Xiaomi 15 Ultra NZ Your Experience?

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  NovaAlpha on 02/02/2026 - 01:23

  I don't own one (yet), but what's wrong with a 5400mAh battery? I've used plenty of phones with 5000mAh battery and they last for days with hours and hours of screen on time. I recently bought a Nothing Phone 3a Pro (was dirt cheap so bought it for fun) and was amazed at how long it lasts, despite having only a 5000mAh battery. It doesn't have the latest battery tech (or any latest tech in general), but it runs well, does what I need and battery is amazing. I just can't kill this thing.

  I've also owned various Xiaomi devices and don't have a problem with battery life in general. Although, most of my Xiaomi devices are rooted and runs xiaomi.eu custom ROM. I've also heavily debloated my devices and I run a lot of LSPosed modules, like:

  • Customiuizer (now known as Pengeek) - https://github.com/MonwF/customiuizer
  • HyperCeiler - https://github.com/ReChronoRain/HyperCeiler
  • Xiaomi Helper - https://github.com/HowieHChen/XiaomiHelper

  Plus I have my own custom Doze profile, which is heavily optimized to my needs and use cases. My phone goes to sleep aggressively and doesn't hold much wakelocks. There're other things I can talk about as well, but my point is that my Xiaomi devices never really disappointed me in terms of battery life or performance. You just need to know how to tweak and optimize them.

  But honestly, you don't really need any of this in general. My Nothing Phone 3a Pro is non-rooted (although I do run a lot of Shizuku addons) and the battery life is perfectly fine.

  I see plenty of people complaining about certain Android skins (like MIUI / HyperOS or whatever) and a lot of them just don't really know what they're talking about. Especially people talking about root, root-hiding and bootloader unlock, etc. I also found a lot of people talking trash about the Nothing Phone 3a Pro's battery life ever since they released Nothing OS 4.0 and while I was a bit concerned at first, I quickly realized a lot of the comments were just BS. Don't get me wrong, I think there are definitely flaws with the OS and this phone isn't even in my top 3, but I don't have any of the issues that others have pointed out on Reddit or XDA. Don't always read into them, unless the reviewer is really thorough with his findings and is a trusted reviewer.

  • 

    ChonkySausage on 02/02/2026 - 10:03

    I'm curious – what would you consider your top 3?

    • 

      NovaAlpha on 03/02/2026 - 16:03

      +1

      Well, it's a very subjective thing, because everyone has different requirements when it comes to what they want from a phone.

      For me personally, I care about these things:

      • Developer friendly, i.e is it easy to unlock bootloader and relock later (without breaking anything) if I wanted to? Some devices allow you to unlock the bootloader and you can't ever go back. For example, my Lenovo XiaoXin Pad Pro 12.7 2023 could be bootloader unlocked, but there's no way to properly relock it. It means you use Widevine L1 for Netflix and you can't ever get it back by going back to stock. Samsung KNOX for example gets tripped when you unlock the bootloader. I think there's a way to bypass that now though, I haven't looked into it much.

      The other thing is, can you even unlock the bootloader in the first place. Xiaomi has changed this process in the recent years. Nowadays, you can't get a Chinese variant of the phone and unlock the bootloader anymore. For example, if you were to get a Redmi K80 (Chinese variant of the Poco F7), you're gonna be stuck with a stock phone. I would used to recommend people who are into Xiaomi phones to buy the Chinese variant, because they have slightly better (sometimes a lot better) specs and are cheaper. But now, it's not possible.

      Also, custom ROMs, kernels and support for other things in a healthy community is important too. It means you can prolong the life of your phone by getting the latest Android updates via non-official methods. Most of the time, official Android updates for your model would be short lived.

      One very important thing is custom recovery. I work in IT and backups is something I care about and practice religiously. Back in the days, we used to be able to do NANDROID backups with TWRP or whatever. Nowadays, TWRP and other custom recoveries are almost dead, along side rooting as well, but I digress. With TWRP, you can backup your entire phone exactly one to one. I can then get another phone of the exact type and restore my backup within 30 mins, unattended. Everything will be restored back to exactly the way it was. No reconfiguration of settings, no logging into accounts, no downloading apps, nothing. One to one copy. With apps like Swift Backup (which I use too), you can only do app-level backups, it's not comparable to NANDROID backup/restore. The problem with TWRP these days is that it can't decrypt /DATA for certain models and certain Android versions (starting from 14 up I believe). However, some developers managed to crack this for certain phones and models.

      • Good battery size. This used to matter a lot, but as battery tech has improved over the years, this isn't so much of a problem now. Also, fast charging is a must. Having a big battery that can last long with good software optimization is one thing, but being able to charge insanely fast within 5 minutes is another. If I'm travelling and don't have access to a charger and all I have is a battery bank (which charges at 150W), I want to charge fast on the go.

      • Aside from custom ROM, the actual OS itself has to be clean and decent. I know you can debloat yourself and I have scripts and other methods for that to automate this process. But still, I dislike it when a ROM is overly bloated with features I don't want or care about. I want maximum control of my devices. Most OEM ROMs these days suck, which leaves very few choices left available, like Pixel OS, Nothing OS, etc. The ROMs I hate the most these days are OxygenOS / ColorOS (I used to like OnePlus, not anymore).

      • Good amount of RAM and storage (at least 12GB RAM and 256GB storage). Flagship level CPU. However, I don't always need the latest. Performance has reached a point where it's already good enough for me, as long as I've got a flagship CPU that's still relatively recent.

      • Decent camera. I'm not a camera guy, but I still want a decent camera to take photos for when I need it.

      There's probably others that I'm missing atm, but those are probably the main points. With all that said, my top 3 phones don't necessarily tick all the boxes, so right now I still haven't found the perfect phone yet. However, I do like to try new phones every now and then, so my top 3 changes all the time. So far, it's:

      • Redmi K60
      • Pixel 9 Pro Fold
      • Xiaomi 17 Pro

      I also have the Poco F7, Nothing Phone 3A Pro and various other ones. So far, Nothing Phone is growing on me, but some of its lack of basic features is bothering me. I wanted a clean Android experience, but not to the phone it's so barebones that it's missing basic features. While I could fix some of the things with root and LSPosed or Zygisk modules, some I can't. Some phones, I rooted, some I intentionally kept stock.

• 

  Zyo on 02/02/2026 - 12:57

  My s25 only has 4000mah. Although it's a smaller screen. 5400mah should be fine. If you really care about battery life wait for poco x8 pro (redmi turbo 5 max)