The Xiaomi Mi 12S Ultra will use a huge 1-inch camera sensor co-developed with Sony

A bit of a unicorn for smartphone image developers are big-sensor cameras. Even the best smartphone cameras employ very small sensors, and attempts to get larger sensors into the mobile form factor have proven to be either unfeasible, specialised, or have never really taken off. With its impending Xiaomi Mi 12S Ultra flagship, Xiaomi seems to be the most recent business to make an effort to define the elusive idea.

The Xiaomi Mi 12S will include a sensor of the size of a 1-inch that was co-developed with Sony, according to a Weibo post noticed by Android Authority. That has almost 1.7 times greater surface area than the primary camera module’s 1/1.33-inch-type sensor in the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra. The $1300 Sony Cyber-shot RX100 VII, which is essentially the tiny camera’s pinnacle, has the same size sensor. It’s significant because, despite Sony’s inclusion of a 1-inch smartphone camera sensor in its Xperia Pro-I device, only a portion of it is really utilised. Particularly in low light, the larger sensor, larger pixels, and larger optics coupled would provide considerable image quality gains over smaller, typical smartphone cameras.

Leica was contacted by Xiaomi to cooperate on more than just the sensor; this is far from Leica’s first smartphone camera endeavour. To be frank, though, the partnerships between conventional camera manufacturers and smartphone OEMs haven’t produced much more than a logo on the camera and a lot of marketing bravado. At least in this instance, Xiaomi Mi 12S is investing the time and money necessary to jointly create new hardware. Lei Jun, the CEO of Xiaomi, claims that Sony and Xiaomi divided the $15 million cost of creating the new sensor. Unfortunately, it’s exceedingly doubtful that the 12S Ultra will ever be marketed in the US because Chinese companies have a very tough time competing there. In any event, it won’t be long before the phone is completely disclosed: according to Xiaomi, the 12S Ultra will be introduced to the globe on July 4 at 7 PM CST.