A Leica phone – or at least a Sharp phone co-engineered with the legendary brand – has just been announced (and it isn't even the first)
(Image credit: Sharp (Japan))
The new Sharp Aquos R9 Pro flagship phone, with camera module co-engineered with Leica, has been announced. It'll go on sale first in Japan next month, followed by a 'global model' soon after.
The Vario-Summicron*2 camera system consists of triple cameras – standard (23mm EFL) , wide-angle (13mm EFL), and telephoto (65mm EFL). All three have 50.3 megapixel senors, with f/1/8, f/2.2, and f/2.6 apertures respectively. The tele camera also boasts optical image stabilization.
The standard sensor is a sizable 1/0.98-inch, which should (in theory) be better equipped to handle low light than the main camera sensor in Apple's iPhone 16 Pro – a 48MP Sony IMX903 chip which is a 1/1.14-inch.
This is the latest co-edition in a series of Leica / Sharp phones, there have been others before, but as well as the upgrades, there is a new 14ch Spectral Sensor to help with color capture.
The selfie camera is also 50.3 million pixels, with an f/2.2 limit and 23mm EFL, and is used for mask-compatible facial recognition, though the phone also boasts fingerprint recognition using 3D "Sonic Max" ultrasonic tech from Qualcomm.
(Image credit: Sharp)
The other side of the device is, of course, dominated by the 7.6-inch display – made of "Pro IGZO OLED," which manages up to 240Hz scrolling – double 'Pro Motion'. with blue-light reduction it could be good for the eyes, and has Dolby Vision Atmos.
Like all new smartphone flagships, especially in the wake of the iPhone 16 and Apple intelligence, Sharp's announcement included AI, and the device has a proprietary phone assistant which uses generative AI to summarise your voicemails as text and save keywords in conversations as notes. "When users make a call, generative AI extracts keywords during the conversation and automatically creates notes with text and images," says Sharp.
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Like the iPhone 16, this new camera phone also boasts "An ingenious shutter key that you can use intuitively" – but the option to screw on filters is not something the iPhone has by default! The camera attachment allows mounting commercially available lens filters, letting the user enjoy taking photos with a hint of the 'real camera' experience. You can find details at the Sharp site (Japanese).
The processor driving all this is the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 at 3GHz, backed with 12GB RAM (the iPhone 16 Pro has 8GB) and 512GB of storage. That screw-on camera fitting makes it 9.3mm thick (0.37-inch) and it weighs 229 g (8.08 oz).
If you're interested in this phone, it's exciting, but the best camera phones in our guides are available outside Japan already – we don't know if this will spread beyond Asiam markets even in Q1 2025 with the 'global' version (specs seen on GSM arena).
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With over 20 years of expertise as a tech journalist, Adam brings a wealth of knowledge across a vast number of product categories, including timelapse cameras, home security cameras, NVR cameras, photography books, webcams, 3D printers and 3D scanners, borescopes, radar detectors… and, above all, drones.
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