Well, this certainly caught our eye! Leica, the iconic camera company, known for high-quality cameras, has introduced a smartphone! It's called Leitz Phone 1, and it's been released to the Japanese market.

If you haven't heard of other smartphones by Leica, it's because this is their first one. Its name pays homage to the company's founder, Ernst Leitz II. 

The company states on their website that the smartphone is the first to "combine uncompromising quality, peerless optical engineering, and imaging software mastery with iconic Leica design." 

Note that the camera's specs are redesigned and rebranded from the Sharp Aquos R6 because the Leitz Phone 1 is being produced in collaboration with the Sharp Corporation. That means that, at least for now, the phone will be available exclusively in Japan through SoftBank, a leading distributor in Japan.

Design

If you like sleek and artsy, you're going to appreciate this new Leica smartphone. It was designed by their German studio and upheld their commitment to eye-catching minimalist design (and, they say, superb quality). 

An anodized aluminum case and matte-black gorilla glass define the phone's exterior, while knurled (ridged) edges help keep the interior dry in wet conditions.  

A large Leica lens takes up about a third of the phone's back, with Leica's unmistakable and iconic red dot logo. A handy lens feature is a magnetic lens cap. For those of us who are hard on our smartphones, this will help protect the lens. 

But that's not all that's admirable about the smartphone's lens. With a fast f/1.9 lens, up to six-fold digital zoom, and the integrated Leica lens technology, it should deliver some sharp images in RAW and JPEG formats. It also gives you a wide field of view thanks to the equivalent of 19mm focal length in full-frame.

A 1" type image sensor with 20.2MP resolution powers the lens. You can shoot RAW and JPEG images paired with Leica's proprietary software engine, the Leitz Engine. The Engine lets you set or create computational bokeh, color correction, edge refinement, noise reduction, etc. But it wouldn't be a Leica without being able to do a Leitz Looks mode. It promises its iconically sharp black-and-white images based on the same visual language of the flagship Leica M Monochrom. 

Technicals

On the technical side of the phone, it's powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 5G chip and runs on Android 11. The 5G phone has 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. 

It has a generous display of a 6.6" WUXGA+ OLED display with 1260 x 2730 resolution. Suppose you like taking selfies, no worries. There's a selfie camera that has 12.6MP resolution and an F2.3 lens. 

Hopefully, the Leitz Phone 1 will eventually be available globally. Because if it's even remotely comparable to the company's iconic cameras, their smartphone could be well worth trying out.