Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “I Wanted To Love The Leica Phone”.
This may come as a surprise, given my line of work, but i’m not really a camera guy sure my sony, my fuji, my smartphones, i love shooting with them, but i just never got into camera culture all that much. That being said, the world of cameras is a lot like the world of the old timepiece. Even if you don’t, you know, get it, you can’t deny the allure of a well-made piece of hardware with those precision, details and mechanical textures, so often missing from today’s smartphone world. So when camera legend leica designed a new carapace for one of the most curious camera phones of 2021, i knew i wanted to take it for a spin, even if it took until nearly 2022 for me to get a hold of one. Yes, as you may have heard, the leica light phone, one is technically a rebadge of the aquos r6 from sharp corporation. In fact, that’s how it still identifies itself in the exif data from its photos, but maybe you can see in this article from ben’s gadget reviews. Why i wasn’t all that interested in covering the aquos i mean take away the huge camera and you’re left with a phone that could easily be confused for many others. Well, there’s no such danger with the lights phone one, not since the days of the nokia lumia line. Have we gotten such an assertive contrast of curves and right angles? The matte black gorilla glass back is a perfect contrast to the satin silver side rails, whose anodized aluminum has been textured, like the edges of a coin, to give the phone more grip than i’ve felt since the red hydrogen one, the display is a curved exo oled. That’S deeper than anything i’ve ever seen. It’S not just that leica ships it with an insanely high color saturation setting it’s the contrast, dark portions of images or interfaces appear almost vantablack in their depth.
It’S a truly striking screen heightened by an android 11 skin, that’s minimal. Without skidding over the ledge into boring, like as trademark font, which, incidentally, is called lg 1050 is not slathered over every part of the interface, but instead tastefully meted out in small doses, from the lock screen to the camera, whose massive module serves as potent punctuation. Even without its one-of-a-kind utterly over-the-top magnetic lens cap, as i said in my weird phones, roundup back in december, this bit of vanity design is exactly the kind of ridiculous that a phone like this calls for. Some of you asked me if it makes using the camera harder and the honest answer is: yes, you have to take the lens cap off to shoot, which turns what should be a one-handed job into a two-hand operation, and i wish leica had given it a magnetic Landing zone you know, so i could stick it to the back when i’m shooting and then replace it when i’m done at the very least, it would have been a nice excuse for the failure to include wireless charging. If i ever do lose the lens cap, i’m not wild about having to shell out almost 100 bucks to get a replacement while we’re discussing things.
I’D have done differently. I wish the back plate were leather like a proper camera, and i wish the bonus button. We got was a proper two-stage shutter release down here, instead of a google assistant button up here.
But let’s remember that this is a re-badge and i imagine lyka was only willing to spend so much to turn a sharp into a light and on the whole i think this is one of the most fetching phone designs. I’Ve seen one that, in my opinion, does justice to the leica founder after whom it’s named. Sometimes great design comes at the cost of fundamentals, but with one glaring exception, that’s not the case here. This is a solid smartphone sure it muddles through with last year’s top-shelf snapdragon processor instead of this year’s, but that’s still a very capable chipset. The phone is very fast and that speed is amplified by the screen, which seems to use black frame insertion to produce an apparent 240 hertz refresh rate, and you know, even if that’s technically, just 120. It feels and looks incredible and that performance is backed up by bonuses that are rare in modern phones, a micro, sd storage expansion, a three and a half millimeter headphone jack and the excellent 3d ultrasonic fingerprint sensor.
It takes a tenth of the time to train a new fingerprint and it can read two prints at the same time. That means, if you decide to split the enormous cost of this phone with a partner, you can each scan your own fingerprint and then it won’t unlock unless you’re both present on the cellular side, the lightspawn one worked well between new york city and my rural routes. On eastern long island, on both t-mobile and at t, because it’s an import phone, i did have to spend a few minutes manually entering my apn settings, after which i had no data issues and no complaints about voice quality on either end of my calls.
The whole package is powered by one of the biggest batteries you can find on a phone of this size, and it shows i can’t recall a single time over the past month that i’ve gone to bed with less than 20 percent left. The dreaded exception i mentioned is not the vibration motor, though that is pretty terrible. It’S the phone’s touch response almost half the time.
