Xiaomi is making what can only be described as the best camera phone ever.
In July, the company released the Xiaomi 12S Ultra, a smartphone with a big 1-inch camera sensor and Leica as a partner. Now, it looks like both companies are working together to improve mobile photography.
A Xiaomi concept phone was just shown off by the company. This one is pretty much the same as the 12S Ultra. This time, though, it has an extra 1-inch sensor that doesn’t have its own lens. Why? This is because it can be used with a professional lens with a Leica M mount. Even without the big lens, sapphire glass is still used to protect the sensor.
To work with the professional lens, the device has a more advanced camera app that can do focus peaking, zebra lines, histogram, 10-bit RA support, and other things that professional photographers would love.
But you’d need an adapter for it to work, which would make everything bigger.
We’ve seen a lot of phone lens add-ons before, but because light had to pass through both the phone’s real lens and the add-on, the image was blurrier. Xiaomi’s idea is better because the light goes straight to the sensor.
This solution is not only a better smartphone camera, but it also makes photography smarter because it can use the power and AI features of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 processor. Plus, it has 5G connectivity for uploads that are very fast.
As with many concept phones, it’s not clear if this one will make it to the market or if it will be in another device, like the Xiaomi 13 Pro, which is also expected to have a 1-inch sensor. We can only wait and see what happens.