So much for that quiet retirement. Just 14 months after selling off the entire Dutton Ranch bar the East Camp in order to spend quality time with Monica (Kelsey Asbille) and Tate (Brecken Merrill), Kayce Dutton is giving it all up home for high-stakes shootouts with gangs, cartels and race warriors.

Either Luke Grimes just really wanted a spinoff of his own, or Taylor Sheridan had a bombshell up his sleeve this whole time. We don’t know how much time has passed since the end of Yellowstone, but the character pivot comes as a major twist regardless, and that’s not the only surprising thing about Marshals.

The Kodak Snapic A1 is a 35mm analog film camera designed and manufactured by Hong Kong-based Reto Production – the same company behind other licensed Kodak analog models like the Ektar H35N and Charmera. Priced from just $99, it’s one of the more affordable ways to dip your toes into the world of film photography, and it comes loaded with enough retro charm to justify that novelty appeal.

The design is immediately striking. Available in off-white or dark gray, the clean-lined plastic body has just enough Kodak orange on the shutter button and logo to feel authentically branded without going overboard. It’s a look that calls to mind the retro-futuristic aesthetic of classic science fiction movies rather than a straightforward throwback, and in my book that’s a good thing. It slipped into my jacket pockets with ease, and the included neck strap and protective pouch are welcome additions that more budget-focussed cameras often skip.

Feature-wise, you get a three-element glass lens at 25mm with a fixed f/9.5 aperture and 1/100s shutter speed. There are two manual focus settings, plus an auto flash with red-eye reduction, automatic film advance and rewind, and a double-exposure shooting mode. A small but practical OLED panel on top displays battery life, remaining exposures, and current settings. It’s basic by design, but thoughtfully put together.

In good outdoor light, I found that the Snapic A1 delivers characterful, grainy 35mm shots with that all-important analog look. Vignetting and some chromatic aberration are present, but these feel like features rather than flaws. Indoors, however, the flash struggles; it lacks the reach and power to properly illuminate subjects beyond a few feet, making indoor shots a more hit-or-miss experience, particularly with slower film.

After both vivo and OPPO played around with their Pro flagships and made people rethink what smartphone photography is, Xiaomi has basically said, “without us?” That’s because the Chinese smartphone maker launched two phones yesterday, the Xiaomi 17 and the 17 Ultra, at the Mobile World Congress happening in Barcelona. While both phones look standard on the outside, Xiaomi has done extensive rework on its cameras. The headline feature is a new LOFIC-based 1-inch sensor on the Ultra, promising next-gen HDR and video performance that could rival that of the iPhone.

Xiaomi 17 Ultra: 1-Inch LOFIC Sensor and 200MP Zoom

The Xiaomi 17 Ultra is easily the headline act here. It is also the thinnest and lightest Ultra device Xiaomi has made so far, measuring 8.29mm thick and weighing just over 218g. It protected Xiaomi’s Guardian Structure, which includes Xiaomi Shield Glass 3.0 with improved drop resistance, a high-strength fiberglass back, an aluminum alloy frame, and an IP68 rating.

But the real story is the camera system. The Ultra introduces Xiaomi’s first 1-inch LOFIC main camera sensor, called the Light Fusion 1050L. LOFIC technology improves full-well capacity, enabling significantly better HDR performance and dynamic range. In simple terms, it should handle tricky lighting scenes far better than previous generations.

There’s also a Leica 200MP telephoto camera with a 75–100mm mechanical optical zoom. Xiaomi claims it maintains high image quality across the zoom range and can extend to a 400mm-equivalent focal length using advanced sensor tech. That’s serious reach for a smartphone. On the video side, the Xiaomi 17 Ultra supports Dolby Vision and ACES Log recording at up to 4K 120fps on both the main and telephoto cameras, positioning it as a true hybrid tool for creators.

Xiaomi 17: Compact Flagship With Big Ambitions

The standard Xiaomi 17 is slimmer at 8.06mm and lighter at 191g, but still packs serious hardware. It features a 1/1.31-inch Light Fusion 950 sensor with 2.4μm 4-in-1 Super Pixel technology, delivering strong dynamic range in varied lighting conditions.

It also includes a Leica 60mm floating telephoto lens that supports portrait photography, macro at 10cm, and up to 20x AI-assisted zoom. On the front, there’s a new 50MP selfie camera with improved autofocus. Like the Ultra, it supports 4K 60fps Dolby Vision and Log recording, making it suitable for creators who prefer a more compact device.

Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 & Big Batteries

Powering the Xiaomi 17 Series is the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 Mobile Platform, paired with the latest Qualcomm Oryon CPU, Adreno GPU, and Hexagon NPU. Xiaomi says the chip is optimized for heavy tasks like rapid photo capture, gaming, and multitasking, and we will put these claims to the test once we get our hands on the phone.

