If you’ve been following HUAWEI’s smartphone game over the past few years, you must’ve noticed the Leica branding on the camera hardware. The troubled Chinese smartphone maker has been an exclusive partner of the German camera brand for a while now when it comes to imaging hardware on its phones. However, it appears that Leica is now looking to forge partnerships with more smartphone brands, with some of the names being thrown in the rumor mill including Xiaomi, Honor, and Sharp. The latter has actually launched a phone called AQUOS R6 with a giant 1-inch camera sensor and some Leica expertise.

The collaboration may still continue with Huawei even if Leica includes another brand, for example Zeiss have 3 brands, Sony, Vivo and HMD Nokia
+ Nothing is confirmed about that Xiaomi thing, do don’t hype about it too much, too early. https://t.co/pOzav8MP7O

— Teme (特米)? (@RODENT950) May 16, 2021

The point here is that joining hands with a camera brand doesn’t mean the results are going to make a huge difference. In fact, that is far from being the truth. Apple’s iPhones and Google’s Pixel phones have excelled at photography without any garish camera branding, and so has Samsung with its Galaxy S series flagships. The exact details of Leica’s involvement in the development of HUAWEI’s smartphone cameras are not known, but it is unlikely that Leica is the key reason behind the stellar camera performance of HUAWEI’s flagships.