Vivo
X100 and X100 Pro smartphones are now official. The company launched the two devices aimed at enhancing smartphone photography by bringing several industry firsts. The Vivo X series has traditionally been a camera-centric smartphone and this time, the company is ‘chasing the Sun’ – in literal sense.
Vivo
X100 series
of smartphones are designed in India and will be made in India, the company said.
TOI Tech-Gadgets Now too got some time with the new phones, and we played around with it, testing its camera prowess.
Vivo X100 Pro
is priced at Rs 89,999 for the lone 16GB+512GB storage version. It will be available in Asteroid Black colour option.
Design
Vivo says that the X100 has a Moon Halo design and the Pro version gets that Sun Halo design. There are noticeable changes when it comes to the main camera setup. The camera module is centrally aligned taking up massive space on the back panel, and bulges out because of the camera tech under the hood.
The smartphone is a bit on the heavier side and we thought it has a slightly non-uniform weight distribution. It has a great in-hand feel and due to its taller stance, it is easy to hold. This also makes one-hand operation difficult, especially those who have smaller hands will have a difficulty in reaching out to top.
Having said that, the phone is thin enough to slide down the pockets of a mildly tight pants/ jeans and the cover included in the box provides a fuller feel. It has a bright display with punchy colour reproduction and nice under-the-sun visibility.
Camera
Vivo is betting on the new camera features and hardware. It continues its partnership with Zeiss to provide software magic and some hardware capabilities to realise the post-processing. Vivo also said that the camera has a 1-inch sensor which is newly-tuned to provide clearer and more dramatic photos as compared to the competition.
The Vivo X100 Pro features a 50MP triple camera setup with ZEISS main camera and ZEISS APO Floating Telephoto Camera with the ability to zoom at up to 100x. The ZEISS APO Floating Telephoto Camera comes with Vario-Apo-Sonnar standards from ZEISS to click high-quality images when zoomed in.
The Vivo X100 Pro also comes with Optical Precision Calibration in ZEISS main camera for SLR-level image stabilisation. It also gets Multi-ALD technology in the T* coating to help in accurately capturing clear images with minimal reflection
There are several features that we have already seen in the X90 Pro but some of the new ones seem to be giving digital cameras a run for their money. One of the features that we tried and went back to was multifocal imaging on a smartphone.
The smartphone’s portrait mode now has options to choose focal lengths to shoot a portrait. Unlike a digital SLR camera where a photographer can shoot with one lens (35mm or 50mm) at a time, Vivo X100 Pro allows users to capture portrait shots by choosing 24mm, 35mm, 50mm and other focal lengths by just a tap.
Each option emulates a different lens giving an impression of different lenses in a smartphone. The company is also taking software magic to a new level. Apart from choosing different focal lengths for portrait shots, the algorithm, Vivo says, helps the phone to accurately process the scene in which an image is shot to being the best version of the photo.
Here are some portraits and other images shot from the smartphone:
Apart from this, Vivo is offering three shooting modes – Vivid, Zeiss and Textured. If you are shooting in vivid mode, the photos will turn out to be catchy with a little saturation. If you want an image that is as close as to what you see from a naked eye, you can choose the Zeiss mode. It will also allow users to have more bandwidth on the editing table. Textured mode enhances textures in an image.
Software and hardware
The Vivo X100 Pro runs Android 13 out-of-the-box with the company promising at least two years of milestone updates and 4 years of security updates. To handle all the processing, Vivo has put its faith in MediaTek 9300 SoC, coupled with up to 16GB of RAM. During our time with the phone, we did not feel any lag or problems of any sorts while doing the daily stuff.
The phone held up well till the end of the day but we ended up needing a charger by 10pm. The phone packs a 5400mAh battery with support for 100W charging. Our phone was fully charged in about half an hour, so that’s a breather if you are a power user.
What we think
The Vivo X100 Pro is a good package of camera, design and hardware. It brings some new features in the smartphone photography space such as a telephoto camera with a unique Telephoto Sunshot feature. Audiences looking for a phone that can – in some ways – replace their old DSLR cameras can consider buying this.
English (US) ·