Battery life, however, is where things get a bit confusing. Somehow, the bigger Xiaomi 17 Ultra packs a 6000mAh battery with 90W wired and 50W wireless HyperCharge, while the smaller Xiaomi 17 goes even bigger with a 6330mAh battery and supports 100W wired and 50W wireless charging.

India Launch?

At the Xiaomi 17 series watch party yesterday, the company confirmed that both phones are headed to India on March 11th. Pricing is still under wraps, but given the price increase in European markets, these phones will cost a pretty penny.

Xiaomi and Leica’s Leitzphone wowed me with its incredible photography skills and fancy physical settings wheel, but it’s not the only exciting phone the company launched at this year’s MWC. The base Xiaomi 17 Ultra has many of the Leitzphone’s impressive specs but strips back some of the Leica stuff to be, well, more like a regular phone. 

It has the same potent Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 processor, 6.9-inch display and 6,000-mAh battery. The camera hardware is identical too, with the main camera using the same large LOFIC image sensor and the telephoto zoom using moving lens elements for continuous optical zoom. It’s an extremely potent camera setup — I absolutely love the images I’ve taken with it. 

So what’s different between this and the Leitzphone? It lacks the physical control wheel around the camera unit for one thing. Though I did enjoy using the dial, especially when I set it to control the exposure compensation, it’s absolutely not a dealbreaker that the 17 Ultra lacks it. There are no Leica color profiles in the camera app that let you mimic the tones you get from Leica’s regular standalone cameras. This is a shame as I adore the look of many of these profiles — especially Leica Chrome — but that’s just one man’s opinion. You may very well never miss them.

The base Ultra doesn’t have the custom black-and-white Leica Android interface either, but I don’t really like it anyway, as I struggle to tell which app is which without proper color cues. 

Physically, the Xiaomi 17 Ultra forgoes the Leica red dot logo on the back and the “Leica Camera Germany” etching on the side, which is no big deal if you’re not a Leica fan. Instead of being minimalist black and silver, the 17 Ultra comes in a sparkly, deep green tone that I really like. It reminds me of a fancy kitchen work surface. I honestly mean that as high praise.

The 17 Ultra is ostensibly the same phone as the Leitzphone; it’s just less in-your-face about its Leica credentials. It also comes at a lower price: £1,299 in the UK instead of the £1,699 you’ll need to shell out for the Leica model. Neither phone will be officially offered in the US, but for reference, those prices convert roughly to $1,750 and $2,290. 

Is that extra £400 worth it? Well, if you’re a real photo nerd like me and love the idea of having a Leica product in your pocket, then sure. The control wheel and Leica color profiles do make for a superb photography experience. But the base model is still an incredible camera, and that sparkly green design really is lovely. 

Watch this: A ‘Robot Phone,’ New Smart Glasses and 6G? Previewing MWC | Tech Today

02:47

Al and I were talking on the podcast today about a sweet 3D printed wide-format camera build, and we got to musing on why we 3D-print.

For Al, it’s an opportunity to experiment with 3D printing itself: tweaking his machines to get the best performance out of them. Other people make small, functional objects that they need in their daily life, like bag clips or spare parts for broken appliances. Some folks go for the ornamental or the aesthetic. The kids in my son’s class all seem obsessed with sci-fi props and fidget toys. The initial RepRap ideal was to replace all commercial fabrication with machines owned by the individual, rather than by companies – it was going to be Marxist revolutionary.

But there’s another group of 3D printer enthusiasts that I think doesn’t get enough coverage, and I’m going to call them the hobbyist industrial designers. These are the people who design a custom dog-poop-bag holder that exactly fits their extra-wide dog leash, not because they couldn’t find one that fit in the pet store, but because it’s simply fun to design and fabricate things. (OK, that’s literally me.)

It’s fun to learn CAD tools, to learn about how things are designed, how they work, and how to manufacture them at least in quantity one. Dreaming, designing, fabricating, failing, and repeating until you get it right is a great joy. And then you get to use the poop-bag holder every day for a few years, until you decide to refine the design and incorporate the lessons learned on the tough streets of practical use.

Of course none of this is exclusive to 3D printing. There were always people who designed-and-built things in the metal machine shop, or made their creations out of wood. In that sense, the 3D printer is just another tool, and the real fun isn’t in using the 3D printer, but rather in the process of bringing things out of your mind and into the world. So maybe there is nothing new here, but the latitude that 3D printing affords the hobby designer is amazing, and that makes it all the more fun, and challenging.

So do you 3D print for necessity, to stick it to the man, to pimp your printer, for the mini-figs, or simply for the joy of the process of making things? It’s all good. 3D printing is a big tent.