners. This simple aesthetic choice adds a unique personality and — you guessed it — a touch more polish. The subtle Leica branding on the module also adds a layer of sophistication, elevating the aesthetic and distinguishing it from Xiaomi’s midrange offerings.

The smooth, matte finish on the rear feels great in the hand and resists fingerprints. And in a nice touch, a basic black TPU case is included in the box to keep the smartphone looking pristine. The IP68 rating is a welcome carryover, providing peace of mind from dust and water damage.

The Xiaomi 15T Pro features stereo speakers, as expected. And while the headphone jack’s absence is no surprise in 2025, the inclusion of a handy IR blaster is. This nostalgic feature allows you to control nearby appliances, adding an unexpected layer of convenience. The Hi-Res and Hi-Res Wireless audio certifications are likewise welcome additions for commuters looking for the best possible sound quality.

Up front, that flat AMOLED screen is literally a huge selling point, delivering a truly stunning viewing experience. At 6.83 inches with a crisp 1.5K resolution, everything from video to text looks fantastic. The blacks are deep, the colors are vibrant, and the silky-smooth 144Hz adaptive refresh rate makes everything feel incredibly fluid. There’s support for Dolby Vision and HDR10 Plus as well.

Xiaomi claims a peak brightness of 3,200 nits and a full-screen brightness of up to 1,800 nits, ensuring clarity even in direct sunlight. To top it all off, the fast in-display fingerprint sensor makes unlocking the phone a snap.

Ultimately, the Xiaomi 15T Pro’s hardware is a testament to the brand’s attention to detail, elevating it to a level that rivals a modern flagship and effectively blurring the lines between top-shelf and sub-flagship devices.

Point and shoot like a ‘Pro’

The cameras, among a few other things, are what make the Xiaomi 15T Pro feel like a legitimate contender. It brings a Leica-branded camera system to the table.

At its core is a 50-megapixel Light Fusion 900 sensor, which is the same one you’ll find on the flagship Xiaomi 15 we reviewed earlier this year. It has an identical Leica Summilux lens with a 23mm-equivalent focal length as well. Paired with a Dual ISO Fusion Max algorithm, the sensor is capable of a high dynamic range and a real-time HDR preview, giving you a true “what you see is what you get” experience in the viewfinder.

The camera system also features a 50-megapixel Samsung JN5 sensor coupled with a periscope-telephoto lens, co-engineered with Leica. This is a first for the series, with a native 115mm-equivalent focal length that delivers an impressive 5x optical zoom. You can push it all the way to 100x digital zoom thanks to AI, but you’re honestly better off keeping the zoom range between 5x and 10x. Like the primary shooter, the sensor here is equipped with optical image stabilization or OIS to make sure your long-range shots are steady and sharp.

But don’t just think of it as a zoom lens. The Xiaomi 15T Pro’s telephoto option produces great portraits, with satisfying background blur and excellent object detection, and also doubles as a solid telemacro camera for closeup shots.

Sample shots

The tertiary camera is a 12-megapixel ultrawide. It’s fine for sweeping landscapes but can’t quite keep up with the main and telephoto lenses. And because it lacks autofocus, you can’t use it for closeups. Despite its more modest hardware, the ultrawide holds its own. It captures nice daytime photos with pleasing colors and solid dynamic range, though sharpness isn’t its strong suit.

Up front, the 32-megapixel selfie shooter is more than capable. It takes sharp pictures with detailed and accurate skin tones, although it tends to get a little heavy-handed with the over-smoothing and face brightening. Still, the overall quality is good, and its Portrait mode does a decent job with edge detection, especially in good light with a simple backdrop.

As with the previous generation, you get the choice between those signature Leica Authentic and Leica Vibrant color filters. Vibrant is the social media darling, with punchier, ready-to-share colors. The Authentic mode, on the other hand, delivers a more moody, classic look with darker exposures, some vignetting, and less saturated color. While it may not be for every scene, it’s the right choice for certain shots that need a bit more dramatic flair.

