One of the best — frequently the best — camera phones of 2026, with a uniquely versatile quad Hasselblad system and class-leading 10x optical zoom
Class-leading battery life: a 7,050mAh silicon-carbon cell routinely delivers 8–10+ hours of screen-on time and can stretch to two days
100W SuperVOOC wired and 50W AirVOOC wireless charging — roughly 0–100% in 45–52 minutes
Stunning, distinctive Hasselblad-inspired design widely called one of the best-looking phones of the year
Excellent, very bright display — ~3,600 nits HDR peak and ~1,800 nits full-screen outdoors
Pros & Cons
Oppo Find X9 Ultra
Pros
One of the best — frequently the best — camera phones of 2026, with a uniquely versatile quad Hasselblad system and class-leading 10x optical zoom
Class-leading battery life: a 7,050mAh silicon-carbon cell routinely delivers 8–10+ hours of screen-on time and can stretch to two days
100W SuperVOOC wired and 50W AirVOOC wireless charging — roughly 0–100% in 45–52 minutes
Stunning, distinctive Hasselblad-inspired design widely called one of the best-looking phones of the year
Excellent, very bright display — ~3,600 nits HDR peak and ~1,800 nits full-screen outdoors
Detailed Comparison
Design & Build
Oppo Find X9 Ultra
A Hasselblad-camera tribute in phone form — vegan leather, a symmetrical 'master eye' module and a Hexagon-inspired ring. Gorgeous to most, oversized to some, and undeniably heavy.
One of the best-looking phones of the year.
Inspired by the Hasselblad X2D camera — the most beautiful phone of 2026 so far.
The perfectly symmetrical 'master eye' camera module and Hasselblad-style shutter button clearly pay tribute to the brand's classic camera aesthetics.
The hardware is insanely ambitious, but the first thing you notice holding it isn't elegance — it's size and weight.
It weighs about 239g and measures ~9.1mm thick — a genuinely big phone.
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Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 delivers top-of-chart benchmark performance
Best-in-class video on an Android phone, with strong stabilization and 8K30 / 4K120 Dolby Vision across lenses
Deal Breakers
Heavy and large (≈236–239g, ~9.1mm) with a polarising oversized circular camera island
Expensive (≈€1,699 / ~$1,100+ in China) with limited or no official availability in many markets
ColorOS trails Samsung and Google on AI-feature depth and integration, and feels iOS-derived to some users
Mediocre sustained performance — 3DMark stability around 49% with peak performance dropping within a minute
Xiaomi 15
What Reviewers Agree On
The best — or one of the very best — compact flagships of 2025: full flagship hardware in a small body with no real spec sacrifices.
The Leica triple 50MP camera is one of the most capable systems available in a compact phone, especially the main and 60mm telephoto.
The display is excellent — flat AMOLED with ~3,200 nits measured peak brightness, very readable in direct sunlight.
Charging is a standout: ~90W wired refills it in roughly 45 minutes to an hour, plus 50W wireless.
It still looks and feels premium after a year of use, with solid build quality and an IP68 rating.
Deal Breakers
HyperOS ships with bloatware you can't uninstall, ads and unsolicited notifications even on a flagship.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite struggles to stay cool under prolonged synthetic or 4K-video loads.
Priced like a flagship (~€999) while a Galaxy S25 or iPhone 16 is cheaper and easier to buy in the US.
Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 delivers top-of-chart benchmark performance
Best-in-class video on an Android phone, with strong stabilization and 8K30 / 4K120 Dolby Vision across lenses
Cons
Heavy and large (≈236–239g, ~9.1mm) with a polarising oversized circular camera island
Expensive (≈€1,699 / ~$1,100+ in China) with limited or no official availability in many markets
ColorOS trails Samsung and Google on AI-feature depth and integration, and feels iOS-derived to some users
Mediocre sustained performance — 3DMark stability around 49% with peak performance dropping within a minute
Xiaomi 15
Pros
The best — or one of the very best — compact flagships of 2025: full flagship hardware in a small body with no real spec sacrifices.
The Leica triple 50MP camera is one of the most capable systems available in a compact phone, especially the main and 60mm telephoto.
The display is excellent — flat AMOLED with ~3,200 nits measured peak brightness, very readable in direct sunlight.
Charging is a standout: ~90W wired refills it in roughly 45 minutes to an hour, plus 50W wireless.
