How much do you want to make sure your friends know you are using the Xiaomi 13T Pro‘s awesome camera? If your answer is “yes”, then you will want to make sure you get the biggest Leica watermark that Xiaomi has included. And yes, they are actually bigger than the one I used during my review period of the Xiaomi 13T Pro. In fact, some of them end up taking up more space than the photos themselves.
How to get it?
In the Camera app, you have access to two watermarks. A more minimalistic one that reminds me of the ones featured on HUAWEI flagships with Leica cameras of yore, and one that’s adds a whole white bar underneath with the camera parameters, and the option to show the timestamp and also the coordinates where you took the shot. But if you want to switch it up, you will have to go to the Gallery app.
Open your image, tap the Edit icon. Switch to the AI tab and select Art framing. Here you can opt to remove the watermark, or choose from the 10 Leica frames. All of them have the option to be switched to black, perfect for you to match your Instagram aesthetic. By default, it will crop into the center of the image you’re editing, but you can touch it to move it around, or use two fingers to zoom in or out. Nifty.
Do I think this is useful? No. But do I find it cool? Yes. I mean, if I am really creating art, I would love to have these frames to help me create a nicer Instagram profile. But it is also quite obnoxious to have such a big watermark flexing your Leica camera. And if you want, you can actually stack the watermarks for an abomination like the above image.
And oh, Xiaomi has apparently patched the camera app to not run on any other MIUI device, which renders our leaked Leica app useless, but with the Xiaomi 13T series, the starting price of a Leica-branded smartphone has been reduced significantly. If you’re after the Leica-branded smartphone camera, Xiaomi has really lowered the barrier of entry with the Xiaomi 13T, which starts from just RM1,999.