Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “I tested the $43,000 Camera-Phone!”.
Smartphone inside this box cost forty three thousand dollars to make and trust me: you haven’t seen a phone camera like it, but for it to make sense, we need to understand the problem with most smartphone cameras. Okay, so the single main component of any camera is the sensor. The sensor is the thing that takes in light and turns that light into a digital output. That then, becomes the image, the bigger the sensor, the more light you can process and therefore, the higher quality that end image is going to be fine, there’s a good chance. You knew that already, but this is why, every few years we are seeing camera sensors on phones get bigger and bigger early smartphones, like the iPhone 3GS had quarter inch sensors. We started pushing half inch sensors on phones like the 12 Pro, which is actually even more of a jump than it sounds at about four times the total sensor area and then, just recently, a couple of phones have even leapt all the way to one inch sensors, Which is basically four times that and on one hand this is great, because these one inch sensors are now basically the same size as the sensors found in entry level. Point and shoot cameras to the point where now it just does not make sense to ever buy one of those smartphones are way more connected. You can share your photos in seconds. They have way faster, are more intuitive interfaces, better quality, larger screens, more powerful, more advanced microphones with better noise reduction, and that’s not even factoring in the supremely intelligent, artificial intelligence which enhances the sharpness, the color and brightens people’s faces on an individual pixel level.
So yeah now that smartphones also have the sensor size to match. It’S not really a surprise that point and shoots have effectively fallen off the face of a planet, but there is a bit of a problem for these guys if smartphones are to continue on this journey. To let’s say properly take on the next tier, which would be high-end, mirrorless or DSLR cameras, then their sensors would need to get many times bigger still, but they can’t. You might have noticed over the last few years that it’s not just that the cameras on phones are getting wider, but they’re also sticking out more and that’s because the larger the sensor, the larger the lens, also needs to be to be able to properly direct light.
To that whole sensor area to actually take advantage of it and the further the distance required between that lens and the sensor sitting behind, which means that, while they’d actually be very little problem, fitting a sensor twice the size of what we have now into a phone. It’S just what you then have to do to the lens. That’S what becomes the sticking point I feel like.
I need to stress this. Very few people are going to buy a phone that they can’t fit into their pocket just because the lens is too big, and that is where this new phone comes in. This is a xiaomi, 12s Ultra concept, and it’s basically what happens when you say: okay, let’s just forget that limitation for a second, let’s not worry about portability and, let’s just see what’s technically possible on a smartphone, should not be holding it like that.
There’S only three of these made in the whole world. That’S why it’s worth forty three thousand dollars. They did not hold back with this unboxing experience, so this is the phone. This is the lens mount the lens.
This is one dense piece of Kit, so the company started with what I would say is probably already the best phone camera for photography. The xiaomi 12s Ultra and iPhone already has a one inch sensor over here, but we’re not going to be using that here. Xiaomi has instead removed what was previously an ultrawide camera in the middle and replace that with a second special one-inch sensor, and this is what’s going to be the main camera of this new phone and one of the special things about it. Is that they’ve made this an exposed sensor, meaning that, while every single other phone camera already has a tiny little lens attached onto it, which basically fixes how the light is focused onto that sensor? Xiaomi have basically said, oh screw, that we don’t want any of your flat lenses.
The second main sensor is only covered by an extremely thin sheet of sapphire glass, which is just there for protection, because Sapphire is basically scratch proof, and it’s also raised above the other sensors and partly to improve heat dissipation, but mostly because you can’t actually fit two One inch sensors right next to each other there, but the point is that all of this makes this phone built from the ground up to support external thick lenses like this one. This is a Leica M lens. It’S made for full frame professional cameras and I guess because xiaomi has just recently announced a partnership with Leica. They decided to build the phone to work with Leica lenses, so we get the adapter in first they’re calling this mounting mechanism the knee Mount, which I mean at least the words, aren’t the other way around.
As you place the lens in give it a Twist. That is a successful Mount. I’Ve seen a lot of tech. In my time this is actually crazy and what it means is pretty cool compared to the ordinary size lens that we had on the 12s Ultra, which sat at an aperture of f 1.9.
