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Last week, both Samsung and Xiaomi took the covers off their phones Latest super phonesbut only one of them properly impressed me. I spent weeks testing Laika letzfon From Xiaomi before its launch in Mobile World Congress 2026 I concluded that it is the best camera phone I have ever used. I even gave it a CNET Editors’ Choice award because it was so impressive — and I think Samsung should be concerned.
Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra It’s a versatile phone, with a supercharged processor, a funky privacy screen, and the all-important S Pen. But its cameras have only seen minor improvements, with a slightly larger aperture in the main and telephoto cameras being the most notable upgrades. Beyond that, it’s really about the various AI tricks Samsung offers, like the ability to change the style of the hat you’re wearing in a photo.
The S26 Ultra cameras haven’t seen much of an upgrade this year.
This has become a trend for Samsung, with the last few Ultra phones only slightly iterating on the previous camera setups, adding a few extra pixels here and there but largely leaning towards software updates to make up for the lack of hardware innovation. While Samsung’s top-tier phones were among the best camera phones ever, Xiaomi and Leica’s Leitzphone He showed what true innovation in photography looks like.
This beast of a camera has a number of firsts. We’ll start with the LOFIC image sensor, which stands for Lateral Overflow Integration Capacitor and is basically a new type of sensor technology that improves dynamic range in a single image. It is capable of taking great photos in all conditions, including at night. Samsung has been rumored to be considering using LOFIC sensors for its phones (as is the case with Apple), but has apparently chosen not to go that route yet.
Xiaomi’s Leica Leitzphone has some amazing photography skills that help it take photos that look almost as good as the ones I take from an actual Leica camera.
The Leitzphone is also among the first phones ever to use true moving lens elements in its telephoto zoom, allowing for true lossless zooming rather than just jumping between specific zoom levels. It works well, and a similar setup has been rumored to appear in the last few generations of Ultra, but it never actually happened.
Then there’s the physical control ring around the Leitzphone camera, the stunning Leica color profiles built directly into the camera experience and the pristine quality of the Leica Summilux optics used in the lenses.
By partnering with this photography icon, Xiaomi has truly innovated its photography, introducing several firsts that truly improve the photo-taking experience. As a professional photographer and true enthusiast, I was blown away by the photos I was able to take with the phone.
But Samsung didn’t excite me this time. Its new generative AI tools may be fun tricks, but they don’t appeal to a real photographer like me. The S26 Ultra had to be more than just a camera phone, of course – it had to be ‘ultra’ in every sense of the word. But Samsung’s latest model shows that proper photography is not a priority for the company.
The Leitzphone is arguably more of a camera than a phone.
As such, Samsung risks losing out on the huge number of photographers and content creators (professionals and amateurs alike) who will instead look to competitors like Xiaomi for products that can meet their photography requirements.