It still looks and feels premium after a year of use, with solid build quality and an IP68 rating.
Cons
HyperOS ships with bloatware you can't uninstall, ads and unsolicited notifications even on a flagship.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite struggles to stay cool under prolonged synthetic or 4K-video loads.
Priced like a flagship (~€999) while a Galaxy S25 or iPhone 16 is cheaper and easier to buy in the US.
Some find the huge circular camera apparatus ugly, when we usually ask for less intrusive camera bumps.
Xiaomi 15
A genuinely compact flagship that fits premium hardware into a small, well-built body. Reviewers consistently praise the in-hand feel and durability, with the flat Xiaomi Shield Glass back the main quibble.
Fitting so much premium hardware into such a small body is a tough job and one Xiaomi continues to excel at — the bottom line is you can't realistically do much better for a powerful, modern, compact flagship.
The frame is high-strength aluminium alloy, nicely rounded at the corners and edges, with a flat display using Xiaomi's own Shield Glass.
After a full year the phone still looks and feels premium — buttons, speaker and port all still work perfectly and the compact design still feels great in the hand.
After eight months of daily use the build quality still feels very solid and the phone carries an IP68 rating.
The sleek flat glass back uses frosty shield glass that is a fingerprint magnet's worst nightmare, and some feel Xiaomi played the design too safe.
It comes globally in black, white, green and silver — the Liquid Silver finish in particular stands out.
The fingerprint scanner performance is outstanding.
Display
Oppo Find X9 Ultra
A 6.8-inch LTPO OLED with up to 144Hz and very high real-world brightness — among the brightest screens on any phone outdoors.
6.8-inch LTPO OLED panel up to 144Hz, with a maximum brightness around 1,800 nits and dimming as low as 1 nit.
Hits a staggering ~3,600 nits of peak HDR brightness, making it incredibly easy to see and edit shots in direct sunlight.
In manual mode the display peaks at 840 nits, rising to ~1,156 nits in auto on a 75% white patch and up to ~1,932 nits in the native gallery app.
The smoother 144Hz panel and 3,600-nit brightness outperform Samsung's display.
Xiaomi 15
A small but flagship-grade flat AMOLED with class-leading peak brightness. Outdoor visibility is a recurring highlight.
An independent test clocked the display at 3,175 nits at 20% APL — bright enough to comfortably read in direct sun.
The phone offers 3,200 nits of peak brightness; a year on, the screen still feels flagship-level for YouTube, Netflix and gaming.
There is a dedicated sunlight mode you toggle in settings that boosts the panel up to 3,200 nits.
Whether watching video or gaming, after a year the display still feels flagship level.
Cameras
Oppo Find X9 Ultra
The reason to buy it. A Hasselblad-tuned quad system with the most versatile zoom on any phone, a true 10x optical periscope and an optional 300mm Hasselblad teleconverter. Near-universally praised, with only minor sharpness and ultrawide caveats.
A 200MP main, 200MP 3x telephoto, 50MP 10x optical telephoto and 50MP ultrawide, all Hasselblad-branded — camera-first overkill in the best way.
Consistently great photos, sharpness and dynamic range with really good color calibration — this phone did basically everything right in the camera department; an incredibly well-rounded smartphone camera.
Is this the best camera phone ever built? — my new favorite camera phone and one of the best Android phones I've ever used.
Even after a direct shootout, still the best camera phone I've ever used.
Detail is very good, but sharpness remains a bit underwhelming on the main camera.
The ultrawide is probably the weakest part of the setup — with the first three cameras taking so much space, Oppo reused the Samsung GN5 sensor here.
Night-mode processing — color, contrast and exposure handling — is so much better than the Galaxy S26 Ultra's, and the ultrawide is now one of the best for detail preservation.
The optional 300mm Hasselblad teleconverter delivers ~13x (300mm) optical-feel zoom that retains real telephoto sharpness, extending to ~60x (1380mm).
Xiaomi 15
A Leica-tuned triple 50MP system that reviewers rate among the best you can get in a compact phone, with a large 1/1.3-inch main sensor and a versatile 60mm telephoto. Pro-grade video is strong via the main sensor.
This is one of the best and most capable camera setups you can currently get in a relatively compact phone.
Xiaomi swapped the Xiaomi 14 sensor for a new JN5 telephoto with a 60mm focal length, paired with a large 1/1.3-inch main sensor.
