iPhone 17 Pro vs Xiaomi 15 Ultra - Nerdy Camera Comparison!.

This video is sponsored by Ugreen. Guys, you know, I like videos from the iPhone 17 Pro and Xiaomi 15 Ultra is my favorite phone for photography. And I had so many requests from you guys on Xiaomi 17 Pro Max. Yeah, that's the one they made with the display in the back. But the cameras on this 15 Ultra are much better than on the newer 17 Pro. I'm not talking about this 17 Pro, I'm talking about the one with the display. I do understand how cool the additional screen looks, but if you look at the foldable phones, they offer pretty much same functionality, but they are more compact, have bigger screen, so there is no real reason to compare it to the iPhone 17 Pro. Maybe that phone with the display in the back makes more sense to compare to the iPhone base model, not the Pro. So what makes real sense now is this Ultra phone. But if you guys still are interested in the 17 Pro Max from Xiaomi or the upcoming 17 Ultra, then let me know by subscribing to the channel. Anyways, I've had this phone since before its release actually, so it's almost one year old and we are soon to witness even better version of this phone, hopefully. I don't really know what they're up to, so yeah, let's start and compare it to this iPhone 17 Pro. Now from hardware standpoint, Xiaomi has better optics and sensors. The cameras are co-branded with Leica and I really like the results coming out of it. Although the shots from the new iPhone 17 Pro are pretty good this year too. But keep in mind, Xiaomi has a larger main camera sensor, which allows to capture shots with more depth of field and overall it just feels more volumetric. This also helps in low light, since the sensor is just larger. So while for most regular people iPhone shots are just good enough, but for me, I love the Xiaomi more. But if you are editing your photos, then in that case there will be more close in color processing. And the main difference would be just from a bigger sensor and a depth of with more background blur on the ultra. Also just look at the camera bump on that ultra, it's massive, which allow them to fit not three cameras like on the iPhone 17 Pro, but four cameras here. On the other hand, from design standpoint, iPhone has two extra customizable buttons, one of which I mapped to the torch switch on and off, which is really, really handy. One thing though I wish Apple did is that they would enable double touch functionality on this phone. So it's something actually similar to Vivo X300 Pro. So they have identical design, even similar button placement, but they have double tap. So this is really what Apple is missing and needs to do in the future, probably iPhone 18 Pro. No way we'll get that with the software update, right? Maybe I'm wrong. I don't know. Let me know in the comments what you think. But one thing I wish was on Xiaomi is just it was available in a bit smaller size, which would be comparable to this iPhone 17 Pro. Because this is one of the reasons I went for a Pro phone this year and not the Pro Max. Because imagine just having so much camera power, but in a more pocketable size, that would be incredible. Also, there was a special edition color of this phone, two of which I actually gave away to completely random strangers on the streets of Barcelona in my video in March. So maybe this white phone is not for everyone, but the special edition phone looks really cool. But anyways, from the design standpoint, let me know in the comments which one you prefer, the iPhone 17 Pro or this one. Okay, now back to the photos. Xiaomi processing became signature to me. Like I can always tell, it's a shot from the Ultra. Rich contrast, just like I like it. And the situation you can control by switching between Leica Vibrant and Leica Authentic. What is really game-changing on that phone, and I really wish something similar would be added to the iPhone, is the metering mode. So on the Ultra, you can go into the settings and you can actually select the metering preference, either face or average. So if you take a photo of a person, the phone will prioritize their face and will expose the shot for the face. And if you want to capture a scene, then you will select the average. And in that case, the phone will expose the shot based on the overall exposure of the frame. And I know it might be difficult to understand at first, but trust me, if you learn photography, this is an amazing option to have. So in that case, you can't really say, oh, this phone is more saturated or this one captures bright sky better. No, in that case, the result photo will mostly, mostly depend on you and how you decide to expose your shot and which settings you set up in the camera. The iPhone 17 Pro also has some customization within their undertones menu. And in a way, it's a little bit more customizable since you can adjust the iteration and contrast to your liking with just one simple slider. So who would have thought that iPhone would be more customizable in that regard? But yeah, it is there. And yeah, long story short, you can get photos which are better from this iPhone 17 Pro, but in that case, I would have to edit those photos to be better than Xiaomi. Whereas here on this Ultra, the photos are good as is coming out of the camera. So I'm okay and happy to post them as is without any editing. On the iPhone though, it requires, you know, slapping a few presets or 5-10 seconds of editing to make them look similar to or better even to Xiaomi. But I have to tell you, this year I've been to so many phone launches and events, and some bloggers told me that they are not the fans of the Xiaomi processing. Like some say the exposure of the skin with some people can really become too whitening or sometimes even desaturated. So I guess a lot of this has to do with your personal taste and preference. It also will depend whether you like more authentic color, vibrant profile, or maybe some other filters that built-in in the phone. Now a really big win for the Ultra would be in macro capabilities. See, on the iPhone 17 Pro, we still are limited to ultra wide-angle lens for macro shots, which is fine, but it distorts the subject a lot. Plus, you have to get so close to your subject, which is, if it happens to be an insect, then you'd