[REVIEW] Xiaomi 12S Ultra is the new king of photography from the Chinese giant, thanks in part to Leica

As we already informed you on our website Xiaomi Planet, a new flagship smartphone model, the Xiaomi 12S Ultra, has recently arrived with us. Once again, we’re bringing you an in-depth review of this long-awaited model exclusively among the first in Slovakia and the Czech Republic.

In the review, we’ll focus mainly on what interests everyone most—how the Leica partnership worked out in the photography field. We won’t forget, though, to cover performance, build quality, battery life, or compatibility in our region, since it’s the Chinese version.

Where to buy Xiaomi 12S Ultra?

You can get the new Xiaomi flagship from our most popular partner: the Chinese e-shop TradingShenzhen. As always, it offers you the chance to buy Chinese versions of smartphones at unbeatable prices and without any unnecessary extra fees. In this case as well, you don’t have to worry about any additional customs charges—everything is handled for you by the seller.

Current offer for Xiaomi Mi 12S Ultra

Technical specifications

Great packaging from TradingShenzhen

We’ll repeat ourselves here. As we’ve mentioned in our reviews a few times now, TradingShenzhen really cares about the packaging. After all, the seller definitely doesn’t want you to receive a damaged product, so they use several layers of protection.

So the smartphone box is placed inside another cardboard box, which is further protected with bubble wrap. Everything is also wrapped in another layer of shrink wrap, so the smartphone box arrived to us without a single scratch. In the package, we also found a small gift again—this time it was a mini fan for a USB-C cable.

Inside the smartphone box, besides the phone itself, you’ll find all the accessories—including a silicone case, a SIM ejector pin, and a charger with a charging cable. Since it’s the Chinese version, we also received a standard European plug adapter in the bundle.

You can also watch our short unboxing video below:

Interesting design with a large rear module

The new Xiaomi 12S Ultra will catch your eye right away with its unusually large rear camera module, which in this case has a circular shape. It’s framed with a thin gold strip and, overall, it has definitely an interesting design.

We believe it will also find its fair share of critics, but we absolutely love this design. Combined with the black leather-look finish of the back cover, it delivers a truly luxurious feel—just as a flagship model should.

The craftsmanship level is also clearly top-tier, so from a design and build quality standpoint we have nothing to complain about. It’s just a shame that Xiaomi includes only a basic transparent silicone case with this model, where the back of the smartphone doesn’t really stand out.

Layout of the control elements

Nothing has changed in this respect. The Xiaomi 12S Ultra has a standard arrangement of the individual elements. The bottom edge includes a charging USB-C port, a Harman Kardon speaker, a microphone, and a slot for two nano SIM cards.

On the opposite, upper edge you’ll find a second speaker, a microphone, and an infrared port. The left side is empty, while the right side has the classic volume buttons and a button to turn on the display, with no fingerprint reader.

The phone’s total weight is 225 g, which isn’t little. The moment you pick it up the first time, you can immediately feel it weighs a bit more than most smartphones. The large and heavy camera module on the back also contributes to the overall weight, but the phone still feels pleasant in the hand thanks to its rounded edges.

Punch-hole display

The Xiaomi 12S Ultra smartphone display has a 6.73″ diagonal and, of course, it’s a Samsung-made AMOLED E5 panel, this time with a resolution of 3200 x 1440 px.

Its refresh rate can reach up to a maximum of 120 Hz, and it also has LTPO technology in version 2.0, which automatically adjusts the refresh rate based on current needs. Xiaomi has finally chosen automatic settings as the default from the factory.

High brightness—up to 1500 nits—will ensure good readability even on sunny days. However, the sampling rate is a bit lower, at 240 Hz. Compared to last year’s Xiaomi 11 Ultra model, that’s only half the value, but we didn’t notice any lag in touch response.

You’ll also be pleased with HDR10+ and Dolby Vision support, which should make the picture even more beautiful. The display is, of course, stunning, with rich and well-balanced colors. At the top there’s a punch-hole for the selfie camera, though it belongs to the smaller ones.

High performance is a given

Performance is handled by the latest and most powerful processor from American company Qualcomm, the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1, which was unveiled only recently. It’s manufactured using a 4 nm process and consists of eight cores. The high-performance core is based on the ARM Cortex-X2 architecture, with a clock speed of 3.2 GHz.

The next three high-performance cores are based on the Cortex-A710 architecture with a clock speed of 2.5 GHz, and the remaining four cores—which are more power-efficient—are based on the Cortex-A510 architecture with a clock speed of 1.8 GHz. All cores use a shared 6 MB L3 cache.

We’re testing a version with 12 GB of RAM of the LPDDR5 type (6400 Mbps ) and 256 GB of UFS 3.1 storage. There are also versions with lower RAM – 8 GB, or with higher internal storage capacity – 512 GB.

The Xiaomi 12S Ultra also becomes one of the top smartphones in the popular AnTuTu benchmark. We achieved a score of 1 018 386 points, which placed the phone just in second place behind the Red Magic 7.

