Xiaomi announces smartphone in July in collaboration with Leica

Smartphone maker Xiaomi will announce its first smartphone in July, made in a partnership with camera maker Leica. Leica first worked with Huawei, but has now switched to Xiaomi.

It is unknown what Leica’s input will be in the collaboration. It is most likely that it concerns the Xiaomi 12 Ultra. The Chinese smartphone maker released an Ultra version of its expensive smartphone last year, but has not done so this year so far.

Leica has been working with Huawei on camera technology for smartphones since 2016. Leica has worked with Panasonic before. The result of that collaboration in 2014 was the DMC-CM1, a camera smartphone that runs Android and contains a 1″ sensor with a resolution of 20 megapixels. The Huawei smartphones with Leica received monochrome cameras, among other things.

Camera makers and smartphone manufacturers work together more often. The input of camera makers often seems relatively limited and concerns, for example, functions in the software, filters or the addition of an extra camera with a certain function.