probably get stung, bitten, or, you know, it will fly away, or all of them combine together. On the Ultra though, I can use the same ultra wide-angle camera for macro, plus I can switch into the 3x telephoto camera and activate the super macro mode, which is basically long-range macro shots. So it's something that feels closer to my real macro lenses for full-frame cameras, which is amazing. And that 3x telephoto lens allows you also do not only macro shots, but also fill up the gap between the main camera and the telephoto, when telephoto is a little bit too far and the main camera is a little bit too wide. Like, you know, now companies are claiming the digital crop of the lenses, it is as a separate lens, well, here you have real optical lens between the main and the telephoto. Oh, and by the way, same goes for the Samsung S25 Ultra, there is also an additional fourth lens here, and I'm using this phone right now to monitor the image from this camera, as you see. What a phone, guys. S26 Ultra is right around the corner, so you know what to do, subscribe. Both phones have options to take photos in RAW, and surprisingly, I like the way you enable the RAW on the iPhone 17 Pro more, because you just simply press over here and then you select RAW photo, you don't need to leave this photo mode, while on the Xiaomi 15 Ultra you need to take few extra steps, so you are in the photo mode, then you need to switch into the Pro right here, you see, hold on, yeah, and then on top over here, there is a switch between JPEG, RAW and Ultra RAW, so it's just a few extra steps there. But for me, when I take RAW photos outdoors, I really don't want to take all my shots in RAW, it's only for the scenes that I know are either wallpaper worthy or something that I want to edit later, because if you take every single photo in RAW, then you will run out of storage pretty quickly. You see, as a content creator, when I'm making these videos, I'm constantly dealing with massive files, and I know that a lot of people use regular cloud storage, but it gets expensive, and I don't love the idea of my work sitting somewhere online. That's why I switched to the Ugreen NES. It's not just a personal cloud, it's your best backup solution. It works just like Google Drive or iCloud, but all the data is stored locally, safely, and it's just much more cost efficient over time. You can configure up to 60 terabytes of storage, and because it's local, the transfer speeds blows cloud services out the water. With its one gigabyte ethernet network port, you can transfer a one gigabyte file in just seconds. Setup is straightforward too. I added the drives, followed the quick guide, and it was ready to go right away. No confusing setups, even if you never used the NES before. And what's really awesome is that you can set up automatic backups. This Ugreen NES can automatically backup the entire iPhone photo library, so I never have to worry about losing my pictures. And for my Mac, it works perfectly as a dedicated time machine drive, so whatever happens to my laptop, I have all data saved at home. And this device just fits into my workflow, you know? Everyone on my team can access projects through shared folders, and I can manage permission per person to keep things organized. Logging in with NFC chip is instant too. I just tap with my phone, and I'm connected. Everything stays local, fast, and under my control. If you're done with expensive and slow cloud storage, this Ugreen NES is where I would start. Check out the link in the description to grab 20% off during this season. Yeah, so RAW photos are pretty decent from both phones, and have great capacity for editing as far as the photos from phones go. Actually, you know, I look sometimes at all these shots, and I cannot believe I took them on the iPhone. Actually, you see, this one is 3D wallpaper effect. Looks amazing. I showed you how I took this one in my previous video, and most of the photos were taken on the iPhone 17 Pro. However, I have a few ones, like this one, that I took in RAW on Xiaomi 14 Ultra. Like, imagine, this phone is so good. Two years later, almost under every single video I make, people say these photos are AI-generated. No, those are taken on the phone. Either iPhone 17 Pro, like this one, this one is also 17 Pro, and this one is Xiaomi 14 Ultra. Just think about it, how good this phone is, that still, two years later, people are thinking this is AI. By the way, a slight edge Apple may have in RAW photography, now as I'm thinking about it, is that you take those photos in a higher resolution of 48 megapixels. On Xiaomi 15 Ultra, you see, we have 50 megapixels enabled, and once I go into the RAW, it will default to the 12.5 megapixels. So, if you want to use the maximum resolution of the 50, then you have to use, basically, lower compression of the photo, and the color profile in that case will be limited to the Leica Vibrant. And remember how I said that Xiaomi has the RAW format available only once you go into the Pro tab? Well, that Pro mode has its own benefits too. So, you see, there are pros and cons to each phone. In that mode, you can actually adjust white balance, shutter speed, exposure, everything. So, I think it's a great step into learning camera settings before you switch into a bigger proper camera. I know maybe regular users do not use it as much, but sometimes the phone processing algorithms just cannot handle either the lighting or just the scene overall, and this always helped me to quickly adjust whatever is wrong with the frame and get an amazing photo that I like. Portrait mode is very difficult for me to decide which one is better. Xiaomi makes the subjects pop with the way it exposes the faces, and I kind of like that, but iPhone 17 Pro with the LiDAR sensor gives such a good subject separation, so it looks closer to the Pro camera. And since both of these phones have so many different undertones and filters available, it is really impossible for me to definitely say one is better over the other one. So, I just say that I like the feeling and the colors from the Ultra and the subject separation from the iPhone 17 Pro. So, if you take portraits on this phone and edit them afterwards, you will get better results because you will get just clearer, you know, separation