High expectations from a collaboration with Leica

Who hasn’t heard of Leica? It’s a leading German company that designs and manufactures cameras going back to 1913. The flagship Xiaomi 12S Ultra model carries its logo. We all have high expectations from this collaboration—so let’s take a look at what’s most interesting about how the new Xiaomi model takes photos.

Let’s start with the parameters of the individual cameras, where the main camera with a 1-inch sensor stands out the most. In general, the larger the sensor, the more light it can capture, which makes it especially better when shooting in worse lighting conditions. Thanks to the larger sensor, photo quality can be improved, the dynamic range increases, and noise is reduced.

The interesting part is that, besides the main sensor, the ultra-wide also has a periscope camera with the same setup as last year’s Xiaomi 11 Ultra.

Two modes from Leica

Right when you open the camera app for the first time, a menu pops up where you choose between two modes – Authentic and Vibrant. You can then switch between them using the Leica icon, which is always right there among the main settings.

Leica Authentic, as the name itself suggests, offers an authentic scene rendering as close to reality as possible. It provides higher contrast to keep a clear difference between bright and dark areas, but it doesn’t artificially boost them in any way.

The Leica Vibrant mode should deliver vibrant, warm colors, brighter tones, and higher saturation, making photos look more attractive. The reality is very close to the manufacturer’s description. Authentic-mode photos are actually a bit darker, have higher contrast, a slightly weaker dynamic range, and colors close to reality.

In Vibrant mode, the photos are clearly enhanced as well. Their colors are warmer, but also brighter, which gives the impression of a better dynamic range. Sometimes the difference between the first and second mode is small, but other times it’s quite noticeable. Vibrant shots are sometimes even overly oversaturated and look unnatural.

On the other hand, for many people they’ll be genuinely more visually appealing and more likely to catch attention, for example on social media. It’s a shame that you can’t change the Authentic or Vibrant mode in the gallery, since you shoot directly in one of them. Sometimes we liked photos from one mode more, and other times from the other.

Main camera with a 1″ sensor

The main, 50 MP camera is the biggest selling point of the Ultra flagship model. We have to admit it’s truly excellent. In good light, the photos are beautiful, sharp, with a strong dynamic range, packed with details and colors adjusted according to the Authentic or Vibrant mode.

As we mentioned above, choosing between these modes lets you tailor the color rendering right while you’re taking the photos, so it’s up to you whether you prefer colors that look more realistic or more vivid ones, even if the photo may look slightly edited. Still, we have to admit that sometimes the colors in Authentic mode are a bit oversaturated, especially with artificial indoor lighting.

Despite the 1″ sensor, photos taken in low light aren’t the absolute best. Sure, weaker sharpness and a bit of noise wouldn’t bother us that much, but what we notice more is the higher contrast and inaccurate color rendering, which often isn’t close to reality in either of Leica’s modes.

We somehow expected a bit more from this camera, especially when it comes to the mentioned color rendering with artificial lighting and in dusk/low-light conditions. In Authentic mode, the photos are a touch darker than we’d like, and in Vibrant mode the colors are already too unrealistic and details get lost. Personally, we’d have preferred something in between these two modes.

But we don’t want to say the main camera shoots poorly. On the contrary, it’s great, but some little issues can still be found, and the Leica partnership could have brought even more added value.

Ultra-wide-angle camera

Compared to the main camera, the ultra-wide delivers a visibly different color rendering in both modes, whether it’s Authentic or Vibrant. Both modes provide brighter colors than the main camera, with less pronounced shadows, even though the dynamic range is slightly worse, which you can especially see when shooting in direct sunlight (e.g., around noon).

Buildings lit directly by the sun are often overexposed and therefore too glaring. It also has some issues with direct backlight, but what surprises us most is how it performs indoors. With artificial lighting, and especially in Authentic mode, it produces very natural color rendering close to reality without unnecessary emphasis on shadows. Sharpness is slightly worse, but the shots look very natural at first glance.

Telephoto lens

The telephoto lens delivers up to a maximum of 5-times zoom, and in good lighting conditions it’s excellent. On your photos, you can clearly see details with good sharpness and similar color rendering to that of the main camera.

Night mode

This mode suppresses strong light sources extremely well, like street lighting or various light banners. It beautifully dims them and brings more light to dark places. The more noticeable one is the night mode in Leica Vibrant. Photos in this mode are significantly brighter with more saturated colors.

When taking photos in the dark with night mode enabled, sharpness usually drops and noise increases. It’s no different here either—both the decrease in sharpness and noise are at a minimum level, and overall we rate the night mode very positively. Especially the main camera with a 1″ sensor didn’t disappoint in this regard.

On the ultrawide camera, the quality is already weaker, and with the zoomed shots made using the periscope camera it’s even noticeably worse.

Surprisingly good video quality

Xiaomi 12S Ultra offers maximum resolution up to 8K, but only with 24 frames per second, which is too low. With this setting, the video isn’t fully smooth, and in our view it’s still more of a marketing move, since 8K resolution is currently somewhat unnecessary in smartphones. Leica video modes aren’t available, but we do have Dolby Vision support.

