Xiaomi 13 Ultra With 1-inch Variable Aperture Summicron Lens Is Here!
Xiaomi is back again with its next Ultra – Here’s everything you need to know.
After pushing the boundaries of smartphone cameras with Xiaomi 13 Pro, Xiaomi is pushing the boundaries even further with Xiaomi 13 Ultra, its latest flagship smartphone.
Xiaomi calls the launch of the phone the “coming-of-age ceremony of mobile imaging.”
Xiaomi-Leica partnership has shown excellent results, with the previous phones, Xiaomi 12S Ultra and Xiaomi 13 Pro hitting it out of the park. Xiaomi would be looking to reclaim the limelight Oppo took with the Oppo Find X6 Pro.
Let’s talk about everything to know about Xiaomi 13 Ultra!
Xiaomi 13 Ultra: Price & Availability
Xiaomi 13 Ultra is currently launched for the Chinese market only, with Europe and Global launch planned for in coming months.
Xiaomi 13 Ultra comes in three colours: Olive green, Professional Black and White.
Xiaomi 13 Ultra is available in three variants:
- 12GB + 256GB – 5,999 Yuan / $872 / €796 / £679
- 16GB + 512GB – 6,499 Yuan / $964 / €864 / £738
- 16GB + 1TB – 7,299 Yuan / $1084 / €968 / £827
Don’t be fooled by the converted prices of this phone. Chinese phones are priced very well in Chinese markets but come with a big margin when they launch in Europe and the UK. In case you forgot, Xiaomi 13 Pro was launched for €1,299 in Europe and £1,099 in the UK. We can expect Xiaomi 13 Ultra to surpass this pricing when it finally launches here.
Xiaomi 13 Ultra: Key Features & Specifications
Xiaomi 13 Ultra builds on the design language used on the previous Ultra from Xiaomi, the Xiaomi 12S Ultra. It uses the familiar big round camera array on the back, but it is now more inspired by Leica cameras. The phone has an anti-bacterial nanotech silicon leather back raised at the top, giving it the camera look.
Let’s talk about cameras now. The phone comes with a quad-50MP camera setup. Like Oppo Find X6 Pro, Xiaomi 13 Ultra has four flagship-level lenses: primary Sony IMX989 and three Sony IMX858s.
The lens of the primary camera comes with a miniaturised version of Leica’s Summicron lens. Peter Karve, Senior Managing Expert Optics and Platform, Leica Camera, says, “Summicron name stands for high-performance lenses in a compact size.” Xiaomi says it has co-engineered this lens with Leica for its Xiaomi 13 Ultra, and it is an 8P lens and seemingly very hard to manufacture. The lens also comes with a variable aperture, which can go from f/1.9 for a shallow depth of field to f/4.0 for a sharper image. The sensor used is the same one from Xiaomi 12S Ultra and Xiaomi 13 Pro, the 1-inch Sony IMX989 sensor.
Coming to the secondary cameras, all three cameras use the new 50 MP Sony IMX858S sensors. The first is a 75mm telephoto lens, which comes at 3.2x zoom, similar to Xiaomi 13 Pro. The next is a 120mm periscope telephoto, which comes at 5x optical zoom. Then there’s the 12mm ultrawide with a 122° field of view. There’s also a ToF sensor on the back for depth sensing.
Xiaomi 13 Ultra brings the various Leica colour modes we saw in the previous Xiaomi-Leica phones: Leica Authentic and Leica Vibrant. It also has various Leica filters integrated into the camera app as well.
The main camera has a new 50MP Ultra RAW mode, which outputs 14-bit DNG files with Built-In multi-frame sharpening, noise reduction and dynamic range adjustment for post-processing. Xiaomi has said Adobe will release a custom camera profile for Lightroom for Xiaomi 13 Ultra.
8K video capture is supported across all the lenses. It also supports 10-bit LOG capture.
Xiaomi also showed off a camera case for the phone, which makes the phone look like a camera even more so. It comes with a 67mm adaptor ring, lens cap, camera-like shutter button, and zoom lever.
In the front, we get a 32MP selfie shooter. Fans have been calling out Xiaomi to increase the video capture capabilities of the front cameras in the Xiaomi flagship. However, it’s sad that Xiaomi 13 Ultra is still limited to 1080p for video capture with the front cameras.
On the front, the phone has a 6.73-inch 3200×1400 pixels AMOLED display with a refresh rate of 120Hz (variable). It surpasses Oppo Find X6 Pro as the smartphone’s brightest display, with a peak brightness of 2600 nits.
Xiaomi 13 Ultra is powered by Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC, the latest and greatest from Snapdragon. It’s not the talking point of the device, also not the fact that the phone ships in 1TB UFS 4.0 storage.
The phone packs a 5,000mAh battery with 90W wired fast charging and 50W wireless fast charging. Battery life and charging are handled by Xiaomi Surge P2 and Surge G1 custom chips.
