Realme has officially unveiled its Interchangeable-Lens Concept smartphone at MWC 2025. The device, first teased a few days ago, was showcased alongside the company’s latest AI imaging technologies.
Interchangeable-lens concept: a step towards modular optics?
Unlike Apple and Samsung, Chinese smartphone makers have been trying to pack the best possible (often largest) optical equipment in their Ultra phones. But as you may have noticed, it has also increased the protrusion of the camera module by quite a bit. While the protrusion is said to be one of the biggest reasons why Samsung has yet to upgrade to larger sensors, it couldn’t prevent Realme and Xiaomi from experimenting.
Realme’s interchangeable-lens concept phone includes an additional custom Sony 1″ sensor with no integrated lens on top. The company showcased the prototype with two different lenses – a 73mm portrait lens and a 234mm telephoto lens. For context of the zoom range, the Galaxy S23 Ultra’s 10x telephoto lens has an equivalent focal length of 230mm. But what makes this prototype stand out is the high-quality lenses.
On top of that, this interchangeable-lens mechanism lets you capture zoomed shots from a 1″ sensor, which is rate for smartphones if not nonexistent. Not to mention, it lets you capture portraits on a smartphone with DSLR-like natural blur.
Nonetheless, Xiaomi experimented with this concept with the 12S Ultra concept phone back in 2022. The company has showcased an even crazier and more practical concept where the lens mount also includes the sensor, snaps like a MagSafe accessory, draws power from the phone, and sends the recorded data to that without you requiring to connect a single wire. You can learn more about Xiaomi’s latest development here.
We hope to see these two concepts turning into consumer products as they not only include some characteristic of a dedicated camera but also combine that with the AI-powered image processing, which even dedicated cameras lack.
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