It looks like the Xiaomi 15 Ultra could be getting a 200MP telephoto camera, as the brand continues to try and make smartphone photography its big selling point. The Xiaomi 14 Ultra brought with it some of the most impressive camera hardware of 2024, but this upgrade could take things to the next level.
Reliable tipster Ice Universe suggests the Xiaomi 15 Ultra will have a telephoto camera with over 4x zoom and a massive 200MP resolution. Presumably, this new camera would replace the 5x 50MP telephoto of the Xiaomi 14 Ultra, which is already one of the best options for amateur snappers on our list of the best Xiaomi phones.
It’s not the first time that we’ve seen a high-resolution sensor used for the telephoto camera. Honor used a 180MP unit for its 2.5x telephoto on the Magic 6 Pro earlier this year. The idea is that you can digitally zoom much further without much quality degradation.
In practice, though, I didn’t find the Magic 6 Pro’s zooming capabilities to be that impressive, and phones with longer optical telephoto lenses often outperform it. Fingers crossed Xiaomi can work its magic and deliver some significant improvements. At the very least, it does have a longer focal length, and a few more pixels to work with, which should, in theory, offer higher-quality zoom shots.
Elsewhere, most of the 15 Ultra’s specs remain a mystery. It’s safe to assume it’ll have a Snapdragon 8 Gen 4, the chipset we’re expecting to see inside of most of the best 5G phones of 2025, and of course, it’ll cost a pretty penny. Considering the Xiaomi 14 Ultra launched in February 2024, we still have a long wait in store for the next generation, likely arriving in early 2025.