The Xiaomi 12S Ultra already has a huge camera sensor. What could be more obvious than equipping the smartphone with a real camera lens? That's exactly what the manufacturer has now done for an exciting concept video.

Xiaomi's new smartphone concept offers a mount for a large Leica M-series lens. As with a full-frame camera, this is attached to the back of the smartphone above the camera sensors.

The Xiaomi 12S Ultra, which formed the basis for this concept, already impressed in the summer with its 1-inch camera sensor from Sony. Such large sensors are usually more likely to be found in compact cameras. However, the new smartphone concept from Xiaomi has now been given a second 1-inch camera sensor.

Leica lens transforms smartphone into full-fledged camera

The highlight of this Xiaomi concept, however, is the fact that large lenses from Leica's M series can be attached to the smartphone. This takes smartphone photography to a whole new level. With the large lens of a system camera, for example, much more realistic depth of field effects can be achieved than the lenses and software of a conventional smartphone are capable of.

Even more advantages are highlighted in Xiaomi's concept video: The special Xiaomi 12S Ultra should also score with software functions that are found in system cameras – such as focus peaking, a zebra pattern function, histograms and 10-bit RAW photography.

No production model planned

However, Xiaomi has already informed Android Authority that the smartphone concept will not leave this stage. So there will be no production version for retail. Nevertheless, it shows interesting technical possibilities for the future of smartphone photography.