[HN Gopher] Leica Is Launching a Smartphone, with a Lens and Mag...
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Leica Is Launching a Smartphone, with a Lens and Magnetic Lens Cap
Author : fortran77
Score : 40 points
Date : 2021-06-21 19:22 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.core77.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.core77.com)
| paulgerhardt wrote:
| As mentioned in the article this looks to be the Sharp Aquos R6
| frame.
|
| I have the previous Leica smartphone (Lumix DMC-CM1) - and while
| as a phone it's fine, having a high end camera with a large
| sensor, raw photos, and great lens natively run Photoshop Express
| is such a luxury for casual travel photography.
|
| It's not so much that you would use this to make calls - it's
| that you can use this to leverage the app store ecosystem for
| much better, higher quality quick editing. That it comes with a
| tetherable data connection is a bonus.
| desine wrote:
| Reading the headline I got really excited, but looking at the
| images of the product I'm pretty disappointed:
|
| * There's lots of glass, but the actual lens appears to be 1/20th
| the size of the cosmetic glass surrounding the lens
|
| * Only one lens/sensor - I think most of us are used to having a
| few different cameras ganged in software to one digital
| representation of the camera - to mixed effect. This usually
| comes with some meddling ML algorithm that fluctuates between
| "better than my point and shoot!" to "looks like FaceTune app
| dialed to 11". The single lens/sensor makes more sense from a
| "accurate photography" standpoint but I think the balance could
| have been struck better with a few lenses and minimal pixel
| interpolation.
|
| * Other posters are commenting it's a potentially modified
| existing Sharp phone. With the amount of resources available to
| Leica, I was hoping for a ground-up engineering project
|
| Traditional photography companies looking to move into the
| smartphone realm have real opportunity available; as paulgerhardt
| commented - the connectivity and apps are where the real
| potential lies. Half assing it wastes corporate resources and
| makes consumers less likely to be excited if a real killer
| camera-first hybrid were to come out.
|
| At this point they seem to be doing more harm than good.
| make3 wrote:
| The last point about making a phone completely from scratch was
| a negative one for me, the idea of making such a complicated
| thing completely from scratch felt like it was bound to be
| really bad and full of bugs compared to other companies who
| have been making this for a long time, because the initial
| investment I expect would need to be so huge to make a
| performant well tested phone from scratch
| desine wrote:
| The phone/android part doesn't need to be from scratch,
| there's literally dozens of companies that specialize in that
| industry. You can probably just order some whitebox logic
| board/chassis for 1/10th the cost of engineering the camera
| part, and just slap a ribbon cable between the two.
| steelframe wrote:
| Sort of reminds me of the Nokia Lumia 1020 Windows Phone
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_Lumia_1020) from about 8
| years ago. Not sure if there is something intrinsic about the
| huge camera lens feature that led to its demise, or if the main
| thing that did it in was the bug-ridden Windows Phone platform.
| Or some combination of the two?
|
| I can't help but think that if Apple were to do something like
| this that it would sell like wildfire.
| romwell wrote:
| The Windows platform wasn't bug-ridden, it was a work-of-art
| UX, and I don't ever remember having issues with any of my
| Lumias.
|
| I held on to Windows Phone for a _long_ time. That platform
| suffered a slow death by abandonment. I can still use that
| phone, it 's just that I can't use half the apps on it anymore.
|
| The demise of Lumia was Microsoft pulling the plug on the OS.
| dougmany wrote:
| This is the first time I heard Windows phone being called bug-
| ridden. It was an awesome phone OS. It did not have many apps
| but the platform was solid. I still miss the way copy and paste
| worked.
| pianoben wrote:
| Once upon a time I was a Windows Phone developer, and I can
| confirm that it was monstrously difficult to write stable
| software for that platform. Many documented APIs just didn't
| adhere to their contracts, and you'd only learn by trial-and-
| error or, if you were lucky, by tracking down the Microsoft
| employee who wrote the API you were working with.
|
| As much as I loved the UX and rooted for the platform, the
| apps were just _bad_. Even first-party apps were depressingly
| crashy.
|
| This was circa Windows Phone 8; maybe it improved with
| subsequent releases.
| steelframe wrote:
| > This is the first time I heard Windows phone being called
| bug-ridden.
|
| From the Wikipedia article I linked:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_Lumia_1020#Reported_prob.
| ..
| romwell wrote:
| "Some users reported . . . " does not equal "bug-ridden".
|
| Windows Phone has been a very stable platform with stunning
| UX. The only _real_ problem it had was the developer
| marketshare.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Someone needs to compile a master list of unexpectedly branded
| Android phones:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/j9alwl/flashback_w...
|
| This must be the third camera company-brand phone after the Kodak
| Ektra and RED Hydrogen One.
| nradov wrote:
| Lamborghini, Porsche, and CAT have all slapped their name on
| Android phones.
| Laforet wrote:
| CAT phones actually offer some utility such as IR camera and
| laser rangefinder beyond the brand appeal. I almost bought an
| S61 back in the day but did not because it had no VoLTE
| capability.
| _trampeltier wrote:
| Would prefer to see a phone with a magnetic objective for low
| light photos.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > and so much glass that it comes with a magnetic lens cap.
|
| 90% of the glass is here for show. But I guess it fits Leica
| these days, very good props to pose with
| meepmorp wrote:
| I have no idea who this phone is meant to appeal to.
| lb1lf wrote:
| -People into vulgar displays of wealth?
|
| It may sound snarky, but there's definitely a market for that
| kind of thing - and this device, probably not by accident, is
| priced just so that you can afford it even if you're only
| aspiring to the wealth you wish to signal that you already
| possess.