The primary camera consistently impresses. In well-lit environments, it captures images with exceptional sharpness and accurate color reproduction when set to Leica Authentic. Thanks to the large sensor and OIS, it’s also effective in challenging lighting, delivering bright, largely blur-free photos. The HDR mode expertly balances highlights and shadows, so you won’t have to worry about blown-out skies or dark foregrounds.

When the light gets low, the Night mode is effective, brightening shots and recovering details in the shadows. Sure, you might spot a bit of noise and softness when you compare it to a dedicated camera phone, but it’s far and away better than what most competitors offer at this price point.

True flagship power

While Xiaomi made some big moves with the cameras this year, the T Series has always been about bringing flagship power without the flagship price. That’s exactly what you get with the latest iteration. Last year’s Xiaomi 14T Pro rocked a MediaTek Dimensity 9300 Plus, so it’s no shocker to see its successor, the Xiaomi 15T Pro, getting the current-gen Dimensity 9400 Plus chipset. It’s built on a more power-efficient 3nm process and, while technically an iterative upgrade from the Dimensity 9400, it’s currently the most powerful MediaTek chip available.

You’ll find this same SoC in top-of-the-line phones from OPPO and vivo. It still packs three Cortex-X4 cores and four Cortex-A720 cores, but the single ARM Cortex-X925 performance core is now clocked higher at 3.73GHz. The NPU 890 AI chip has been upgraded, too, supporting sophisticated LLMs and generative tools. This means everything from smarter computational photography to personalized assistants is handled right on the device, keeping things fast and private. The Xiaomi 15T Pro also comes with a pretty generous 12GB of LPDDR5X RAM and up to 1TB of fast UFS 4.1 storage.

Xiaomi claims some impressive gains with this model — a 35% boost in single-threaded CPU tasks, 41% faster GPU performance, and 44% better power efficiency over the last release. Those numbers certainly look incredible. Unfortunately, Antutu and 3DMark couldn’t verify our review unit, so we weren’t able to run any benchmark scores before the embargo lifted. But we did manage to get the latest version of Geekbench to work, and the results were more than promising. Our unit posted single- and multi-core scores of 2,605 and 7,899, respectively, putting it on a par with the best performers on the market today.

Ultimately, benchmarks are just part of the story; real-world performance is what really matters. Running on Android 15-based HyperOS 2, the Xiaomi 15T Pro provides an incredibly smooth and responsive experience. Apps launch instantly, scrolling is seamless, and games run flawlessly without any performance drops, even during extended play sessions. The ample RAM also makes multitasking a breeze.

To put the smartphone’s gaming power to the test, we fired up graphics-heavy, console-quality titles like Destiny: Rising, a free-to-play mobile spin-off to Bungie’s popular looter-shooter, and GRID: Legends, easily one of the most demanding games on the Google Play Store. We were seriously impressed. Our phone consistently averaged 50 frames per second in both games, with regular bursts to 60 FPS — the maximum allowed.

We even took things a step further and tried PC emulation, running Grand Theft Auto V and hitting around 30 FPS despite the lack of native driver support. And for something less demanding, the PC version of Hollow Knight: Silksong blew us away with around 150 FPS — not a typo! — in an early area. That’s no small feat and proves this device has more than enough horsepower for any game you throw at it.

The Xiaomi 15T Pro’s ability to maintain peak performance is another win as well. A big reason for this is the company’s improved 3D IceLoop cooling system. This advanced heat-dissipation tech expands the vapor-chamber area by 12% and the graphite-sheet coverage by 8%, maximizing heat transfer across the chassis. Our testing confirmed it works as promised. Even during our GTA V emulation run, the phone never got uncomfortably hot. It also never throttled below 81% of its max performance after a brutal 30-minute run in the CPU Throttling Test app. That’s mighty impressive for a device with a flagship SoC inside.

