The Xiaomi 14 Ultra borrows a top-tier main camera sensor from the Oppo Find X7 Ultra?

Last year, the Xiaomi 13 Ultra was all about photography, packing some serious camera hardware and thoughtful post-processing software tricks.

It’s 2024 and it’s time for the Xiaomi 14 Ultra to be born. It seems that this upcoming flagship will stay true to its ancestor, as the Xiaomi 14 Ultra is rumored to pack a brand new state-of-the-art sensor from Sony. So far, it’s found on the Oppo Find X7 Ultra – the mobile photography world is in love with this phone right now (it shines with a dual periscope telephoto setup, offering 3x and 6x optical zoom).

Also, there’s a possibility that the Xiaomi 14 Ultra will launch in a few weeks. Let’s get into it.

What’s so special about this new main camera sensor?

The Xiaomi 14 Ultra might get the Sony LYT-900 one-inch type sensor, the spiritual successor to the insanely popular and beloved IMX989 sensor from Sony.

LYT is short for LYTIA, and that’s the new product brand of image sensors for mobile devices developed by SSS (Sony Semiconductor Solutions Corporation).

It’s pronounced “Lye-tee-ya”, not Lithya, Lythia or Litya.

The LYT-900 sensor is named a bit like a Terminator (remember the T-800 and the T-1000?) and is expected to be as efficient as them. The LYT-900 is the top-of-the-line model in Sony’s LYT series, being a 50-megapixel one-inch type sensor with individual pixels measuring 1.6μm.

The LYT-900 beast could potentially be installed in another upcoming camera-centric phone: the vivo X100 Pro Plus. On a side note: the rumor has it that this vivo device will bring a 200MP periscope telephoto camera with 10x optical and 200x digital zoom to the table. My my my!

What else?

In case that’s not enough for you, there’s more that makes the Xiaomi 14 Ultra a camera beast.

Per the Android Headlines report, the new Ultra from Xiaomi could offer a variable aperture of f/1.6 through f/4.0 for the main sensor. The 50MP periscope telephoto zoom camera will reportedly have a f/2.5 lens and 120mm focal length. The phone is rumored to offer a 50MP ultrawide camera and a second 50MP zoom camera.

On the non-camera related stuff: the Xiaomi 14 Ultra could include a curved OLED display with a 2K resolution and a 120Hz refresh rate, a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor paired with up to 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM, up to 1TB of UFS 4.0 storage, a 5,180mAh battery with 90W wired charging and 50W wireless charging, an ultrasonic in-display fingerprint scanner, two-way satellite communication, and Android 14-based HyperOS.

The rumors are that the Xiaomi 14 Ultra is about to be unveiled at the end of February. Hmm, let’s see what’s set for the end of February… Oh, right: the MWC 2024 in Barcelona! We already talked about the possibility of the Xiaomi 14 rolling out globally at the MWC 2024 and we expressed hopes that the Xiaomi 14 Pro could also make it to Barcelona.

If, however, we get a Spanish unveiling of the Ultra variant as well, it’d be another Christmas.