In July this year Xiaomi unveiled its new flagship 12S series of phones, with the unveiling piquing our interest as the Chinese phone maker had recently announced a partnership with Leica, which has been headlined by the Xiaomi 12S Ultra.
This latest device is not available in South Africa at the time of writing, but when we were offered the chance to review one, we leapt at the chance to do so.
The Xiaomi brand has been ramping up its presence in South Africa of late and while its premium flagship models have not arrived in SA with regularity, that could change in future. As such, this presents us with the opportunity to see what Xiaomi can do, as well as discern what the Leica partnership will yield.
In the past, Huawei phones have benefitted from partnering with the German photography specialists, so we are quite curious to see what the camera performance is like on the Xiaomi 12S Ultra.
Both a camera test and review are in the offing and will be published by Hypertext in the coming days, but we first wanted to share our first impressions of the Xiaomi 12S Ultra below.
Straight off the bat, before we even unbox, we need to highlight just how similar the packaging of the Xiaomi offering is compared to Huawei phones when it was still collaborating with Leica. Save for the MI logo on the top right hand corner, you would be easily forgiven for confusing the two brands.
This is actually not a bad thing either, especially as some of the P series phones of a few years ago really set the standard as far as Android flagship phones were concerned in SA.
As for the rest of the packaging, it is what we have come to expect from Xiaomi, having reviewed some of its other mid-range and premium mid-range phones over the past year.
Everything you need is in the box, with a generic plastic protective cover, USB Type-A to USB Type-C charging cable and 67W wall charger present. The latter requires an adapter only, as this particular device shared with Hypertext is designed for the Chinese market.
Once unboxed, you are immediately struck by one element – the rear camera array.
Featuring the Leica logo in the top left hand corner, this array is a Vario-Summicron design and reminds us of the Halo Ring that the Huawei Mate 40 Pro sported. That said, this offering juts out a lot more and is indeed more imposing.
Housed inside this sizeable array is Sony’s massive IMX989 1″ sensor. In terms of the lens options a 48MP ultra wide-angle, 50.3MP wide-angle and 48MP telephoto lenses are present. While there are indeed phones that sport more lenses, it looks like Xiaomi and Leica have gone for quality and size over quantity.
The rest of the rear cover is faux leather in black, which looks quite sleek. It does not, however, do anything to draw focus away from the rear camera array, which still just out a tad when the plastic protective cover is attached.
The result is the Xiaomi 12S Ultra sitting a bit oddly when placed on a flat surface, with the device sloping slightly from top to bottom. On initial handling this seems to throw the balance off, not to mention the rear array immediately generating glances from onlookers.
We still need to put the Xiaomi 12S through its paces, but while it has all the hallmarks of a 2022 flagship phone, it is the rear camera array that is the scene stealer here, as we have not even mentioned the 6.73″ AMOLED display.
We will be sharing our thoughts on the camera performance and a review of the phone in the coming days, so do keep an eye out for it.
