Xiaomi’s Leica Leitzphone mostly earns this name

The long-standing phone partnership between Xiaomi and Leica just got a little closer. Along with the new international version of its flagship phone, the 17 Ultra, Xiaomi has been tasked with manufacturing a separate version that is the first Leica Leitzphone to be launched outside of Japan, after three… Sharply made models exclusive to the country.

In fact, the Leitzphone is a 17 Ultra phone with Leica branding and a rotating camera ring, and apart from a few design tweaks, it’s mostly the same Leica version of this phone already available in China. But branding is important: Leica hasn’t allowed Xiaomi to use its red dot logo on devices yet, even though the two companies have partnered on Xiaomi’s flagship cameras since 2022. The move to a fully Leica-branded phone is a vote of confidence from the camera company.

After two weeks of using the Leitzphone version of the 17 Ultra, it’s clear that confidence has been in good stead. This is my favorite phone of 2026 so far, whether it has the Leica logo or not, although most buyers would be better off saving money with the standard 17 Ultra.

The 17 Ultra and the original Leica version were launched in China on December 25, 2025. The international version and the Leitzphone were launched at Xiaomi’s introductory conference.MWC Press conference in Barcelona on February 28, along with Xiaomi 17 regular. The 17 Ultra starts at £1,299/€1,499 (about $1,750) with 512GB of storage, rising by £400/€700 for the Leica version. That’s a significant premium, but there are some differences from the regular 17 Ultra.

Let’s start with Leica of all things. It’s evident first and foremost in the design: a slightly glossy black finish on the back, an industrial touch in the knurled aluminum alloy edges, and the Leica red dot logo in one corner. It’s a slightly different design than the 17 Ultra Leica Edition Released in China at the end of Decemberwhich features two colors and faces the Leica logo in the other direction. It also comes with branded accessories, including a faux leather case with Leica lens hood, a microfiber cleaning cloth, and a bright red wrist strap.

Other changes are run through the software. While both versions of the 17 Ultra run Xiaomi’s HyperOS 3 operating system, based on Android 16, the Leitzphone interface has been customized. There are custom Leica widgets, including photo galleries and a gold hour timer, and custom monochrome app icons for the most popular apps from Xiaomi and third parties – which look great when you first turn on the phone, but less so once you mix it in with all the non-monochrome apps you’ll inevitably download from elsewhere.

Most of the customization is in the camera. There’s an expanded range of Leica filters, and the interface uses Leica stripes and red as the accent colour, rather than Xiaomi’s usual yellow. Leica’s new Basic Shooting mode lets you choose between two camera simulations: color reproduction for the M9 and monochrome shot for the M3. Leitzphone also adds the option to enable C2PA Content credentials in every snapshot you take.

None of this is as new as the Leitzphone’s unique hardware feature: the rotatable camera ring. The edge of the camera island can be twisted circularly, with a satisfying tactile buzz to simulate the clicking sensation of gears. It’s an excellent fidget tool, although its real purpose is to control the zoom in the camera app, or navigate through exposure settings or filters if you prefer.

This sounds like a great idea, and it’s something I’ve wanted to see on more phones since discovering it Nubia Focus 2 Ultra. In practice, it’s not useful. The camera island may be enormous by phone standards, but it would be small on a real camera, and is too flush with the body to hold comfortably. I had to power I can use the camera ring to zoom, finding the on-screen controls faster and more natural every time. Maybe with persistence I can etch it into my muscle memory; Right now, I mostly spin it by accident and feel annoyed when I do.

The addition of the zoom ring makes sense given the 17 Ultra’s main photographic feature: a telephoto with continuous optical zoom. While the Xiaomi 15 Ultra has two telephoto cameras, the 17 Ultra combines them into one camera. (The company crossed 16 To catch up with Apple.) A single 1/1.4-inch, 200MP sensor is paired with a Leica APO zoom lens that covers 3.2-4.3x magnification – equivalent to 75-100mm – to adjust the aperture from f/2.39-2.96 as it goes.

The obvious criticism is the same We installed it on the Sony Xperia 1 IVwhich features a continuous magnification of 3.5-5.2x: that’s too short a spread to make much of a difference. It’s rare for the image frame to change radically as you move across the range, and outside of those limits, you’re back to the same digital zoom and sensor crop that every other phone offers.

The pictures are excellent. The large sensor provides a natural bokeh effect, along with macro support at a distance of at least 30cm. It can handle difficult lighting conditions, with good results in dim light – although it once suffered from the opposite, blowing out the lights on a particularly bright day. I often shot exclusively on the Leica Authentic mode – the other option is the Leica Vibrant – which I like for its cinematic qualities, preserving more highlights and shadows than most phones and avoiding the flat gloss of excessive HDR.

The other lenses are just as impressive, though I find myself falling behind with the zoom. The main camera has a large 1-inch sensor, with the same 50-megapixel resolution as the ultra-wide camera and selfie camera. It is one of the first phones to include LOFIC (side overflow integration capacitor) sensor.which expands the dynamic range of highlights, helping me capture some of the most dramatic horizon shots I’ve managed on a phone, and contributing to the excellent performance in night shots with bright lights.

Despite the Leica logo, this is not the case only camera. The Leitzphone has all the key specs you’d expect: Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset, 16GB of RAM (In this economy?!), 1TB of storage (with a 512GB option on the regular 17 Ultra model), a 6.9-inch LTPO OLED display with a 1-120Hz refresh rate, and IP68 protection.

The battery is another notable feature. The 6,000 mAh silicon and carbon cell isn’t the largest ever, and is smaller than the Chinese version of the phone, but it’s still impressive. Even when powering a demanding phone with a large screen, I’m usually able to use it for about two days between charges, though with very little left in the tank after that. 90W PPS wired charging and 50W wireless charging are both fast, though you’ll be limited to slower Qi speeds via third-party wireless chargers, and there’s no support for the magnetic Qi2 standard.

The biggest problem the Leitzphone has is that it’s mostly a more expensive version of the 17 Ultra, which shares most of its best features. I prefer the look of the Leitzphone, and like a few of the Leica’s shooting styles and the included case. But these aren’t worth £200, and neither is the rotatable camera ring. Unless that little red dot is very dear to your heart, there’s little reason to pay more money for it – but mostly because the 17 Ultra is a good phone in its own right.

Photography by Dominic Preston/The Verge