The telephoto offers 2x optical zoom (46mm) but you can still push to ~6x with an impressive level of detail — a strong pick for buyers who don't need extreme reach.
Portrait shots were compared directly against a Sony a6100 with a 23mm f/1.4 lens (≈35mm equivalent, ~f/2.1 depth of field) and held up well.
The main camera can shoot 8K30 from the main sensor, and that 8K footage is roughly 50% more detailed than 4K30.
Performance
Oppo Find X9 Ultra
Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 puts it near the top of the benchmark charts, but sustained-load stability is mediocre and Oppo deliberately throttles early to control heat.
As expected, the Find X9 Ultra earns excellent benchmark scores near the top of the charts.
A 3D ultrasonic fingerprint scanner Oppo claims is 35% faster and 33% more reliable, plus vapor cooling to dissipate heat through the aluminium frame for better sustained performance.
3DMark returned ~7,530 best-loop and ~3,682 low-loop with only ~49% stability, and peak performance didn't last a minute — weak sustained behaviour.
Genshin Impact stayed consistently above 50fps and remained smooth even when throttling to ~30fps after ~16 minutes at 41.5°C, at under 4W power draw.
Honor of Kings averaged 144fps over 30 minutes at max settings; Genshin held max 60fps before stabilizing near 50fps.
Xiaomi 15
Snapdragon 8 Elite makes it one of the fastest small phones available, and it holds sustained performance better than larger rivals — but it still runs warm under prolonged synthetic and 4K-video loads.
It runs the Snapdragon 8 Elite — pretty much the fastest chipset available on any smartphone at launch.
In a stress test against the Galaxy S25 and Oppo Find X8, the Xiaomi 15 won on stability (~72%) versus the S25's 67% and the Find X8's 58.6%, and also had the upper hand in Geekbench.
Despite being a much smaller phone tested in hotter conditions, it sustained better performance and smoothness than an iQOO 13 in a 10-loop benchmark; an external cooler lifted the lowest-loop score 14%.
The chipset swap to the Snapdragon 8 Elite is welcome, but just like last year the Xiaomi 15 still struggles to keep it cool under prolonged loads.
A year on the flagship chipset is still very powerful and the phone's performance remains solid in 2026.
Battery & Charging
Oppo Find X9 Ultra
A genuine highlight: a 7,050mAh silicon-carbon cell that posts some of the best endurance numbers of any 2026 flagship, with fast 100W wired and 50W wireless charging.
Draws power from a 7,050mAh battery — a sizeable increase over the previous generation — with 100W SuperVOOC wired and 50W AirVOOC wireless charging.
Earned an active-use battery score of over 20 hours; with the SuperVOOC charger it went 0–75% in 30 minutes and to full in 45 minutes.
After ~10 hours of continuous use starting at 7am it still had 53% battery, regularly getting 8–9 hours of screen-on time and ~40% left after a 13-hour day.
A PCMark synthetic loop returned 15 hours 2 minutes, and 100W SuperVOOC charging took ~49–52 minutes (the charger isn't included).
With moderate usage you can easily expect more than 2 days of battery life — Oppo finally feels like a truly complete product.
Charges 0–100% in about 52 minutes on the official 80W charger in a head-to-head charge test.
Xiaomi 15
A ~5,240mAh cell that beats a Galaxy S25 in head-to-head rundowns and recharges very fast over both wire and wireless — though a HyperOS idle drain divides reviewers.
The Xiaomi 15 packs a larger ~5,240mAh battery versus a Galaxy S25's ~4,000mAh while only being 27g heavier, and ended a head-to-head rundown at 30% vs the S25's 13%.
It charges in around 45 minutes with the 90W adapter in the box, and the reviewer had zero issues with battery life in normal mixed use.
From a fully dead battery a measured charge test reached 66% in 45 minutes, 91% at 1h05m and a full 100% in about 1h15m.
It also supports 50W wireless charging — faster than typical flagship wired speeds — though there are no Qi magnets built in, so you need a 50W-compatible mat for top speed.
Xiaomi says battery can run roughly 25% longer than the Xiaomi 14.
Software & AI
Oppo Find X9 Ultra
ColorOS 16 has matured a lot and is fast and smooth, but it still trails Samsung and Google on AI depth and feels iOS-derived to some — the phone's clearest weak point relative to its hardware.
