A week ago, I watched most of the Xiaomi 14 Ultra launch event on my mobile phone in Europe because of the MWC 2024 itinerary - the plane was already busy opening the link while taxiing on the runway. Although Xiaomi's 2024 Imaging Super Flagship was already used long before its release, I was eager to hear how they tell the story of this Ultra. Yes, compared to the state of the Xiaomi 12S Ultra when it was launched in 2022, the current Xiaomi is confident and firmly ......
I believe many people still remember the words of Lei Jun, the founder of Xiaomi, when Xiaomi 12S Ultra: "Image is the integration of technology and aesthetics, and we are standing at the crossroads of technology and humanity", and put forward a new concept of "beyond the human eye and perceiving people's hearts".
Driven by this new concept,Xiaomi digital series of ultra super flagships to the third generation,Although we know that there is still a lot of controversy about this kind of image performance-oriented models,But it is undeniable,It is under their traction,Xiaomi 13 14The two generations have become phenomenal products in the field of Android flagships,A trend of firm upward curve has been drawn by them,For example, the Xiaomi 14 series has sold nearly 1.5 million units in only 10 days on the market, In the first sales month (December 2023), the series accounted for 38% of the Chinese market in the range of 4,000 yuan and 6,000 yuan**.
Xiaomi itself defines the release of the 14 Ultra as the third chapter of the mobile image, but Xiaomi's exploration of the moving image began as early as 2016: the image-related optical team was established in this year, a year before the establishment of Xiaomi's camera division.
In the years that followed, we continued to see the work of the optical team come out: the Xiaomi Mi 9 Ultra Transparent released in February 2019 with a maximum aperture of f1The 47 7P lens is **; In November 2019, Xiaomi CC9 Pro Premium Edition was equipped with a 100 million pixel Samsung HMX sensor, and was the first to release an 8P lens to ensure ultra-high pixel image quality. At MIDC 2020 in November 2020, Xiaomi's self-developed "telescopic large aperture lens" technology was unveiled; At Xiaomi's spring launch event in March 2021, the liquid lens on the Xiaomi Mi MIX Fold, the self-developed ISP of the surging C1, and the Samsung GN2 1 1 on the Xiaomi Mi 11 Pro UltraThe 12 bottoms are unveiled together. It can also be seen from here that Xiaomi has long recognized that in order to do a good job in imaging, optics must come first.
In 2020, Xiaomi officially proposed to invest 10 billion yuan in three years to hit the high-end market. On August 11 of the same year, Xiaomi Mi 10 Extreme Commemorative Edition was equipped with OV48C 48 million pixel outsole debut-This is the Xiaomi image strategic node model in my personal cognition, and it is also from it that it starts, "super large bottom main camera, high pixel telephoto" has become an important symbol of Xiaomi image super flagship; The Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra, launched in March 2021, was criticized for its design, but its image stacking was unrivaled in the industry at the time. In July 2022, Xiaomi 12S Ultra with 1-inch Sony IMX989 outsole and Leica image cooperation debut, Xiaomi "carefully" presented the "Leica Classic" image style to consumers, but the feedback from the market proved that their concerns were unnecessary, more importantly, the trend of doing shadow tones and stylized imaging on mobile phone images was precisely after Xiaomi 12S Ultra won market recognition, and it used word of mouth to prove that traditional image thinking can be realized on mobile phones" Renaissance".
It is the first product in cooperation with Leica that has achieved a good market response, and the Xiaomi Mi 13 Ultra released in the spring of 2023 has taken a more extreme step, those elements from the traditional imaging field have been loaded into this generation of image super flagships: 1-inch IMX989 + 3 IMX858 form a quad-camera system with excellent synergy, Leica Summicron lens system designed for mobile imaging, two-stop variable aperture, full focal length large aperture, full focal length night scene, Full focal length capture, Leica street photography mode + parameter preset, "optical problems should be solved from the optical level" ......On the premise that the Xiaomi 13 series has been successful, the earlier debate of "whether Xiaomi is making a mobile phone or a camera" has disappeared, and the entire industry is looking forward to what level Xiaomi can pile up the Android image super flagship.
