For years, Xiaomi has been teasing its Ultra line of over-the-top flagship phones in India, only to leave fans hanging without an actual release.

Well, the wait is finally over with the newly launched Xiaomi 14 Ultra. This maxed-out beast is gunning straight for the Galaxy S24 Ultra's crown as the Android flagship king.

When it comes to design philosophy, Xiaomi and Samsung are on opposite ends of the spectrum. The Galaxy S24 Ultra keeps things clean and minimalist, going full-on flat with zero display curvature this year. It also rocks a new titanium frame, though that didn't help cut down on the hefty 232g weight.

Under the hood, these two are packing some serious punch. Both run on Qualcomm's latest and greatest Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip with a huge 5,000mAh battery. But Xiaomi takes charging to insane levels - the 14 Ultra juices up at a blistering 90W for a full top-up in just 33 minutes. Samsung's 45W charging looks downright sluggish in comparison.

On the software side, Xiaomi's new HyperOS is an evolution of MIUI based on Android 14. It's highly optimised for buttery smooth performance, easily one of the most fluid Android skins out there. Samsung's One UI 6.1 has made strides too, but still can't quite match that level of refinement, in our experience.

Where Samsung shines is its AI-powered ecosystem. With the Galaxy S24 Ultra, you get deep integration across Samsung's entire product lineup for a seamless connected experience. Plus, you get the added flexibility of the beloved S Pen stylus built right in.

Samsung and Xiaomi are again taking two very different approaches. Samsung is going all-in on one crazy high-res 200MP main sensor that uses pixel-binning tech to capture insanely bright and detailed shots.

For the other cameras, it's keeping things simple - a decent 12MP ultrawide and the same 10MP 3x telephoto as last year's S23 Ultra. The biggest upgrade is swapping out the old 10MP 10x zoom cam for a higher 50MP resolution shooter, but cutting the zoom range in half to 5x.

.