This one opens up the aperture all the way to as wide as you can possibly get on a phone. It’S 1.4 divided the aperture, the more light, and so F 1.4 basically means that this system is getting in two times the amount of light of the pretty beastly already normal, 12s Ultra, but then also magnification. The main cameras on most phones are around 20 to 25 millimeters in focal length. This is a 35 millimeter lens with an additional magnifying adapter, which all basically means this is between three and four times, magnified by default, losslessly using its main camera.
So really your main camera on the 12s Ultra concept is your telephoto camera and then, if you happen to want to take one time shots you take the lens off and use the normal one inch sensor over here. Do you know what’s kind of cool about this? Last year, where we all saw the standard 12s Ultra and we thought oh cool camera ring and they’re just kind of carried on. No one realized that this phone was also being co-developed at the same time and designed to use that camera ring to mount actual lenses onto it. Xiaomi did a sneaky. I do have one quite fundamental problem with this whole system, but we’ll get to it. I I do just want to see what it can do.
First, because, like xiaomi’s gone to all the effort of building a custom smartphone, you have to attach a lens, that’s half the size of my face. It is begging the obvious question of how does this compare to just the iPhone in my pockets? Let’S see if xiaomi can wow me. I hope no one heard that so for starters, more settings for sure got focus peaking, which means that, as I manually adjust the focus ring on this lens. The screen of the phone is going to highlight in red the bits that are in complete Focus.
You also get zebra lines which are there to show you when something is Overexposed. The full-on histogram as well, which shows the total brightness across the entire range of the image being able to fiddle with settings like this in a friendly smartphone interface. But with the hardware of a proper camera, it’s like a 10 year old dream of mine come true, Leica huh. So what about the quality of the photos themselves bear in mind.
This is not a completely Fair test to keep the images like for, like I am going to have to use the three times zoom camera on the iPhone, which is not as good as its main camera, but obviously the difference is absolutely enormous. I started off with just some plain old shots of scenery and you can see straight away the extra light Gathering ability of this concept phone. It’S not necessarily that the shots look brighter, but the extra light does mean more information, as you kind of crop in to see the finer details interesting caveat, though, because focusing at further distances requires basically a level of Precision Engineering that xiaomi haven’t managed to achieve here.
This can only really focus on closer objects within about 20 meters. One thing that I thought would be really fun is to have a portrait mode comparison, because having a wide aperture large lens, like this, basically means that this is the first time ever that a smartphone can naturally achieve this DSLR, like separation between foreground and background, which Is the exact effect that software-based portrait mode has been trying to simulate for the last 10 years? I mean credit. Where do the iPhone’s fake portrait mode has reached a stage where on its own – and I don’t think the average person will be able to tell that? It’S not taken on a DSLR but side by side with the real thing you do start to notice that it’s not quite there. To be honest, though, the single biggest area, where you’ll notice, the benefits of a system like this is video, because video is the one thing that most smartphones and their software-based Solutions have struggled to recreate. I also got to mess around with it in low lights, and this is the fun bit because this is.
This is so interesting about this product, because it answers the question that I’ve been thinking for the last 10 years. What would it look like to blend pretty high-end camera Hardware, with pretty high-end smartphone software, like my mode, safe to say the results are about what you would expect them to see, but very cool, seeing it in action? Okay time to talk about the problem with this 12s Ultra concept, though, but on a serious note for a second, if you do watch my videos regularly and you enjoy them, then been through a lot to get this video done. I’Ve literally just come back from the emergency room in a hospital after a life-threatening allergic reaction. I’Ve eaten nothing all day, and this is the most difficult room in the world to film it every single time that door opens.
We have to stop filming, so yeah a sub to the channel would be heartwarming anyways, even just putting aside the fact that this is already quite bulky and that to be fair at the point where you’re already carrying an external lens around with you, you are 70 Of the way to just taking a proper main camera body with you too, this is also just a bit of an inefficient system. Leica M lenses are made for proper cameras with much bigger sensors than even the one inch one this so using it like this. You’Re still having to put up with the extra space and the weight of the lens, but you’re not really getting the full perks from it as a proof of concert, though, this does definitely prove that the concept does work to check out my video on funnily enough. Why everyone’s buying iPhones right now, that’s here and we’ll catch you there .