Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Xiaomi 14 Ultra First Look: Lookin’ Leica Photography Beast!”.
Xiaomi has just announced the global launch of their latest flagship phone for 2024, the xiaomi 14 Ultra. But what makes this phone stand out from other tier one devices? Well, let’s take a look. Shall we now, just by looking at the phone, the 14 Ultra screams, Flagship device and that’s true inside and out on the outside? The xiaomi 14 Ultra is built with a durable unibody, aluminum construction and the back of the Phone features, an updated vegan leather material, which xiaomi claims is six time more wear resistant than the previous version. Now, honestly, I quite like this design. It’S definitely reminiscent of those more expensive Leica cameras, which is probably what jiai was going for anyway, and it definitely separates the 14 Ultra from the sea of glass and ceramic backed smartphones. Now, on the flip side, you’re greeted with a very bright 6.73 in QHD plus OLED display, and it boasts a 3000 nit Peak brightness.
Now I can definitely see this High brightness display being very useful for people who plan to use this phone for outdoor photography, especially in bright sunlight. Now, under the hood, the xiaomi 14 Ultra boasts the latest Snapdragon hn3 processor and you can configure the phone with up to 16 gigs of RAM and up to 1 tbte of internal storage. The xiaomi 14 Ultra will also come with a big 5,300 mAh battery, which, for reference, is slightly larger than the 5,000 Mah hour cell on the s24 ultra and when you do need to charge you’ll be able to take advantage of the 14 ultra’s blazing fast.
Charging speeds with support for 90, W fast wied charging and 80 W wireless charging, which is leaks ahead of what you’ll find on Apple and Samsung’s flagship devices, okay with the general specs out of the way, let’s dive into the piece, the resistance, the rear camera system. Now xiaomi has once again partnered with Leica for the development of the 14 Ultras camera system and together, the two companies have packed a lot of features and are making a lot of bold claims towards what the 14 Ultras cameras are capable of. Now the xiaomi 14 Ultra comes with a quad camera system, which essentially offers you a total of six different focal lengths to use in your photos and videos. Now the camera cameras were designed with like a sumalu lens technology, which is an upgrade from the summicron Optics of the 13 series.
Now this means the ultra 14 cameras feature improved Optical Coatings and larger lens apertures. Now these larger Iris values will help in maximizing the amount of light that hits the camera sensor, which should lead to better looking photos and videos, even in poor lighting conditions. Of course, the star of the Leica xiaomi engineering partnership is the main camera which features a stepless aperture and is something that you don’t really see on mobile phones so in instead of having to change your aperture at set increments, you’ll really be able to go in, And adjust the aperture on the 14 ultra’s main camera, as you would, with a traditional manual photography or cinema camera lens, thus giving you more control over your image.
Also, the main camera sensor features Sony’s new Lydia 1-in sensor, which again is pretty big for a smartphone and should result in greatl looking images and videos compared to the competition, but size isn’t the only thing that matters here. The new Lydia sensor also promises to deliver a whopping 14 EV of dynamic range, which should result in lower chances of clip, highlights or Crush Shadows when shooting in challenging conditions such as Outdoors or just any high contrast environment. Equally impressive. The new camera sensor also features dual isos now. This is something you typically only see on professional, mirrorless or Cinema cameras.
What this essentially means is that if you were to shoot in a darker environment, the camera could raise its image sensitivity of the sensor without sacrificing dynamic range in the process. So it’ll be interesting to see just how the Dual isos perform in more casual photography, setting ings on the 14 Ultra as a filmmaker myself, it was really nice to see xiaomi really go in depth with the video capabilities of their new flagship. The phone can shoot. 4K, 120 FPS from the main camera and up to 8K 30 frames per second across all four of the rear cameras and if you’re, a professional who wants to extract as much detail from their shots, then you’ll be happy to know that the 14 Ultra will be Able to shoot 10- bit log footage and record using the h.265 compression format now all these video features definitely remind me of Apple’s push for cinematic video on smartphones, particularly clearly with the launch of their iPhone 15 Pro.
In fact, xiaomi is so confident in the video performance of the 14 Ultra that they invited us to a demo showing the phone in a professional film studio and they even had a professional colorist go through the color grading workflow using the 14 Ultras footage. Now, I have to admit the footage shown to us on the monitors was pretty impressive. The Highlight rolloff, especially on the actor’s face, was quite smooth and it’s typically a challenge for smartphone cameras to get right.
Color rendition was also pretty impressive and the fact that the colorist was able to pull some of the highlights down to preserve details in the windows was also very interesting to see. But again I am a little skeptical about the True Performance of the 14 Ultras cameras. Considering that this demo was done in a studio that consisted of thousands upon thousands of dollars in lighting equipment, that being said, I am curious to get a unit in for testing and to see just how well the 14 Ultras cameras actually perform, especially in more natural Lighting or in situations with minimal lighting equipment, now, if you’re, a photography, buff or mobile, cinematographer and you’re keen on getting your hands on the xiaomi 14 Ultra then make sure to check the description of this video for the latest regarding pricing and availability.
But what do you think is this the phone you’re thinking of getting? Do you love it? Do you hate it? Let us know in the comments down below until next time make sure to like subscribe and follow us for our full coverage of mwc 2024 Harley Morano with Android authority, and I will see you in the next one. .