#089: Xiaomi 17T Pro
I got the Xiaomi 17T Pro last month, which means I can now say I've officially bought a Leica-branded product. Hurray! Achievement unlocked? (Yes, I know. The M9-P was a different era, and it was on loan to me, so let me have this one.)
Naturally, I've been taking it out for a spin. The trouble is the haze, which has been sitting over the city for over a couple of months now (for as long as I have had this new phone) and shows no sign of leaving- it has put a hold on a lot of outdoor activities. Not many days have been ideal for testing a camera on the streets of KL. Still, from the "small" sample of shots I've taken so far (in the very few times I did get to go out), I've reached one big conclusion: I am not used to the Xiaomi+Leica colours/processing. The way this phone processes an image in-camera is not what I'm used to, or what I expected. It isn't bad. It just isn't mine. It’s also probably just a mindset change… eventually.
The Xiaomi 17T Pro in the Deep Blue colour.
Some background. I've used Google Pixel phones since the very first one. The last was the Pixel 6, which has been my constant for the past three years, and the 3a and 5a came in between (I've written about them before on this blog, if you're curious). That's nearly a decade of Google's image processing, and somewhere along the way I stopped noticing it was there. I knew how a Pixel would handle a backlit stall on a street corner. I knew roughly how it would flatten a harsh midday sky, how far it would lift the shadows and how it captures portraits of people. I never edited a Pixel photo to "fix" it. I edited it to finish it. Without ever deciding to, I had adopted Google's taste as my own, especially for all the family snaps that fill most of my camera roll.
The Pixel 6 was due for retirement, and in diving into the vast mobile phone market… the Xiaomi 17T Pro offered a lot more phone for the money, especially with the amazing price I got through my mobile carrier. That was the practical reason, and an easy one to make. The heart, I'll admit, still wanted a Pixel. The Pixel 10a was on offer too, and the new Pixel 11s were just way too expensive for me, for now. The Xiaomi just had better value as an overall phone.
So then, when it comes to the photography side of things, I've shot almost entirely in two profiles, Leica Vibrant and Leica Authentic, straight out of the camera, plus a few frames in the high-contrast black-and-white simulation (more on that maybe in a different post). There are plenty more “looks” to play with, and I'll get to them eventually. For now, I wanted to see what the phone camera and processing does when I leave its “natural” settings.
What it does, when the light is good, is produce nice, sharp images, that are overly sharpened style as you'd expect from a processed phone camera. When the light is poor, though, the processing gets louder. Contrast goes up, saturation goes up, and the whole frame sounds like it's shouting to be heard.
That's my verdict so far: these images are far more contrasty and saturated than the Pixel photos I'm used to. Also, from the general shots I have been getting, I feel that they are almost always a tad underexposed.
I can't say yet whether I like it. Some frames, like the wet road reflection and the pink flower on a rainy morning, I like more than I expected. Others I look at and think a Pixel would have been calmer about the whole thing. Mostly I've noticed that I'm no longer sure what I'm looking at. After nearly a decade of knowing where a phone photo would land, I'm guessing again. It's mildly irritating, and yet also quite good for me. With the Pixel, I took the photo and moved on. With this one, I want to experiment.
The telephoto lens is new for me as well. I've never had a 5x optical zoom in my pocket before, and framing shots at that focal length has been fun. I'll be doing a lot more of it.
This isn't a complete review, and I doubt I'll ever write one. It's a month plus of notes from the streets of KL: from markets, from a rainy Chinatown, from the Mid-Autumn lion dance, and from a few too many pictures of fruits. The colours are still not quite mine, and they may never be unless I start processing the files myself. For now, I'll take them as they come. This is the only phone I'll have for the foreseeable future, so I'd better get used to it.
You'll notice the Leica watermark on a few of the photos. I was testing out that feature. It was also my way of announcing to the world that I now have a Leica in my pocket when I share the images with friends.
I got a few exciting trips planned for the year-end, which I will put the Xiaomi 17T Pro through even more tests. And maybe, just maybe… I may even venture into doing some vlogs using the video features on this camera!
For now, the images below were all taken with the Xiaomi 17T Pro, using mostly the Leica Vibrant and Leica Authentic profiles, all straight out of the camera, then just resized for the purpose of this blog. Predominantly from the main lens, then some from the wide-angle lens and then the telephoto lens, all mixed in.
Enjoy!
Cheers.
