Last week, we were graciously invited by Xiaomi India to the wonderful Vietnamese island of Phú Quốc. The purpose of the visit was to check out the cameras on the new Xiaomi 17 series phones and put them through their paces in this bustling, vibrant environment.
Our weapon of choice for this trip was the flagship Xiaomi 17 Ultra. This phone has a broad array of cameras on the back, including a 50MP main camera, a 50MP ultra-wide camera, and a 200MP telephoto camera with a variable 3.2x to 4.3x optical zoom. We recently did a full review of this phone, which you can check out here.
All of the photos below were captured on the phone running the latest global firmware. They were captured in the phone’s camera app in JPEG, with occasional in-camera filters enabled. Some of the photos go back and forth between the two shooting modes the phone offers, the default Leica Vibrant mode and the more muted Leica Authentic mode. The images have not been altered in any other way.
Telephoto camera
Let’s start with the star of the show, which is that 200MP telephoto camera. On our first day of the trip, we visited Grand World along the northern coast of the island city. This is a tourist attraction that has been expertly modeled after the Italian city of Venice, along with a few other European influences, but look closer, and some of the local Vietnamese charm still comes through.
The Leica Vibrant mode was in its element here, pulling stunning color out of these flamboyant buildings that surrounded the central canal. The telephoto camera has excellent image quality, and while the 3.2x-4.3x optical zoom range did seem limited, a quick punch to the 8x mode produced exceptionally usable results.
Later in the day, we drove all the way to the southern tip of this tiny island. This area also featured European architectural influences and housed a great many attractions, including this stunning Kiss Bridge, which is a bridge that’s split in the middle and requires a couple to travel individually from either side to meet in the middle. Then there’s also the Dragon Staircase, which snakes upwards through a wall of vines. The day ended with a rousing performance at the Kiss of the Sea show, which projects moving images on a wall of water with live performances underneath, as well as a breathtaking fireworks show afterwards.
Telephoto camera
On our second day, we went back to the northern tip of the island, this time to a place called Rạch Vẹm. From there, we took a short boat ride to Starfish Beach, a cosy beach area with crystal clear shallow waters and hundreds of thousands of starfish dotting the coastline. Finally, the day ended with a fire dance show back at the hotel.
Telephoto camera
Speaking of the hotel, a special mention must be made of this gorgeous school of koi in the hotel’s lobby area.
Telephoto camera
We also shot some images from the main 50MP camera. These aren’t as numerous, but that’s not due to a lack of quality. It’s just that it was so much more fun to punch in every time with the telephoto and get more striking shots than with the rather generic look of the typical wide-angle lens. Still, this camera is a capable shooter, and with a switch to an aspect ratio, you can certainly get some interesting-looking shots from this camera as well.
Main camera
Finally, here are some shots from the 50MP ultra-wide camera. This isn’t the sharpest camera in the world, nor the sharpest camera on this phone, but it certainly has a more interesting perspective than the main wide-angle camera, while having reasonably good image quality and color performance to keep up with the high standards of this phone.
Xiaomi had also provided us with the Photography Kit for the Xiaomi 17 Ultra, which included a case and grip that transform the phone into basically a point-and-shoot camera. However, we ultimately chose to use the phone in its naked form, just to see how well it would hold up without augmentations. The Photography Kit is certainly a nice thing to have if you are serious about this stuff, but from experience, we can say that you don’t need it, and that the phone handles quite well even without it, thanks to its generous proportions and easy-to-use UI.
And that’s a wrap for this trip. We hope you will enjoy looking at these images as much as we did while capturing them. There is no shortage of great camera phones on the market today, and we could not be happier about that, but if you vibe with the ‘phone’ part of this cameraphone, then the Xiaomi 17 Ultra should be on top of your shopping list.
