This new Android phone can act like a walkie-talkie in a pinch

Hundreds of new smartphones are released each year, making it difficult for any single device to truly stand out. For me, the best Android phones are the ones that not only lack any noticeable flaws but also have a unique hook that makes them special, whether it’s a clever AI feature or new hardware used in an interesting way.

Xiaomi’s T series has generally ticked the right boxes for what makes a good smartphone, but it’s always lacked that one extra feature to make it exciting. The new Xiaomi 15T is a great device with solid all-around specs and some welcome generational improvements, like a better telephoto lens, a bigger battery, and a larger display. However, it also breaks from the T series mold by bringing a seldom-seen feature to mobile devices: an offline communication mode that effectively turns your phone into a walkie-talkie.

A walkie-talkie, in the year 2025?

Smartphones made traditional walkie-talkies largely obsolete, but the classic devices are still used for communication in areas without cell service. While many Android apps claim to turn your phone into a walkie-talkie, none truly can, because mobile devices lack the hardware to broadcast over the necessary radio frequencies.

The Xiaomi 15T doesn’t have this hardware either, but it works around this limitation with a significantly stronger Bluetooth antenna than most phones. This allows it to make direct voice calls to other 15T devices over great distances without a network or cellular connection. Xiaomi says the 15T Pro can connect at distances of up to 1.9km, while the standard 15T reaches up to 1.3km. For comparison, that’s much longer than the 10-200m range supported by BeaconLink, the equivalent feature on OPPO and OnePlus devices.

If Xiaomi’s new Offline Communication feature works as advertised, it could be a genuinely useful tool for hikers, frequent cruisers, and anyone else who likes to go off-the-grid. Of course, there are a few major caveats. The most obvious is that you need two Xiaomi 15T devices to use it, as the feature is part of Xiaomi’s proprietary “Astral Communication” suite. This relies on the company’s custom Surge T1S Tuner and “Super Antenna Array,” hardware designed to boost Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, and cellular signals. This is what enables Offline Communication to make Bluetooth calls over distances most devices can’t reach.

The other major caveat is the range itself. The figure Xiaomi cites is a maximum, achievable only in “open, unobstructed environments.” In my brief testing, I made a successful call between my 15T Pro and 15T review units from nearly 200m away, but the call failed at 500m due to an obstruction. More testing is needed to see how Xiaomi’s claims hold up, but even if the range falls short, this is far from the only thing the Xiaomi 15T has going for it.

The Xiaomi 15T Pro: A flagship phone without the flagship pricing

The Xiaomi 15T Pro is a well-rounded flagship smartphone with no major deficiencies. Unlike past T series Pro models, which often lagged behind more premium flagships, the 15T Pro closes the gap. It adds a periscopic telephoto camera and reverse wireless charging — two key features missing from the 14T series. On top of that, Xiaomi also increased the size of both the display and the battery.

What’s largely unchanged from last year’s model, though, is the design. The 15T Pro has a flat display, an aluminum frame, a glass back, and rounded edges just like its predecessor. The new device is slightly trimmer, shaving off about 0.4mm of thickness, but it still weighs about the same. While the colors this year are less industrial-looking, the overall design is very similar, right down to the camera bump.

Speaking of cameras, the Xiaomi 15T Pro has a triple rear setup consisting of a 50MP main wide-angle lens, a 50MP 5X telephoto lens, and a 12MP ultra-wide angle lens. In contrast, last year’s model only had a 2.6X telephoto camera that was mainly used for portrait shots. Xiaomi upgraded the telephoto lens for greater distance photography, facilitated by an “Ultra Zoom” algorithm that uses AI to enhance details at zoom levels past 20X. Overall, the 15T Pro’s new triple camera setup covers the 15-230mm equivalent focal lengths, making it far more versatile than the 14T Pro.

Also new to the 15T Pro is an upgraded photography experience. Xiaomi has added new “Wide” and “Bubbles” bokeh effects to Master Portrait mode, along with the ability to individually configure focal length and aperture. There’s also a new “Leica street photography mode” that enables photo capture from the lock screen using a variety of classic focal lengths. On the video front, the cameras now support 4K30 recording with HDR10+ enabled.

The most noticeable change can be found on the front of the device. The 6.83” display on the 15T Pro is massive — the largest we’ve seen in a “Xiaomi Series” device, excluding their foldables. Xiaomi increased the display size without significantly affecting the phone’s overall footprint by trimming down the bezels. The company says the 15T Pro’s bezels are only 1.5mm, a 27% reduction from the previous generation.

The display itself is a pixel-dense and bright OLED panel, with a 2772×1280 resolution and a peak brightness of 3200 nits. As expected, it’s also a smooth panel, refreshing at up to 144Hz depending on the content. It also supports features designed to improve comfort for users with flicker sensitivity, such as full-brightness DC dimming.

Powering the device is the Dimensity 9400+, a high-end chipset that was, until recently, MediaTek’s most powerful design. The Dimensity 9400+ has an octa-core CPU with one Arm Cortex-X925 core, three Cortex-X4 cores, and four Cortex-A720 cores, as well as the Arm Immortalis-G925 MC12 GPU. The Xiaomi 15T Pro pairs this chipset with 12GB of LPDDR5X RAM and is available in 256GB, 512GB, or 1TB UFS 4.1 storage configurations.

To keep the chipset (and the phone) running cool, Xiaomi equipped the 15T Pro with its custom 3D IceLoop system. To keep it running for a long time, Xiaomi packed a large 5,500mAh battery, which can be topped up wired or wirelessly. The phone supports Xiaomi’s proprietary 90W wired and 50W wireless charging, but you’ll need to purchase a compatible charger to take advantage of those speeds. Unfortunately, it does not support the latest Qi2 wireless charging standard, which is still a rarity among Android phones.

It does, however, support the latest Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6.0 connectivity standards. It also supports a plethora of 4G and 5G network bands so you can use it on almost any network. With support for both dual physical SIMs and dual eSIM, you have plenty of flexibility for cellular connections.

The Xiaomi 15T Pro is available starting at €799 in Europe. It comes in three colors: Black, Gray, and Mocha Gold (the version shown in my photos). Out of the box, the phone runs Xiaomi’s fork of Android 15, but the company promises to deliver its take on Android 16 by the end of next month.

Alongside the 15T Pro, Xiaomi is also launching the regular Xiaomi 15T starting at €649, which features a similar design but with a few key downgrades. Its display refreshes at 120Hz instead of 144Hz, and its wired charging is slower at 67W, with no support for wireless charging. Under the hood, it uses the Dimensity 8400 Ultra chipset instead of the 9400+. The camera system also sees some changes: the 5X telephoto is replaced with a 2X lens, the main sensor is slightly downgraded, and it loses support for 8K and 4K120 video recording.