Leak: Another major photography brand to bring its expertise to the phone world

Update: July 2, 2021 (5:57 AM ET): A Weibo tipster has now claimed that realme will announce a partnership with camera company Kodak. We’re not sure about this leaker’s track record, so we’d recommend you take this with a pinch of salt.

Original article: July 2, 2021 (2:06 AM ET): It seems like plenty of smartphone brands on the market have a partnership with a camera manufacturer right now. This trend doesn’t seem to be abating anytime soon, as it sounds like one more smartphone manufacturer could join the party.

Weibo leaker Digital Chat Station has claimed that realme will announce a partnership with a “veteran camera manufacturer.” There’s no exact word on when to expect this announcement, although the machine-translated post seemingly suggests we could hear the news at the realme GT Master Edition launch. In any event, who could be the camera partner in question?

Well, the tipster specifically rules out Sony in a comment below the post. We’ve also seen Leica team up with HUAWEI and Sharp, ZEISS team up with vivo and HMD, and Hasselblad partner with OnePlus. There have also been strange rumors that Samsung could launch Olympus-branded smartphones in 2022.

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That doesn’t leave many other camera companies on the table for realme, but some potential candidates include Canon, Fujifilm, Nikon, Panasonic, Pentax, and Polaroid. Either way, we hope this is more than just a branding exercise and extends to actual photography and videography improvements if realme is indeed taking this route.

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