Xiaomi’s 15T and 15T Pro are impressive phones that are about to be outdated

Xiaomi just announced the 15T and 15T Pro, a pair of near-flagship phones that would be more exciting if they hadn’t arrived less than 24 hours before the company is set to unveil its next set of flagships. Odd release schedule aside, the 15T handsets have a lot going for them — I’ve been using the Pro for a week and a half, throughout a demanding vacation in New York, and have more good than bad to say about the phone.

First, let’s try to make sense of Xiaomi’s release strategy. The 15T phones are follow-ups to the 15 and 15 Pro, which first launched in China in October 2024, delivering similar specs at a slightly more affordable price. They’re launching globally today, including in Europe. But tomorrow the company will announce the 15 series’ true successors, the 17 series (Xiaomi is skipping a number to keep up with the Joneses Apple). Those phones will be more powerful, using the soon-to-be-announced Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip and featuring second screens on the rear of the Pro models, but likely won’t launch outside of China until spring 2026.

The 15T handsets run on MediaTek silicon: the Dimensity 8400-Ultra in the 15T, and the more powerful Dimensity 9400 Plus in the 15T Pro. Both offer 12GB of RAM, with up to 512GB storage in the regular model and a 1TB cap for the Pro. These are both pretty powerful devices.

Both phones are the same size, with no sign of a smaller handset to match the original 15. The 6.83-inch OLED displays are huge, in fact — larger than either the 15 Pro or 15 Ultra — though the 15T models are thinner than both those phones too, less than 8mm each. The Pro is the thicker and heavier of the two, at 7.96mm and 210g, but it’s still pretty comfortable by big phone standards.

I’m not entirely sold on the rose gold and mocha gold finishes my review units arrived in, though both phones are available in black or gray if you prefer. They also share IP68 ratings, 5,500mAh batteries, and fast wired charging — though only the Pro supports wireless charging too. Battery life on the Pro has certainly impressed me, staying the course throughout long vacation days with plenty of photos, navigation, and LTE usage, rarely dropping much below 50 percent in the process.

It’s the cameras that have impressed me the most though. The 15T Pro’s lenses aren’t quite a match for the 15 Ultra’s — close to the gold standard for smartphones right now, behind only Vivo’s X200 Ultra — but the difference is slight. The 50-megapixel f/1.62 main camera is fantastic and the 12-megapixel ultrawide gets the job done, but I’ve been most impressed by the 50-megapixel telephoto. This is where the Ultra models have leaped ahead in the last year or two, but the 5x periscope here held its own in all but the most challenging restaurant mood lighting.

The regular 15T shares only the ultrawide and the 32-megapixel selfie camera, using slightly different sensors in its main and tele cameras. The latter is especially different, with only 2x zoom, though it gets a much faster f/1.9 aperture instead.

The 15T phones are also the first Xiaomi phones outside China to support its satellite voice calls, which you can use to make calls without cell service or Wi-Fi, at distances of up to 1.3km (0.8 miles) from the 15T or 1.9km (1.2 miles) from the Pro. The catch? Right now you can only call other 15T users, a limitation that probably makes it pretty useless for most people.

The 15T Pro is available to order now in the UK, starting at £649 (around $870), while the 15T starts at £549 (around $740).