I shot the same portrait with Leica's Leitzphone and a $3,000 mirrorless camera with pro lens — good luck guessing which photo is which

The Leitzphone is seriously good

04 Apr 2026, 07:00 by https://www.techradar.com/uk/author/tim-coleman · TechRadar

News By Timothy Coleman published 4 April 2026

(Image credit: Future / Tim Coleman)

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I spent an entire month last year using the Xiaomi 15 Ultra as my primary camera. It ticked a lot of boxes for me as a long-time photographer, and has become my favorite camera phone, not least for the natural photo quality from its large 1-inch sensor.

That phone was recently updated with the Xiaomi 17 Ultra, which appears to be a relatively minor upgrade, but which shares the same hardware as Leica's first globally available phone (other than in the US), the co-branded Leitzphone. (There was no Xiaomi 16 series, as Xiaomi hopes to "directly [compete] with the iPhone in the same generation.")

Both phones pack a triple-camera unit comprising the main 1-inch sensor camera, a 3-4x optical-zoom telephoto camera, and an ultra-wide camera, and which is powered by Qualcomm's latest and most powerful mobile chip, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5.

Image 1 of 2

The Leitzphone comes in one colorway only – a black finish with silver trim(Image credit: Future / Tim Coleman)

Here it is with the supplied case and red wrist strap(Image credit: Future / Tim Coleman)

Leica has added its own design twist on the phone's exterior and it's a characteristically classy one, with a black finish and a knurled silver trim, plus a unique mechanical control ring that surrounds the circular camera unit and which can control zoom, but which be assigned to another control instead, such as exposure compensation.

There's also a nod to Leica's camera UI, with the camera app UI sharing the same style and typeface, which will be familiar to folks who have used a digital Leica camera such as the D-Lux 8. And, perhaps inevitably, when it comes to price there's also the 'Leica tax': the Leitzphone costs £1,700 / AU$2,299 (around $2,000), which is around 20% more than the Xiaomi 17 Ultra.

Ah I mean Leica's UI for the camera. So the typeface and style of the camera app's UI is the same as Leica cameras

I approached my time with the Leica Leitzphone effectively treating it as an upgrade of my favorite camera phone, and so I couldn't resist comparing its image quality to that of my pro mirrorless camera in a few tests.

I'll soon share a deep dive on my experience with the Leitzphone as a photographer, based on using it every day over two weeks, but here I'm going to highlight one aspect of that experience: comparing the same portrait taken with the Leitzphone's telephoto camera and with my Nikon Z6 series camera paired with the superb Viltrox 85mm f//1.4 Pro lens.

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