This New Smartphone Comes With a Leica Camera Onboard
Xiaomi’s latest smartphone will be of particular interest to shutterbugs.
The Chinese electronics giant has just unveiled a new flagship model called the 14 Ultra earlier this week, according to New Atlas. The mobile comes loaded with all the latest and greatest premium features that people have come to expect, including one that really caught our eye—a Leica camera.
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If you have a smartphone—and almost all of us do at this point—you know that mobile camera technology has improved dramatically over the last decade. So much so, that that phones have all but killed off the digital camera at this point. A 2023 study from CIPA, a Japanese-based photography industry group, found that worldwide camera shipments fell by 93 percent between 2010 and 2022.
The 14 Ultra is a good example of why this has happened. The phone comes with a camera quad developed by Germany’s Leica, one of the most trusted names in the history of photography (and a company that’s already shown interest in smartphones before). At its heart is a 50-megapixel main camera with a large one-inch-type image sensor from Sony— another company that knows a thing or two about photography equipment—as well as telephoto, periscope, and ultra-wide lenses. It has F1.63 aperture, 23-mm equivalent focal length, and optical image stabilization. And, in case you didn’t know that the camera is the start of the show, Xiaomi will release Leica Pro grip with tactile controls alongside the phone.
The camera may be the phone’s main selling point, but there are plenty of other noteworthy features. Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset keeps everything running smoothly and quickly, and you can also opt for 16 GB of RAM and up to a terabyte of storage. It also has a high-definition Dolby Vision OLED screen 120-Hz refresh rate and a 3,000-nit brightness. Finally, the phone figures to be plenty durable thanks to its aluminum alloy mid-frame (a titanium upgrade will be available down the line) and IP68 water resistance.
Intrigued? Well, there’s a problem. As of right now, there are no plans to release the phone in the U.S. Xiaomi does sell wearables and household appliances stateside, but it’s yet to bring over one of its phones. If it does, though, expect the 14 Ultra to start around $900, just like in China.
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