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Leica Leitz Phone 2 officially presented: A legend lives on!

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The German camera expert Leica has designed the Leica Leitz Phone 2 with the Japanese smartphone manufacturer Sharp and presented it in Japan. Once again, the company focuses on an Android smartphone with only one main camera, which is to go on sale for the equivalent of $1600 starting November 18 (exclusively in Japan for now).

Leica Leitz Phone 2 is officially unveiled in Japan

Back in the summer of 2021, German camera expert Leica teamed up with Japan's Sharp in close collaboration and unveiled the first Leica smartphone with the Leica Leitz Phone 1. Now the company presented us with the successor, the Leica Leitz Phone 2, which once again presents itself with only one main camera. But instead with a 1-inch CMOS image sensor with 47.2 megapixels. The sensor supplier is not known at this point—in the predecessor it was an ISOCELL-GN2 image sensor from Samsung.

With a focal length of 19 millimeters (equivalent to 35 mm) and an aperture of f/1.9, Leica wants to recreate the "Leitz look" of the well-known M lenses with its own software engine.

The Summilux 28 for spacey shots in the middle of the action, the Summilux 35 for everyday and street art photography, and the Noctilux 50, which with its extremely high aperture of 1.2 is ideal for portraits and captures images with the unmistakable Leica bokeh.

Leica Leitz Phone 2
In search of the distinctive "Leica Look" / © Leica

Technical specifications of the Leica Leitz Phone 2

The rest of the technical specifications draw on the expertise of the Sharp Aquos R7, which comes with a 6.6-inch AMOLED IGZO display and a resolution of 2,730 x 1,260 pixels (WUXGA+). At the top center, the 161 × 77 × 9.3 millimeters large and 211 grams heavy Android 12 smartphone houses a 12.6 megapixel front camera (punch hole) with an autofocus (PDAF) and an aperture of f/2.3.

It is powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, with 12 GB of RAM and a whopping 512 GB of internal storage. And as befits a full-blooded camera smartphone, photos can optionally be saved in *.jpg, *.dng or *.raw format on an up to 1 GB internal microSD memory card. The battery offers a capacity of 5,000 mAh.

Leica Leitz Phone 2
Leica supplies a magnetic cover for the large lens for the Leica Leitz Phone 2. / © Leica

The Leica Leitz Phone 2 enjoys special protection with a magnetic cover not only for the circular lens, but also in general with an IPX5, IPX8/IP6X certification, against dust and water ingress. Small fun fact: There is a widget on board that displays the "golden hour". Photographers use this term to refer to the period after sunrise or before sunset, since the light is particularly warm and soft then. Also often referred to as the "magic hour".

What do you think—would the Leica Leitz Phone 2 for $1600 find buyers outside of Japan? Can a 1-inch image sensor plus a ToF (Time of Flight) sensor be enough for a camera smartphone? Feel free to write us your opinion in the comments.

Source: Leitz

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