Emir BardakçıMaking a surprising turn of events, well-known tipster DCS just disclosed on his Weibo account that Xiaomi’s future flagships would not come with ultra-wide cameras. This huge change in strategy for Xiaomi cameras was hinted at with the latest launch of the Xiaomi MIX FLIP just 10 days ago, which also lacked an ultra-wide angle camera.
The Xiaomi MIX FOLD is only fitted with two cameras: a 2X telephoto lens and a primary 1X camera. This was very astute thinking from Xiaomi, perhaps a pointer toward the gradual shifting in focus from ultra-wide lenses to telephoto ones, as user preference indicates higher usage of telephoto cameras over their ultra-wide counterparts.
As the tech community speculates whether this new way will see its adoption in the upcoming Xiaomi 15 series, all eyes are on the launch expected to happen around October 2024. It would be prospective at that time if it is finally phasing or just cut the ultra-wide camera from specific flagship lineups.
In 2019, Google added a 2X telephoto camera to the Pixel 4, the first dual-camera Pixel phone, instead of adding an ultrawide camera. Although Google’s choice was criticized by many people, it is now certain that the telephoto camera is more important in phones.
This strategic change marks a far departure from the current trend, as most flagship smartphones today are fitted with an ultra-wide camera as part of their photographic arsenal. Depending on how this current shift goes in terms of consumer reception, it could impact other manufacturers and the future design of cameras in smartphones. With the unveiling of the Xiaomi 15 series, it will be interesting to see how this change will affect the overall functionality and appeal of Xiaomi’s future flagships and leaves the industry, as well as consumers, very excited.
Ultra wide camera is very important because it is used for taking group photos of home specials and for taking high quality group photos.
that sounds like the worst choice I’ve ever heard. who tf said ultrawide cameras are unimportant? if you have a high res main cam, telephoto is useless. jesus christ xiaomi
It makes zero sense to sacrifice an ultra wide lens for a zoom lens when low level zooms between two and five times can easily be replaced by a cropped image from a good main lens, whereas there’s absolutely no way of faking or replacing the type of image an Ultrawide can take