The Leica Leitzphone adds a fun twist to Xiaomi’s flagship

I spent the last few days in sunny(ish) Barcelona checking out the latest and most interesting tech products at the MWC show. Xiaomi was one of the first to host the event, presenting its latest smartphone system: i Xiaomi 17 series. But there were other surprises to be had, too.

After spending years partnering with Xiaomi on its flagship phone cameras, the photography experts at Leica have finally taken matters into their own hands. Kind of. The Leica Leitzphone Powered by Xiaomi (to give it its full name) is a reverse of the Uno, and Xiaomi co-engineered the Leica product to make the change.

Hardware, for all intents and purposes, is no different from Xiaomi 17 Ultra. Here they are together:

The design is slightly different but the dimensions are the same, 78 x 8.3 x 163mm (WDH) and the Leitzphone weighs just a few grams more, at 223g. The processor is the same as the top-end Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, supported by 16GB of RAM and 1TB of storage space. The battery is a 6,000mAh cell that supports 90W wired and 50W wireless charging, and the display is a 6.9in AMOLED panel with a 2,608 x 1,200 resolution and a 120Hz LTPO refresh rate.

Equally, the cameras are the same as the Xiaomi 17 Ultra (not surprising, given that the shooters already had Leica’s fingerprints all over them): there is a 50-megapixel selfie camera (f/2.2) above the display and on the back we have a 50-megapixel camera (f/1.7) ult/2.5 megapixel and a main camera 200-megapixel (f/2.4-3.0) periscope telephoto lens offering manual zoom with an optical range between 3.2x and 4.3x.

Here, on the back of the phone, we get a big new twist – and yes, I’m kidding about that word. We’ve seen phones with large mid-range cameras many times before, with brands using aesthetics to evoke the look of SLR cameras, but the Leica Leitzphone takes the honor a step further – and I’m surprised I haven’t seen this before.

The stylish metal ring around the camera housing can be turned – twisted, if you like – like a regular camera lens, allowing you to zoom in and out in a style more reminiscent of “correct” photography. If that doesn’t work for you, a lens twist can be given to adjust focus or bokeh strength, too.

It’s a really fun little gimmick that makes photography feel more objective than doing it all digitally on your phone screen. This is helped in no small part by the incredibly satisfying haptics that click and rotate with each rotation of the camera wheel.

The rest of the design is quite sharp, too. There’s only one color, with a rich black fiberglass back and shiny metal accents, with a red Leica dot sitting prominently in the top left corner to add a splash of color.

The software is built on Xiaomi’s HyperOS, so all my usual gripes on that platform remain, but other than that it looks interesting enough, with a widget-based aesthetic that adds a million miles to what you get on a Nothing phone.

What’s less attractive is the price tag. In fact, we have a cool rotating camera for crying out loud and 1TB of storage. But still, £1,699 is quite the asking price. That’s £200 more than the equivalent Xiaomi 17 Ultra – which also differs in that it lacks the rotating camera ring and Leica logo.

So it’s not the best value proposition at the moment, but I can’t get over how much fun it is to zoom in by rotating the camera wheel. Does it cost £1,699? The answer to that is between you and your chosen deity. If you end up saying yes, though, check out mine Xiaomi 17 Ultra review to see what kind of hardware you can expect.