Adam Doud/SlashGear

Here in the U.S. we have a narrow slate of smartphone to choose from. If you want to buy the best smartphone on the market, it's fairly easy to narrow down your choices between Apple, Samsung, Google, OnePlus, and Motorola. But that's in the United States. Once you go overseas, you find an incredibly wide variety of smartphones to choose from.

At MWC 2025, I got to see a lot of those, including a number of weird features that phones have overseas that are just too cool. I also had the opportunity to check out some phones so good, they came away with an award. One of those was the Xiaomi 15 Ultra. In some ways, this is the best phone I've used in a long time. In others, there's room for improvement. But overall, the Xiaomi 15 Ultra earns its award and its Ultra name, and perhaps more than its U.S. counterpart. I've been using the Xiaomi 15 Ultra (and its official Photography Kit) across Barcelona, my hometown of Chicago, and in rural Moline, IL for about three weeks, and this is my full review.

Of course, every time we look at phones from companies like Xiaomi, Honor, and others from overseas, we need to start off with the obvious disclaimer. This phone was not built for the U.S., and if you decide to try to import one, your mileage may vary. I used T-Mobile's network both in Barcelona and in Chicago, and in the Quad Cities, straddling the mighty Mississippi, and I had no connectivity issues.