When i try to swipe home. It takes more than one attempt before the phone registers the gesture i’ve tried holding it differently. I’Ve tried disabling the auto scrolling enabling glove mode and i’ve cross-referenced with three other reviewers who’ve used the device, two of whom also reported this bad touch response folks losing a lens cap. That’S on me having to import a sim card from japan to update the software.
Well, that’s life on an out-of-market device, but not being able to swipe home or scroll or even sometimes type because of weird touch issues. It’S unacceptable on any phone, let alone one as expensive as this. Finally, if we assume those bugs get ironed out, somehow, let’s talk about the biggest reason to buy this thing. The camera and i’m talking specifically about still photos, not the video mode which overheats all the time. In fact, it’s getting ready to overheat right now. So, let’s just get to those photographs.
Every time you unlock the screen that lfi widget is there to inspire you with its photos, shot on leica cameras and when you want to shoot your own. This camera is a true optical oddity. Don’T let that second lens fool? You that’s a time of flight module, there’s just one shooting sensor behind this 19 millimeter equivalent lens and it’s the same one-inch model that powers sony’s rx100 mark iv point-and-shoot. Yes, that’s an older generation sensor than the one behind the xperia pro. I that i reviewed recently but leica uses much more of the sensor area to produce a 20 megapixel photo and, in addition to the extra resolution you get incredibly pronounced depth of field. The phone isn’t using software fakery. To do this, there’s no artificial processing that you know, misses a hair or screws up your eyeglasses, it’s natural separation of blurry, background, bokeh and tack sharp subject. Now, if your instagram audience is the type that wouldn’t know the difference, well, they will.
When you toggle leica, looks and before you say it, yes, it’s a black and white photo and yes, of course, you can take any photo taken by any smartphone and just pull the color out of it. You don’t even need a fancy program. You just take a shot like this one from the pixel 6. You drop the saturation to zero and bam black and white, but now compare that with the lights looks photo it’s not just removing color information, it’s applying a profile based on the leica m monochrome camera.
The contrast is higher, the attitude is sharper and in the parlance of black and white photographers, the overall effect is harder. When i took a moody photo walk on a drizzly christmas morning. That lights look was perfect for the overcast light box of a day that greeted me now, leica, isn’t the only company doing this? Probably the coolest example is the x-pan mode that hasselblad recently brought to the oneplus 9 pro, but lights looks is great and if i could pay to use it on other phones, i absolutely would sadly, though, falling out of love with this camera really only took a Trip back to the city, because when it comes to mobile photos, there’s great there’s good and then there’s baddies yeah as powerful as its hardware is the only times i found the lights phone really sang was when i was shooting, evenly exposed, landscapes or other static.
Frankly, simple scenes: there’s often extreme shutter lag so photographing, animals or kids is very difficult. There’S no proper telephoto camera, so you have to settle for digital crop if you want to get closer and most importantly, i have to echo benson’s conclusions in the mobile world. We’Re well into the age of computational photography where processing is as or more important than the hardware and sharp and leica are far behind google and apple. When it comes to that computational approach, if the lights phone one came from a different kind of company, i’d still say: maybe it’s worth the price for some folks. After all, this is an enthusiast device, not unlike a gaming phone.
You know people don’t necessarily buy an rog phone because they want to be better at gentian impact. They also do it as an expression of identity, the lights phone. One is the same.
It conveys at the very least, an appreciation for the tools of the trade where photography is concerned and its design alone might be reason enough for an iconoclast of a certain taste to shell out the seventeen hundred dollars or so needed to import it from japan. But when that design is based on a hundred plus year legacy of delivering outstanding cameras, well, in my view, the one place you can’t compromise is in the camera, and sadly compromise is just what leica has done here. I hope there’s a light phone too someday.
I hope it’s a redemption story and i hope it comes to more markets than just one if you’d like to see something closer to leica’s core competency. My buddy david amell has just reviewed its m11 camera over at mkbhd’s the studio and i’ll link that video below this review was made possible via device loan from qualcomm. But as always, neither qualcomm nor leica nor any other company was given copy approval rights. Any editorial input or a sneak peek at this content, they’re seeing it for the first time right alongside you till next time, i’ve been michael fisher thanks for watching and stay mobile. My friends, you .