|
| Clever.
| usrusr wrote:
| There's definitely a market like that but I'm not sure that
| this product is a good fit. I'd expect the typical buyer to
| more along the lines of being so wealthy that they don't even
| notice how hard they are displaying. What they show off isn't
| the price, it's that they consider bothering about smartphone
| performance to be beneath them. "I don't care if maybe some
| Samsung or Nokia or BenQ or Whatever is offering more for
| less. This phone does everything I need. Did you know that
| father was traveling with a Leica in his youth?"
| ipsum2 wrote:
| High end camera companies have been doing this for awhile.
|
| Leica has rebranded a mirrorless camera from Panasonic as their
| own, charging a 2x price for a red dot.
|
| Hasselblad rebranded a Sony camera with some faux wood paneling:
| https://petapixel.com/2015/06/13/hasselblad-lusso-to-be-a-lu...
| ginko wrote:
| There's also a phone with Hasselblad branded camera:
|
| https://www.cnet.com/news/oneplus-9-pro-hasselblad-camera-gr...
|
| Which is extra silly since 1) Hasselblad is a specialist for
| medium format cameras making a tiny sensor phone camera and 2)
| they don't and never made their own lenses (they get Zeiss
| lenses).
| cannaceo wrote:
| I owned both the Leica and the Panasonic. They weren't
| comparable. If your shooting in RAW there's no difference but
| the Leica firmware produced better photos.
| desine wrote:
| What a weird distinction. Those who shoot RAW are probably
| more likely to be the ones that spend for the upgrade in kit.
| Those that shoot JPEG/PNG I assume are more likely to not
| even notice the difference.
|
| And even then is a custom firmware worth the extra cost? No
| experience here, but I would think that the Panasonic would
| likely come with more frequent firmware updates, possibly
| closing the gap between the two over time.
|
| Interesting user experience you shared, thank you.
| desine wrote:
| I was thinking maybe they included better glass in the kits
| that made up for the costs. Linked article explains the 'blad
| came with a Zeiss lens, and was still overpriced for the combo.
| No info in article on the mentioned Leica but my expectations
| are similar disappointment.
|
| Everyone is now a lifestyle company
| lrem wrote:
| Hmmm, it states 1:1.9 and 19. Which would mean an apparent
| aperture of 10mm. But it doesn't look that large from the
| picture. What gives?
| RosanaAnaDana wrote:
| Hmm. I wonder if they'll do one with a lidar sensor at somepoint.
| strict9 wrote:
| For years I've been trying to find a small camera with GPS
| enabled yet with a sensor larger than the one in my iPhone and
| came to the conclusion that they are no longer made, perhaps due
| to battery drain.
|
| Looks like I should have been looking at phones instead, as this
| and another model mentioned in another comment (Lumix DMC-CM1)
| are a step above iPhone sensor-wise and also tag photos with
| location data.
| conductor wrote:
| There are compact cameras on the market which are able to
| connect to a smartphone (via Bluetooth) and take the GPS
| coordinates form there, apart from other functions (like
| uploading the photos).
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| I don't have an example handy, but there are software solutions
| that take a recorded GPS track and apply EXIF to photos based
| on timestamp. Heck, knocking that together with command line
| tools wouldn't be too terribly difficult.
| strict9 wrote:
| Thanks! I have tried software solutions in the past with my
| phone but its time-consuming and results were often terrible.
| I guess Canon set an expectation by putting GPS in some of
| their DSLRs.
| reidjs wrote:
| Is this the same Softbank, of WeWork fame? If so, this will be
| fun to watch!
| Apocryphon wrote:
| They're a massive telecom in addition to a massive investment
| fund. They previously owned Sprint. They're a huge corporation
| in general, that's how they started the Vision Fund in the
| first place.
| bdcravens wrote:
| Also of Uber and Slack fame. And that's just their VC arm.
|
| The mobile branch of the company is of Vodaphone fame.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| Only in Japan. Vodafone itself is a British company; they
| just sold their Japanese arm (Vodafone Japan) to SoftBank who
| eventually rebranded it as SoftBank Mobile.
| threeseed wrote:
| The whole point of VC is that some of the bets you make will
| turn out wrong.
|
| But that it is more than offset by all of the good bets.
| romwell wrote:
| Softbank of everything-in-Japan fame. It's a Keiretsu[1], so
| its reach can be surprising.
|
| So, yes, the same Softbank, also of Alibaba and T-Mobile fame
| (25% each).
|
| [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keiretsu
| bserge wrote:
| > the Leitz 1 is a rebranded Sharp Aquos R6
|
| Reality is often disappointing.
|
| Kind of getting tired of these brand name sales, Sharp for
| household electronics has been licensed to Beko and some Chinese
| company, for example. All for a quick buck.
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| Well there are only a few smartphone makers left, the industry
| has consolidated.
|
| Recently LG threw in the towel.
| wmeredith wrote:
| I think you're being too skeptical in this case. The point
| isn't the phone, it's that it comes with attachable Leica
| lenses.
| cuu508 wrote:
| *attachable Leica lens cap
| ipsum2 wrote:
| That's not in the article, where did you see that?
| toss1 wrote:
| According to other sources, it was jointly developed between
| Sharp and Leica [1]
|
| [1]
| https://www.gsmarena.com/sharp_aquos_r6_is_a_flagship_with_o...
| [deleted]
| ushakov wrote:
| anyone remembers what happened to the RED phone?
|
| https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/10/red-quits-the-smartp...
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/29/18027782/red-hydrogen-on...
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(page generated 2021-06-21 23:02 UTC)