“Leica” branded phone spotted in Tenaa but we wonder
if Leica knows anything about it? Huawei and Leica have forged a successful
partnership over the past few years. Huawei has used the Leica name to boost
sales in its phones and Leica has helped Huawei to improve camera performance
in its top end offerings.
It’s been a winning combination both abroad and in
China, and other brands have started to notice but not in a good way. In an
ideal world, we would hope to see other phone makers team up with high-end
cameras makers to boost performance, but this hasn’t happened yet, what has
happened though is a knock-off Leica phone instead.
While browsing through the latest device to receive
official TENAA approval, we came across a smartphone branded as Leica, in fact,
the Leica name is written on the rear of the phone beneath the dual camera
module.
According to the TENAA information, the phone is
manufactured by Leica Electronic (Shenzhen) Co. LTD which isn’t the same Leica
we know and love for their stunning cameras, nor the Leica that works with
Huawei.
According to the TENAA listing, this knock-off Leica
phone will support TD LTE networks meaning that it’s only been developed the
Chinese phone market in mind, although it will have WCDMA support so should
work on 3G networks outside of China too.
Specs for Leica YCT12 included a 5.5inch 1920 x 1080
display, 2950mAh battery, a 1.25Ghz chipset, 2-3GB RAM and options for 32-64GB
internal memory. It appears that the camera specs including a front 2-megapixel
sensor which has been fudged to take 8-megapixel photos, and the rear main
camera is an 8-megapixel unit interpolated to 13 megapixels. There are no
details as to the specs of the secondary rear camera. Another hint that this
phone is only intended to launch in China is the YUN OS 5.1.1 operating system
which is essentially Android with all of the Google apps replaced with
China-friendly services.