ColorOS 16 feels like one of the best versions yet.
It's a good Android experience but not on par with the Galaxy experience for AI features and tool integration, and portrait autofocus struggles in some low-light conditions.
For me it's the best version of Android I've ever used — light, fast and smooth with no major issues.
The hardware is superior to the latest Samsung, but the software feels like an imitation of iOS.
With a bit of tweaking and updates, Oppo's software and camera engineers can make this even better — there's clear headroom.
Xiaomi 15
HyperOS is fast and feature-rich (IR blaster, long update commitment) but the bloat, ads and unremovable apps remain the phone's most consistent complaint, and big updates have shifted benchmark behaviour.
Xiaomi committed to roughly 4 years of major Android OS updates and 5 years of security patches.
Owners dislike that certain pre-installed apps can't be uninstalled and that HyperOS surfaces ads and unsolicited notifications even on a flagship.
The HyperOS 3 (Android 16) update is described as one of the riskiest software moves Xiaomi has made; everything still feels like butter day-to-day but Geekbench scores have declined with every major HyperOS update.
After the Android 16 / HyperOS 3 update many owners report better battery life, and the IR blaster remains a favourite Xiaomi touch.
A year on the software support has kept the phone feeling fresh and reliable, with a smooth overall experience.
Value vs Competition
Oppo Find X9 Ultra
Premium-priced and hard to buy in many markets, but reviewers broadly conclude it out-cameras the S26 Ultra and Pixel and edges the Vivo X300 Ultra on usability.
Its main compromises are the ~€1,699 price, large 236g body, occasional software concerns and limited availability in some markets.
It feels like Oppo wanted to make the camera first and just happened to also create the best Android phone you can get right now — though it won't win every year-end award.
The base Find X9 Ultra starts at 7,499 yuan in China — roughly £814 / ~$1,100 — but the heaviness and visual pressure are the first impression.
The closest rival is the Vivo X300 Ultra, but the X9 Ultra wins by having a more user-friendly OS.
The Hasselblad alliance delivers a phone that genuinely challenges the Galaxy S26 Ultra on cameras.
Xiaomi 15
Widely called the best compact flagship of 2025, but it's priced like a flagship and only an iterative bump over the Xiaomi 14 — and in the US a Galaxy S25 or iPhone 16 is cheaper and easier to buy.
One of the best compact flagships on the market, if not the best one — reviewers were left quite impressed.
Pitched directly as 'The Best Compact Flagship of 2025?' in a benchmarks-and-blind-camera comparison against the iPhone 16 Pro Max and Galaxy S25 Ultra.
A compact flagship with excellent battery life, though it shares near-identical design, display and cameras with its predecessor — it can feel like a fairly minor update.
A new Xiaomi 15 (12GB/256GB) retails around €999 globally; used prices have dipped to €700-800 on eBay/Swappa — a solid 20-30% drop that makes the used market tempting.
Compared with a Galaxy S25 or iPhone 16 — both cheaper and easier to buy in the US — the Xiaomi 15's price feels premium for what is essentially an iterative upgrade over the Xiaomi 14.
4K30 video is consistent with great detail, tasteful colours and good contrast, but 4K60 footage can sometimes look too compressed and mushy.
Third-party apps like MotionCam Pro or MC Pro 24fps unlock truly stunning log video and show what the main sensor is really capable of.
There is good consistency between the lenses and no real issue with the Xiaomi 15's camera in everyday use.
In third-party pro apps the camera is locked to a fixed ~78mm field of view with no optical zoom range, limiting professional workflows outside Xiaomi's own camera app.
In a cross-platform speed test the Xiaomi 15 posted a higher Geekbench multi-core score than an iPhone 17 (which led single-core).
One reviewer reported a real HyperOS idle drain — 15-20 minutes of light morning use (email, WhatsApp, Slack) cost 5-6% and warmed the phone, persisting even on the dimmest setting.
After a year you still get a full-day battery for most users — heavy users may need a quick top-up — and 90W fast charging stays extremely useful.
r/Android long-term owners describe an awesome device with a fantastic camera and even better battery life.
Globally available in black, white, green and silver in 12GB/256GB and 12GB/512GB configurations.
If you don't need the latest model, a year on the Xiaomi 15 is still an excellent choice.