The Xiaomi 14 Ultra sports a six-blade mechanical iris in the camera

Xiaomi’s huge Cell World Congress launch is the Xiaomi 14 Ultra. This can be a top-tier flagship that after all just isn’t coming to the US however is out there in Europe for a whopping 1,499 euros ($1,624).

Let’s get the specs out of the best way: This has a 120 Hz, 3200×1440 OLED, a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC, 16GB of RAM, 512GB of storage, and a 5000 mAh battery. A proprietary 90 W wired “HyperCharge” will get the telephone from 0–100% battery in 33 minutes, whereas a wi-fi 80 W model will cost the telephone in 46 minutes.

Xiaomi could be very proud that every one 4 sides of the display screen are curved. The entire display screen form of rises up and bubbles out from the aluminum physique. Xiaomi says the glass has “deep bending round all 4 sides and corners, making a seamlessly elegant curved kind.” All photographs, movies, web sites, and apps count on to show on a flat floor, so curved shows serve to distort the image you are , and fortunately some producers have began to drop the thought. Having the show be an enormous glass bubble additionally means you now have 4 glass corners on the entrance of the telephone, so uh, do not drop it!

Identical to the Xiaomi 13 Extremely, the entire again design mimics a traditional leather-wrapped 35 mm digital camera—the digital camera is “Leica” branded, in any case. The again is “vegan leather-based,” aka specifically handled plastic (hey, a few of these outdated cameras used pretend leather-based, too!), and the digital camera lens is a big circle faintly evoking a standard digital camera lens.

The pictures focus options the return of the “Skilled Digital camera Equipment,” which makes the telephone look much more like an actual digital camera. The package has two elements; the primary is a case that provides a mounting ring across the digital camera bump, so you may connect a lens cowl or digital camera filter to the digital camera bump. The opposite half of the package is a clip-on digital camera grip attachment, which provides each a 1500 mAh battery and bodily digital camera controls, like a two-stage shutter button that may set off auto-focus, a report button, a two-way zoom lever, and a customizable dial. Identical to final yr, this makes the telephone look like a extra critical digital camera, however it’s all simply appears—what makes a standard digital camera good is the considerably larger digital camera lens, and that is nonetheless only a common, very small smartphone digital camera lens.

The digital camera theatrics proceed with the brand new six-blade variable aperture for the principle digital camera. Identical to a standard digital camera, there’s a very tiny six-blade mechanical iris in the principle lens that may open and shut to regulate the aperture of your photograph. Final yr, Xiaomi had an analogous system, however it solely used two blades and will solely snap between the “blades open” f1.9 mode and the “closed blades” f4.0 mode. With six blades, you get a “stepless variable aperture” that allows you to choose any spot within the telephone’s f-stop vary.

That is nonetheless a tiny telephone digital camera lens, although, so the f-stop vary could be very small, simply f1.63 to f4.0. On a DSLR, adjusting the f-stop would change the digital camera’s depth of subject, with a narrower aperture letting in much less mild in change for a crisp focus. A wider aperture would give brighter footage with a smaller focal vary, which you need to use for blurry background bokeh results. That is all on a DSLR although, with a standard f-stop vary of like F1.4 to F22. On a smartphone digital camera, particularly when there’s tons of software program processing, f1.6 to f4 will not change your photographs a lot. Any background blur remains to be a pretend post-processing impact, and it is onerous to think about a state of affairs the place you would not simply need as a lot mild as attainable on your tiny smartphone lens. Samsung tried all this before on the Galaxy S9 and S10 after which dropped the function as a result of it simply wasn’t carrying out a lot. The six-blade aperture might be a triumph of micro-engineering, however in the true world, it is extra of a advertising and marketing bullet level.

Regardless of the fluff, the Xiaomi 14 Extremely remains to be packing critical smartphone-level digital camera {hardware}. The primary sensor is a 1-inch, 50MP Sony LYT-900, most likely the largest and greatest smartphone digital camera sensor on the market. Smartphone footage are so closely processed that the software program has simply as a lot to do with the {hardware} (see: each Pixel telephone), however Xiaomi did get one of the best {hardware}. The opposite three rear cameras are all 50 MP Sony IMX858 sensors, with lenses for wide-angle, 3.2x telephoto, and 5x telephoto.

Preorders are already open, and the telephone will ship on March 15.