Of course, the results are certainly good, and even the Xiaomi Mi 13 Ultra's bizarre back bulge can't discourage the market from acknowledging its excellent image performance. It is worth mentioning that the Xiaomi 13 Ultra is the first Xiaomi phone to use a one-piece metal frame body, and it is on this basis that the Dragon Armor architecture of the Xiaomi 14 Ultra was born. This is important because the huge image module brings too many "broken boards" stacked, and the overall architecture must be changed to ensure the overall reliability and durability of the phone.
This is not only the improvement of cost and stacking capacity, but also the growth of Xiaomi's own precision manufacturing capabilities, from the earliest Xiaomi Yizhuang black light factory, to the foundry that invested in Lens Technology, and then to the latest Xiaomi smart factory in Changping, Beijing, the independent and controllable manufacturing capacity is also the guarantee that the overall design of Xiaomi 14 Ultra has been quickly optimized.
It is also because of the improvement of precision manufacturing capabilities that the performance of the lens module of the Xiaomi 14 Ultra has been comprehensively improved. The main camera's two-stop variable aperture is f1 from the previous generation9、f4.0 two gears upgraded to f1The infinitely variable 63 f4 achieves beautiful physical starlight shooting like the Xiaomi 14 Pro. The periscope telephoto aperture is also up from the previous generation of f30 to f25. And add 30cm macro ability, together with 75mm upright small telephoto, to form a double macro combination, the creative space is very considerable.
Thanks to this, Xiaomi 14 Ultra should also be the first super flagship product to mention portrait capabilities separately, the main camera and small telephoto together form a 4 focal length portrait system, I hope that the next 5 times the periscope can also add portrait capabilities, so that it will not fall behind in the competition with competitors.
After the main camera of the Xiaomi Mi 14 Ultra was upgraded from the IMX989 with a 40nm process to the 22nm LYT-900, the new generation of 1-inch sensors and the three IMX858s worked more closely together. At the same time, the significant reduction in power consumption brought about by the advanced manufacturing process allows the sensor to be more fully utilized, which I have made clear when talking about the OPPO Find X7 series.
Another point of care is that the Xiaomi Mi 14 Ultra's professional image kit has been fully upgraded, not only the Type-C connection is more stable and convenient, but the additional 1500mAh battery brings more battery life for shooting, and the newly added dial wheel and ** buttons are more like a camera. If the zoom lever can add a zoom function during playback**, it would be better to strengthen the sense of passage of the dial, and I believe that the next generation of Xiaomi will be able to do it!
Unlike when the Xiaomi 13 Ultra was released 10 months ago, with the improvement of software and hardware technology, device-side large models and AIGC (generative AI) have become the current mainstream technology. Therefore, the Xiaomi 14 Ultra has upgraded the previous software system, the Xiaomi Image Brain, to the Xiaomi AISP, thus giving birth to the functions of super negative, portrait large model, and AI super zoom.
These changes answer the question well: when the sensor size of mobile phones has reached 1 inch, and it is no longer possible to rely on the increase in sensors to improve the hardware, what kind of development can mobile imaging have? Or computational photography,It's just that after the mobile phone manufacturers have a deeper understanding of the essence of the image,Richer、More layered ** details,More textured tone and color depiction,More comprehensive and delicate picture presentation,Will be the main direction of mobile phone image software tuning in the future,In this regard,Xiaomi 14 ultra has given its own answer。
Write at the end
Looking at the final pricing, the Xiaomi Mi 14 Ultra has a noticeable improvement, but I don't think it's a problem. First, the Xiaomi 14 series already has good potential energy, especially on the premise of solving the sales problem of Pro products, the super flagship naturally has enough confidence to continue to rise, because consumers who choose it want the most extreme image performance; Second, from the perspective of the technical content and performance of the Xiaomi 14 Ultra itself, there are very few competing products on the current market that can compete with it. When the mentality of Xiaomi's product team changes from the earliest temptation to today's "ultra", the product will naturally become extreme.