The Xiaomi 14 Ultra is the company’s main Mobile World Congress launch product. Naturally, this top-tier flagship will not be accessible in the US, but it is available in Europe at a staggering 1,499 euros ($1,624).
To start, let’s address the specifications: This includes a 5000 mAh battery, 16GB of RAM, 512GB of storage, a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC, a 120 Hz 3200×1440 OLED, and more. The phone can be fully charged in 33 minutes using a proprietary 90 W wired “HyperCharge” or in 46 minutes using a wireless 80 W version.
Xiaomi takes great pride in the screen’s four curving sides. The entire screen appears to bubble out of the aluminium body and rise to the surface. According to Xiaomi, the glass has “a smooth and elegant curved shape with deep bending around all four sides and corners.” Curved displays distort the image you’re seeing because all photos, movies, websites, and apps are designed to display on a flat surface. Fortunately, some manufacturers have begun to abandon the concept of curved displays. You now have four glass corners on the front of the phone because the display is a large glass bubble, so, you know, don’t drop it!
Since the camera bears the “Leica” brand, the entire back design is reminiscent of a vintage 35 mm camera covered in leather, much like the Xiaomi 13 Ultra. The camera lens is a large circle that vaguely resembles a typical camera lens, and the back is made of “vegan leather,” which is actually specially treated plastic (hey, some of those old cameras used fake leather, too!).
The reappearance of the “Professional Camera Kit,” which enhances the phone’s resemblance to a genuine camera, is part of the photographic theme. The kit comes in two parts: a casing that enlarges the area around the camera bump to accommodate a mounting ring for attaching a lens cover or camera filter. The other half of the kit is a clip-on grip attachment for the camera, which adds a 1500 mAh battery and physical controls to the camera, such as a record button, a two-stage shutter button with auto-focus capability, a two-way zoom lever, and an adjustable dial.Similar to last year, this gives the phone the appearance of a more serious camera, but it’s all cosmetics; a traditional camera’s much larger lens is what makes it great, while this smartphone’s lens is still just a standard, little smartphone lens.
The main camera’s new six-blade variable aperture adds to the camera’s theatrical effects. The primary lens has a tiny six-blade mechanical iris that can open and close to change the aperture of your picture, just like in a conventional camera. A similar mechanism was utilised by Xiaomi last year, but it could only switch between the “blades open” f1.9 mode and the “closed blades” f4.0 mode. It also only employed two blades. A “stepless variable aperture” with six blades allows you to select any location within the phone’s f-stop range.
However, because this is still a tiny phone camera lens, the f-stop range is extremely narrow—just f1.63 to f4.0. A narrower aperture lets in less light in exchange for a sharper focus, and altering the f-stop on a DSLR will vary the depth of field. You may get hazy background bokeh effects by using a wider aperture, which would result in brighter images with a smaller focal range. All of that is, however, with a DSLR, which typically has an f-stop range of F1.4 to F22. f1.6 to f4 won’t significantly alter your photos taken with a smartphone camera, especially if there is a lot of software processing going on.It’s difficult to think of a situation in which you wouldn’t just want as much light as possible for your little smartphone lens, and any background blur is still a phoney post-processing effect. All of this was previously tested by Samsung on the Galaxy S9 and S10, however the function was later discontinued because it wasn’t producing much of an impact. Although the six-blade aperture is likely a feat of micro-engineering, in practice it’s more of a marketing gimmick.
The Xiaomi 14 Ultra still has significant smartphone-level camera hardware within, despite the extras. The primary sensor is a 1-inch, 50MP Sony LYT-900, which is arguably the largest and greatest camera sensor for a smartphone available. Xiaomi did obtain the best hardware, but smartphone photos are greatly manipulated to the point that the software and hardware work together just as much (see: every Pixel phone). The 50 MP Sony IMX858 sensors in the other three rear cameras have wide-angle, 3.2x telephoto, and 5x telephoto lenses.
The phone will ship on March 15th, and preorders are currently being accepted.
