MWC 2025: Realme’s ‘Ultra’ concept brings the goodness of mirrorless cameras to smartphones

Realme has showcased the much-awaited ‘Ultra’ phone concept at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2025 event. The concept brings the goodness of mirrorless cameras to a smartphone body, letting users get the most out of their phone cameras. 

What’s great about the concept phone is that it features a 1-inch-type camera sensor and supports interchangeable lenses, allowing for 10x optical zoom. Here’s everything you need to know about the Realme Ultra.

What’s special about the Realme Ultra?

Realme’s Ultra concept looks like something out of the ordinary. From the front, it may look like your regular smartphone, but from the rear, you may mistake it for a mirrorless camera. While it’s not exactly a mirrorless camera, it does act like one, thanks to the support for interchangeable lenses. 

The Realme Ultra features a massive camera island that holds only two camera sensors. The first unit is a 1-inch-type sensor and the other sensor is an ultra-wide unit. For telephoto, you’ll need to use an external lens, and the one attached to the phone at the Realme booth is a 10x telephoto lens. 

Realme showcased two interchangeable lenses for the phone – a 73mm lens that offers 3x zoom for portraits and a 234mm lens for 10x zoom. No word on the lenses, but they use Leica’s L-mount with an adapter to attach to the phone. 

ALSO READ: The Realme 14 Pro series has a bigger battery than some power banks

Notably, since these are actual lenses, there’s no auto focus support; You’ll have to manually focus on the subject. Also, when using the lenses, you may have to be fully steady as the stabilisation may not be on point. But regardless, this concept does look great and no doubt will excite camera nerds. 

It’s unclear if Realme plans to make such a device commercially available anytime soon. But we’ll surely know more about that later. Until then, stay tuned to Unboxed by Croma for all the on-ground coverage from MWC 2025.