Xiaomi 17 Ultra officially teased as a "co-creation" model with Leica, expect it in seven days

The Xiaomi 17 Ultra's predecessor. | Image by PhoneArena

Ask any mobile photography-obsessed user what they anticipate next, and Christmas festivities probably won't be at the top of the list – it'll be the upcoming Xiaomi 17 Ultra.

The high-end camera phone by Xiaomi is now officially teased by the company's Weibo account: it's expected to arrive "next week", with no exact date mentioned. A late December announcement was previously rumored, too. Now it's clear that the Xiaomi 17 Ultra won't be unveiled around New Year's Eve, but rather around Christmas. So, we're eyeing a possible premiere on December 26 at the latest.

The Leica collaboration deepens

In another social media post, Xiaomi highlights that the company has deepened their collaboration with the world's best-known premium camera maker: Leica.

The machine-translated post reads that Xiaomi Group and Leica Camera AG announced an upgrade to their global imaging strategic partnership. Building on their highly successful joint R&D foundation, the two sides have introduced a new strategic co-creation model.

The Xiaomi 17 Ultra will be the first flagship product created under this new collaboration model.

The phone represents a deeper and more multi-layered partnership between the two companies, Xiaomi says. It aims to break through traditional thinking and usage scenarios in mobile imaging by co-creating products from the very source.

The collaboration integrates Leica's professional optical expertise, aesthetic philosophy, and interaction concepts derived from its camera-making heritage, fundamentally reshaping the mobile imaging experience, the post reads on.

Another industry-first

Xiaomi and Leica have jointly developed "a new-generation optical system solution" of landmark significance and, for the first time, introduced a Leica APO-certified telephoto lens designed specifically for mobile imaging.

APO stands for apochromatically corrected, which is a specialized lens design used to make photos look clearer. In standard lenses, different colors of light focus at slightly different spots, which can cause blurry, colored outlines known as color fringing. APO lenses use special glass to force all colors of light to land on the exact same focal point. This results in much sharper images with perfectly clean edges, which is especially important for long-distance zoom shots.

The newly developed main camera would feature a massive 1-inch sensor. This, paired with the Leica APO telephoto lens, should deliver outstanding results. Although, as always, we'll perform our own in-house, in-depth PhoneArena tests and we'll let you know about the result.

I personally expect the Xiaomi 17 Ultra to excel in both day and night photography with purity, detail accuracy and high dynamic range.