At 4K resolution you can choose between 60 or 30 fps, similar to the lower resolution 1080p. There’s also optical image stabilization, but on paper it’s weaker at 4K/60 fps. Still, it’s very good, and even video recorded while walking is almost never shaky.

Better video stabilization is available only for 1080p/30 fps, where image quality is clearly worse, and the stabilization isn’t really any noticeably better than the one we have at 4K/60 fps. So, in our view, the winner is video in 4K/60 fps.

The video dynamic range isn’t perfect, but overall the video quality together with stabilization is surprisingly very good. We’ll go so far as to say it’s one of Xiaomi’s best smartphones for video—if not the best.

Selfies with the front camera only

An interesting innovation of last year’s Xiaomi 11 Ultra model was its rear, secondary display. In the new Ultra model, you’d be looking for it in vain. For many people it was unnecessary, but for taking selfie photos it’s a huge benefit, because you could take a selfie using the main camera—whose quality is incomparable.

This way, you only have the front selfie camera available with 32 Mpx resolution, whose quality is good, but it still offers only 1080p / 30 fps video, while competing brands already have 4K video even from the selfie camera.

Runtime and charging

Xiaomi 12S Ultra houses a 4860 mAh battery that delivers an average battery life of about one day, depending on how you use the smartphone. We were, however, slightly surprised by the fast charging support, which is “only” 67 W.

Many—and even significantly cheaper—Xiaomi models support faster charging, so we expected 120 W charging in this model as well. What’s nice, though, is support for wireless charging with 50 W power, which has been forgotten fairly often lately. There’s also reverse, 10 W charging.

67 W wired charging works like this:

Android 12 and MIUI 13 in the Chinese version

The new flagship model is equipped with the latest Android in version 12, with the MIUI graphical overlay in version 13. Since Xiaomi 12S Ultra doesn’t have a global version yet, and we also don’t know if it will ever get one, we ordered the version intended for the Chinese market. Unfortunately, it lacks the 4G LTE band B20, used in Slovakia in villages and smaller towns.

As we already mentioned in several reviews of smartphones without support for band B20, we had absolutely no problems in the city. The 800 MHz band, known by the abbreviation B20, is not the only 4G band used here. We spent most of the testing period in Košice, where the smartphone connected to band B7 (Telekom). In villages, though, you have to expect limitations in the form of 3G or EDGE networks.

Regarding the MIUI system in connection with the Chinese version, you’ll find several Chinese apps here, as well as a Chinese Mi Store. However, there aren’t many unnecessary apps, so they didn’t bother us at all. Notifications worked properly after enabling auto-start and disabling battery saving. Overall, we didn’t have any issues with the system. It ran smoothly, the design is done well, and it offers plenty of options to adjust the settings.

By default, the Chinese system doesn’t include Google apps like Chrome, YouTube, Maps, or Gmail. However, you can install them via the Google Play store, which the seller pre-installed for us, or you can search for APK files through a browser.

Fingerprint reader in the display and working NFC

As we hinted at in the introduction, the fingerprint reader is located in the display. It’s not a 3D ultrasonic reader like, for example, iQoo 9 Pro, so occasional stutters are nothing unusual. Overall, it’s a standard in-display fingerprint reader like most smartphones have today. Its speed and accuracy don’t really wow, but they also don’t disappoint.

Despite being the Chinese version of the smartphone, it still has NFC support and working contactless payments through the Wallet app, which is a replacement for Google Pay. The only extra step we had to take was setting Google Pay as the default payment app (the old name was still shown here). Without this setting, Mi Wallet will be used, so the payment won’t go through successfully.

Dolby Atmos support

Xiaomi is teaming up with Harman Kardon again, and you can find its logo on the top side of the smartphone right next to the speaker. You’ll also appreciate support for spatial sound thanks to Dolby Atmos technology.

The speaker sound is characterized by slightly more prominent highs and mids, with less pronounced bass. Overall, though, it sounds great even at maximum volume.

Xiaomi 12S Ultra: Final assessment

From the new flagship model Xiaomi 12S Ultra, we had high expectations—especially from the cooperation with Leica. As a smartphone camera, you’ll find it in our review, but if we had to briefly evaluate the cameras, they perform great. Sure, certain shortcomings can be found, mainly with weak or artificial lighting, but overall—especially the main camera—it’s very decent and worthy of a flagship model. However, from the Leica partnership we expected a little more, and there’s no “wow effect”.

On the positive side, we were surprised by the video—especially its stabilization, which finally works really well. Last but not least, you get an excellent AMOLED display and high performance thanks to the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 processor, which allowed us to reach a score of over 1 million points in AnTuTu. We also appreciate the luxurious design with a leather-textured back cover, featuring a large round camera module.

Among its weaker points, we’d list the higher weight, “only” 67 W charging, and the absence of the 4G band B20.