Xiaomi confirms it is working with Leica to launch camera flagship phone in July

Xiaomi has announced its partnership with Leica, a German camera brand, for a phone with flagship camera features that will be launched later this year.

After some earlier rumours, Xiaomi has confirmed that it is in a strategic partnership with German camera brand Leica, and their first co-developed phone will arrive in July this year.

This is Xiaomi’s first partnership with a camera brand, whereas, for Leica, this is not the first rodeo. Leica has worked with Huawei, Sharp, and Panasonic previously, but its most successful partnership has been with Huawei, which is still facing challenges from the US government. As such, Leica’s partnership with Xiaomi — which is among the top phone brands in the world — makes sense.

Xiaomi is not the first brand to use some of the expertise from renowned camera brands for its phone. Most recently, Vivo launched the X80 flagship series with cameras powered by ZEISS, whereas Oppo and OnePlus have been in a partnership with Hasselblad to leverage the Swedish brand’s photography know-how for their flagship phones. As a result of the partnership, the branding of the German camera company on Xiaomi’s next flagship phone, as well as at least one camera feature, can be expected.

"Xiaomi focuses on creating the ultimate user experience, and has always hoped to explore the capabilities of smartphone photography to the extreme. Xiaomi and Leica agree with each other's “pursuits and ideas” and their cooperation involves optical design as well as “tuning aesthetic orientations”,” Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun said in a press statement.

As it is with announcements like this, details are mostly not revealed initially. That means we are not sure if this partnership will have a greater impact on the making of Xiaomi's next flagship or if it will be limited to a few camera filters, which we have seen before on other phones that use a camera brand's logo on their bodies.

Xiaomi also has not said what this phone will be, but if we go by rumours, this flagship camera phone that it is co-developing with Leica could be the Xiaomi 12 Ultra, which could also use Qualcomm's latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 Plus chipset to represent that it is more powerful than the existing Xiaomi 12 Pro, as well as similar phones. Another possibility is that this phone will be called Xiaomi 13, but I will not bet on this since Xiaomi launches one major flagship per year, while the rest are smaller improvements.