Powering the Xiaomi 15T Pro is a 5,500mAh battery, managed by the brand’s own Surge G1 chip for better efficiency. We’re happy to report it easily lasted a full workday on a single charge. For gamers, the Slow Charging feature is a notable inclusion, letting you power the smartphone slowly to keep things cooler during intense sessions. There’s Smart Charging, which adapts to your habits and pauses at 80% to avoid overcharging overnight. You can even set it to stop at 80% all the time for maximum battery health. Finally, Cold Endurance mode limits performance to keep the battery running longer in colder environments.

When it comes to charging, the Xiaomi 15T Pro has stepped up its game, offering some of the fastest wired and wireless charging speeds on the market. Easily the most impressive spec on this front is the phone’s blazing-fast 90-watt wired charging. Xiaomi says it can go from zero to 100% in just 36 minutes, and our tests with the included power brick confirm that’s pretty spot-on. If you’re into the cable-free life, meanwhile, that 50-watt proprietary wireless charging is still blazing-fast — you’re looking at a full charge in about an hour.

Putting AI to work

The Xiaomi 15T Pro ships with HyperOS 2, a custom overlay on top of Android 15. But that’s just a starting point. Come November, it will be one of the first devices to get the upgrade to HyperOS 3, Xiaomi’s next-gen overlay built on Android 16. This update promises a smoother, smarter, and more refined experience with improvements to the interface as well as AI-powered productivity. Beyond that, the brand is also promising four years of major OS updates (for a total of five), plus six years of security updates for this model.

Even with HyperOS 2 out of the box, the smartphone already comes loaded with a broad suite of HyperAI features for productivity and creativity. The list is extensive: AI Writing, AI Speech Recognition, AI Search, AI Gallery Search, and a bunch of other tools like real-time translation and an AI Creativity Assistant for stuff like image enhancement and sky replacement.

Sample AI-generated images of Revü Philippines’ editor on the Xiaomi 15T Pro

A couple of standout features here are AI Search and AI Gallery Search, both brand-new to the just-launched lineup. Built on Google’s Gemini 2.0 model, AI Search lets you find and summarize information using natural language across local apps like the Gallery, File Manager, and Notes. The AI Gallery Search, on the other hand, brings that same intelligence to your photos, letting you find images with more precision and rediscover memories more intuitively than ever.

Perhaps the most notable new feature for international markets is Xiaomi Offline Communication. This device-to-device voice communication works without any cellular or Wi-Fi networks. It’s currently limited to the Xiaomi 15T series and future Xiaomi phones, though. Besides that caveat, you have to be logged in with a Xiaomi account and have a SIM card. By default, only contacts can call each other, but you can manually open it up to any nearby device.

Final thoughts

Make no mistake, the Xiaomi 15T Pro is the most complete sub-flagship the company has ever produced. It packs so much premium hardware, from the polished design and ultrafast display to the Leica camera system and MediaTek powerhouse chipset, that it effectively blurs the line between a flagship and a more affordable alternative. This makes it harder for consumers to justify spending more on a smartphone — even from within Xiaomi’s own backyard.

If you’ve been waiting for a true flagship killer this year, and you’re comfortable with a MediaTek processor at the helm, then the answer is simple: Yes, this is your best option. Look no further.

Xiaomi 15T Pro specs

• 6.83-inch AMOLED display, 1.5K resolution, 144Hz refresh rate
• 3nm MediaTek Dimensity 9400 Plus 5G processor
• Immortalis-G720 MC12 GPU
• 12GB LPDDR5X RAM
• 256GB/512GB/1TB UFS 4.0 storage
• Triple 50-megapixel main, 50-megapixel periscope-telephoto with 5x optical zoom, 12-megapixel ultrawide rear cameras with Leica Summilux lens
• 32-megapixel front camera
• Dual speakers
• 5,500mAh battery with 90-watt wired charging, 50-watt wireless charging
• HyperOS 2 based on Android 15
• Colors: Black, Gray, Mocha Gold

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