Xiaomi’s Leica Leitzphone mostly earns the name

Xiaomi and Leica’s long-running phone partnership just got a little closer. Alongside the new international release of its 17 Ultra flagship, Xiaomi has been entrusted with manufacturing a separate version that is the first Leica Leitzphone to release outside of Japan, following three Sharp-made models exclusive to the country.

In truth, the Leitzphone is a 17 Ultra with Leica branding and a rotatable camera ring, and apart from a few design tweaks, it’s mostly the same as the Leica Edition of that phone already available in China. But the branding is a big deal: Leica hasn’t let Xiaomi use its red dot logo on hardware until now, even though the companies have partnered on Xiaomi’s flagship cameras since 2022. The jump to a fully Leica-branded phone is a vote of confidence from the camera company.

After two weeks using the Leitzphone version of the 17 Ultra, it’s clear that confidence was well placed. This is my favorite phone of 2026 so far, Leica logo or not, though most buyers would be better off saving money with the standard 17 Ultra.

The 17 Ultra and its original Leica Edition launched in China on December 25th, 2025. The international version and the Leitzphone were launched at Xiaomi’s pre-MWC press conference in Barcelona on February 28th, alongside the regular Xiaomi 17. The 17 Ultra starts from £1,299 / €1,499 (about $1,750) with 512GB storage, rising by £400 / €700 for the Leica version. That’s a hefty premium, but there are a few differences from the regular 17 Ultra.

Let’s start with the Leica of it all. It’s obvious first and foremost in the design: an ever-so-slightly glossy black finish on the back, an industrial touch in the knurled aluminum-alloy edges, and Leica’s red dot logo in one corner. It’s a slightly different design to the 17 Ultra Leica Edition that released in China at the end of December, which has a two-tone finish and orients the Leica logo the other way. It also ships with branded accessories, including a faux leather case with a Leica lens cap, a microfiber cleaning cloth, and a bright red wrist strap.

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

Most of the customization is in the camera. There’s an expanded array of Leica filters, and the interface uses Leica fonts and red as its accent color, instead of Xiaomi’s usual yellow. A new Leica Essential shooting mode lets you pick between two camera simulations: a color re-creation of the M9 and a monochromatic take on the M3. The Leitzphone also adds the option to enable C2PA content credentials on every shot you take.

None of this is as novel as the Leitzphone’s unique hardware feature: a rotatable camera ring. The edge of the camera island can be twisted round, with a satisfying haptic buzz to emulate the feel of gears clicking. It makes for an excellent fidget spinner, though its real purpose is to control zoom in the camera app, or cycle 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 spotting it on Nubia’s Focus 2 Ultra. In practice, it’s not that useful. The camera island may be enormous by phone standards, but it would be small on a real camera, and it’s too flush against the body to hold comfortably. I’ve had to force myself to use the camera ring to zoom, finding the onscreen controls quicker and more natural every time. Perhaps with persistence I could drill it in my muscle memory; for now, I mostly rotate it by accident and get annoyed when I do.

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

The obvious criticism is the same we levied at Sony’s Xperia 1 IV, which boasted continuous 3.5-5.2x zoom: This is too short a spread to make much difference. It’s rare that the framing of a photo changes drastically as you move through the range, and outside those limits you’re back to the same digital zoom and sensor cropping that every other phone offers.

Photos are excellent. The large sensor delivers natural bokeh, along with macro support at a minimum distance of 30cm. It can handle challenging lighting conditions, with good results in dim light — though it did once struggle with the inverse, blowing out highlights on an especially bright day. Mostly I’ve shot exclusively on the Leica Authentic mode — the other option being Leica Vibrant — which I like for its filmic qualities, preserving more of the highlights and shadows than most phones and avoiding the flattened sheen of excessive HDR.

The other lenses are just as impressive, though I do find myself defaulting to the telephoto. The main camera has a large 1-inch-type sensor, and the same 50-megapixel resolution as the ultrawide and selfie camera. It’s one of the first phones to include a LOFIC (lateral overflow integration capacitor) sensor, which expands the dynamic range for highlights, helping me take some of the most dramatic skyline shots I’ve managed on a phone, and contributing to excellent performance in nighttime shots with bright lights.

Despite the Leica logo, this isn’t just a camera. The Leitzphone has all of the flagship specs you’d expect: Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset, 16GB of RAM (in this economy?!) and 1TB of storage (with an option for 512GB on the regular 17 Ultra), a 6.9-inch 1-120Hz LTPO OLED display, and IP68 protection.

The battery is another standout feature. The 6,000mAh silicon-carbon cell isn’t the biggest around, and is smaller than the phone’s Chinese edition, but it’s still impressive. Even powering a demanding phone with a big display, I’ve usually been able to just about get two days of use from it between charges, though with very little left in the tank afterwards. 90W PPS wired charging and 50W wireless top it back up fast, though you’ll be limited to slow Qi speeds over 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-specific shooting styles and the included case. But those aren’t worth £200, and the rotatable camera ring isn’t either. Unless that little red dot is very dear to your heart, there’s not quite enough reason to shell out extra for it — but mostly because the 17 Ultra is such a good phone in its own right.

Photography by Dominic Preston / The Verge