Xiaomi 12S Ultra: The Camera Masterpiece

     The Xiaomi 12S Ultra is the third installment in the company's ultimate flagship lineups. And you know what's up? The camera specs are out of this world. Before we get into the meat, let's take a surface look at this beast.

 

     This is the Xiaomi 12S Ultra. It has a clean list of specs. It comes in Green and Black. It has a design similar to that of its predecessor only that things are at an entirely new level. On the Mi 11 Ultra, Xiaomi has to fit a display in there but this time around, they didn't have to worry about display and so there was more freedom for component placement. The layouts of the controls and features around the aluminum frame of the 12S Ultra remains unchanged in comparison to predecessors. We have a power button and volume rocker on the right side of the phone and these are somewhat larger this time around when compared to a somewhat unfittingly small power button on older models. On top, you will find branded speakers, a microphone and an IR emitter which is classic of Xiaomi. We also have below another speaker, a USB-C port and a dual nano SIM slot with no option for memory expansion. The 12S Ultra measures 163.2 by 75 by 9.1mm which is 0.7mm thicker than the 11 Ultra. It weighs 225g, the new model is marginally lighter than the older. It is a very large phone. It has an incredible display only slightly different from the previous model. It has a 6.73 inch diagonal size. It's new size along with the relocated selfie camera suggests  it has the same panel as 12 Pro and 12SPro although that unarguably makes a lot of sense. Resolution is again 1440 by 3200 pixels( 20 by 9 aspect ratio, 522 ppi pixel density ). It has an LTPO2 AMOLED panel which allows for dynamic refresh rate switching between 1 and 120Hz. When it comes to color mode handling, the 12S Ultra has similar options to other high end models like it. There are three immediately available preset color modes (Vivid, Saturated, Original Color) with a color wheel below for tweaking temperature in addition to three factory presets ( Default, Warm, Cool ). 

     The Xiaomi 12S Ultra has an endurance rating of 93 hours. The battery life of 12S Ultra is a lot better than the 12S Pro it replaces. The 12S Ultra comes bundled with a proprietary 67W charger. Using it, it takes about 30 minutes to charge all the way to 73%. It also supports wireless charging. The 12S Ultra has a good rating for loudness when compared to other flagships. 

     The Xiaomi 12S Ultra runs Android 12 with MIUI 13 on top of that which is very popular among recent high end Xiaomi flagships. Hillariously, there is no Google Suite when you power up the 12S Ultra but there is Xiaomi app store which will get you to the Google Play Store. Themes have always been a huge part of the MIUI family. They can change wallpapers, ringtones, system icons and even the always on display style. MIUI comes with its proprietary multimedia apps. There's gallery, music and MI video. And of course, a Mi Remote app which uses the Integrated IR blaster. There is also the security app which can scan your phone for malware, manage your blacklist, manage or restrict your data usage, configure battery behaviour and free up some RAM. It can also manage permissions for your installed apps, define the battery behaviour of selected apps and apply restrictions only to certain apps. The S12 Ultra gets the Snapdragon 8 Plus in there signifying it is the mid cycle of Qualcomm's end Soc. The S12 Ultra has a very good on-screen test  score of 1318 on Geek-Bench. The S12 Ultra goes for about $1349 which sounds reasonable considering the hype around it.

 

A Masterpiece in Cinematography

     Yes indeed as the title suggests, the S12 Ultra is a power rocker in imagery and photography. It has a 1 inch sensor with phase detect autofocus, and it's entire area is used for image capture. Now "one inch" refers to the diameter of the video camera tube needed to project an image that would cover the size of the sensor. It is something the industry should have abandoned as a whole but behold here we still are though. So the IMX989 sensor that is the core of the Xiaomi S12 Ultra's primary camera has a 8192 by 6144 px effective resolution. Let's call it 50MP and the pixel pitch is 1.6μm. The S12 Ultra's sensor is 86% longer than the one used in the galaxy S22 Ultra's main camera. That 50MP sensor has what Sony calls a Quad Bayer color filter array. The Xiaomi's main camera has better sensor hardware and has one of Sony's fanciest Xperia itself. In front of that sensor, Xiaomi placed an 8-element lens with aspherical elements and stabilization. The lens has a 23mm equivalent focal length and a focal aperture of 1.9. The other two rear cameras are also quite impressive and carried over amazing features from the Mi11 Ultra. The camera app on the 12S Ultra is more or less the same as on other Xiaomi devices but the only twist is the accent color is red, presumably in honor of the Leica collaboration. Another Leica related touch is the processing mode you need to choose the first time you launch the camera. The two options are Leica Vibrant and Leica Authentic and once you're past the welcome screen, you can switch back and forth between them all you want. That is your only option because there is no generic non-Leica auto mode. The photo quality is quite good. It has very good day light and low light image quality. In night mode, colors maintain quite a nice level of saturation and the auto white balance handles even complex scenes flawlessly. There is an occasional margin improvement in the deepest of shadows. The  Xiaomi S12 Ultra can record videos up to 8K24 with all three of its rear cameras. 4K30 and 4K60 modes are also available on all of them. The Ultrawide's 8K is more less the same as the predecessor while the telephoto's 8K again struggles to match the quality of last year's model, itself hardly spectacular either. In general, the video quality is very good.

     Now you know that popular saying that too much of a good thing can be bad. Yh it applies here. As impressive as the specs on the flagship really are, there is a bit of a twist to the tale. Let's go over the pros again. The flagship has a premium look and feel and a striking rear design, a superb OLED display, great stereo speakers, super powerful chipset solid under prolonged load too and a thoroughly capable camera system within a particularly impressive main unit. That's pretty much about it. So what are the cons? Reports flooding in indicate somewhat of a rarity of scarcity of the flagship since it is mostly only available within China so greeting one outside China will be problematic. Adding to that, the MIUI build is basically Chinese and so can't be fully westernised. I must have also forgotten to mention a little glitch on the telephoto camera which can be unreliable in the dark. There is also inconsistent colour renditions in video between the three rear cameras, minor drops in video quality compared to the predecessor.

     Don't get the information twisted though, the Xiaomi flagship is still the 21st century camera masterpiece that has been talked about. So guys, is this a good run for the money? Let me know in the comments below.