Leica’s “Leitz Phone 2” has a giant 1-inch camera sensor, magnetic lens cap

Encountered LeicaLeitz2. phone, a phone from the famous German camera maker and exclusive to… Japan? If smartphones are consuming the camera market, it makes sense that some camera companies look to go the other way.

Leica is not a smartphone company, so the company that makes this phone is Sharp! Now exclusivity in Japan makes sense. If you have to build your own branded smartphone on someone else’s hardware, it’s hard to go wrong. Sharp Aquos R7, a surprisingly unique Android phone that squashes many of the silly phone trends that other manufacturers are mindlessly following. The R7 went out the door with Leica-branded optics, so it looks like this is the other half of that deal.

Sharp is no stranger to Exclusive designs for smartphonesThe Leica and its R7 sibling make a lot of good decisions. Instead of a bunch of dubiously useful little rear cameras, you get one giant camera: a 1-inch Sony IMX989 sensor. This is the largest size currently available in a smartphone. The IMX989 is usually 50 megapixels, but Leica cuts that a bit short and lists an “effective pixel count of 47.2 megapixels.” The screen is flat, which is a big change from the outdated, distorted, curved screens that companies typically put on Android flagships. The trick works on Samsung’s curved screen, which powers most of the world’s smartphone screens, but here the screen is made by Sharp, a 6.6-inch 2730 x 1260 OLED with a very high refresh rate of 240Hz.

Another unique feature Sharp offers is that it appears to be the only company interested in Qualcomm. Giant 3D Sonic Max In-display fingerprint sensor. The biggest problem with in-display fingerprint sensors is that there’s no haptic guidance on where to place your finger, so it’s easy to miss the sensor a bit and get a poor reading. Qualcomm’s Sonic Max 3D sensor is huge, though it’s big enough to fit two fingers so you don’t lose it. This sensor was released in 2019, but nobody uses it because it’s too expensive.

As for Leica’s actual contributions to this phone, it has a redesigned aluminum frame at 90-degree angles and a textured knurled finish that runs along the side of the frame. Screen design could be better. The 90-degree corners make the front a little awkward, as the screen is still pulled from the Aquos R7’s rounded corner, so the phone now has a screen that doesn’t match the corners of the body. You get rounded viewing angles with a matching black bezel, and then 90-degree aluminum angles, giving the front an exotic dual-bezel look. Some phones like it Galaxy S22 Ultraat 90-degree angles, but does better in the looks department thanks to the mirrored screens.

Leica naturally took care of the design of the rear camera. The 1-inch camera sensor needed a big bumper for the rear camera, but not the size of camera Leica decided to go with, and the circular camera bump now extends to include the LED flash and telemetry sensor of 2 megapixel not photographed. To replicate the “real camera” feel, the Leica Leitz Phone 2 has a large magnetic camera lens cap that cuts across the top of the rear camera. There’s also a black case for it, which looks like it’s trying to replicate the traditional black and silver camera design, but it doesn’t feel airtight.

Leica isn’t the camera maker here, but has created a “proprietary software engine” that “brings that signature Leica look to smartphone photography.” It contains three filters named after Leica lenses that try to replicate the bokeh effect and different focal lengths. There’s a “golden hour widget” that supposedly tells you when the sun sets in an hour, as well as a widget that displays images from international Leica Photographs.

The spec sheet is the same as the Aquos R7: Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 SoC, 12GB RAM, 512GB storage (actually double the R7), 5,000mAh battery, dust and water resistance IP68 and Android 12. There is also a headphone jack.

You’ll pay a premium for that red dot (and increased storage space). The price in Japan is 225,360 yen (about 1,580 US dollars), while the regular R7 is 189,360 yen, or 1,365 US dollars.

leica photo list