Xiaomi to announce smartphone in collaboration with Leica in July

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

It is unknown what Leica’s input will be in the collaboration† It is most obvious that it concerns the Xiaomi 12 Ultra. The Chinese smartphone maker released an Ultra version of its expensive smartphone last year, but has so far failed to do so this year.

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

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