with the background and the colors you can always adjust. It's just up to you to decide which one you prefer. And now with the selfie cameras, well, iPhone wins, there is no debate. New selfie camera is really game-changing on the 17 Pro, and I covered it in my last five videos, I think. And I will say it again, so far it's the best selfie camera I tried this year, so iPhone is the winner here. And when talking about the zoom, I think this Ultra is the pioneer for this new telephoto sensor. Now, not so new, but at the beginning of this year it was new. And guys, you can have the same sensor and hardware on another phone, but the way these companies program their phones and make them interact with the hardware, this is where the difference is between the phones. One thing that I really hope Apple can fix is that I can manually switch into the telephoto camera. Like, there has to be manual override, otherwise the phone quite often uses main 1x camera and crops on it to match the telephoto focal length, which looks bad. But that aside, Xiaomi 15 Ultra has a telephoto sensor that I covered so many times already, and when it's mixed with their computational photography, it gives really great results on the default zoom values. And same as on other Android phones, when you zoom further out there, the phone enables the AI processing. So if you want the best results, obviously it's best to stick to the default 4x and 8x zooms. If you go much past that, the photo is becoming less usable. Also, what's cool here, feels like when you switch into the telephoto camera, the refresh rate on the display becomes much higher. Like, you can see how everything becomes more fluid on the screen. And with this out the way, now it's time to talk about videos. Well, videos are next level on the iPhone 17 Pro this year. Apple introduced a lot of improvements here, and they little by little pushing the iPhone to be really better every year. Of course, Apple log is there, so you can color grade your shots and make them look better. And on Xiaomi, there is also log recording option. And I actually went this year to their launch event in Barcelona, as well as MWC, where they showed their new concept phone with an attachable lens. And by the way, what happened to it? I mean, it was a nice views generator for about a few weeks, but I haven't heard about that phone since. It would be very cool to see what they come up with this year, camera wise. Anyways, during that trip to MWC, I filmed lots of visuals of the city and just day in the life kind of content. And log from the Xiaomi performed pretty well and showed that it's capable too, as on the iPhone. So if you're thinking that log is something super exclusive to Apple, no, it's also available here as well. Plus you can enable lots, adjust all kind of stuff within the built-in camera app. On the iPhone 17 Pro, you can adjust all those settings too, but only within the Blackmagic camera app, which is free. There is no ads. Probably the best third-party app, which actually makes it feel like it's supposed to be on every single phone out there. It's that good. Now, one thing that's important to mention is that there are way more accessories made for iPhones. Even remember what I said about macro shots, how good they are on Xiaomi? Well, you can get a separate third-party macro lens for your iPhone, attach it, and in that case, your results will be better because you will be using the quality of the main camera plus the additional optics will allow you to focus closer. Or let's say if you use your phone for making videos, you can easily get yourself something like this cage or a MagSafe monopod or even an anamorphic lens. By the way, this is my lens and most of the shot on the iPhone 17 Pro footage you see in my videos, I filmed with these lenses. I'll leave the link below so you can get yours too. So the point is, iPhone is just a bit more universal with various accessories and mounts. So when you're filming, maybe it will be a little bit more easier to find certain rigs or even SSDs, external ones, for recordings that are optimized for iPhone 17 Pro rather than something for Xiaomi. But it is not the brand's problem, it's more of a consumer choice really. So if you are filming videos, both phones will give you great results but I would give the edge to iPhone. There is also Open Gate which I covered in my previous videos and a lot of improvements on this phone which make it the king of videos in 2025. Now I always get asked how is the image quality when posting to social medias. When you're uploading the stuff that you filmed with the camera app and then you go and upload it to Instagram, well I would say I never seen decreasing quality from pretty much all the Android phones I covered on my channel. Like so many of my IG posts were made from Android devices and this one is no exception. There's just maybe one thing that comes to my mind that is better on the iPhone is when you use the built-in Stories app and you film within that, you know, extension of the Instagram. In that case, iPhone is just way more optimized with the zooms, when you want to adjust your captions, do all of that. It just works much better on the iPhone and yes, it is more optimized. Otherwise, the image quality is the same. So which one should you buy? Well, right now this Ultra is almost 10 months old. That means you can really get it a lot cheaper than just recently released iPhone 17 Pro. So if the price is your concern and you want the flagship camera experience and you like Android, then it's a really good camera phone. If filming videos is your priority though and you want decent RAW photography capabilities, optimized social medias and good selfie camera and all of that in a more compact form factor, then I would definitely go for the iPhone 17 Pro. And I think we're just a few months away from new phone launches like S26 Ultra is coming out soon and then there has to be also by logic Xiaomi 17 Ultra 2. So make sure you are subscribed to see how those phones will perform in my tests. And I'm already working on my next video that features a Samsung phone and you guys are gonna love it. And meanwhile, make sure to check out this video next because I think it will be perfect for you. And yeah, I'll see you there. Bye-bye.