The cameras on our phones won’t stop getting bigger. Xiaomi’s new 15 Ultra is dominated by an enormous ring of cameras on the back, Nothing has rethought its camera layout from scratch to fit a periscope into the Phone 3A Pro, and consistent rumors suggest that even Apple is going to strap a big ol’ camera bar onto the back of its iPhone 17 Pro models later this year. But why stop there? What if you could get all of the heft and weight of a real camera and burden your phone with it? What if we could make your phone camera much, much bigger?

That’s what both Xiaomi and Realme have attempted to do at this year’s Mobile World Congress, with two very different concept phones that each attempt to bridge the gap between a smartphone and a DSLR.

Realme’s attempt is the most familiar. In fact, its “interchangeable lens concept,†which mounts a full DSLR lens onto the existing camera island of its concept phone, is remarkably similar to a concept that Xiaomi already showed off in 2022. The phone here is itself custom, not based on any of Realme’s existing smartphones, and includes two typical cameras on the rear, plus a third, customized one-inch-type sensor from …

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