Vivo X50 Pro Review: Gimbal Camera Works, But There’s More To Like Elsewhere.

Vivo X50 Pro Review: Gimbal Camera Works, But There’s More To Like Elsewhere.

The Vivo X50 Pro.

Last month, I tested the Vivo X50 Pro, a mid-tier smartphone released for the China market with a headline-grabbing hardware innovation:

Its main camera is built on a miniature-sized three-axis gimbal that fits inside the phone’s 8mm body.

Vivo launched the global version of the phone for various markets in Europe and Southeast Asia, which I’ve been testing for the past week.

There’s no difference between the China and global version in terms of hardware, so the pros and cons of the gimbal camera in my thorough video test still apply here to the global version.

But after using the phone fully for a period of time now, I’m impressed by the rest of the package: the X50 Pro is one of the best mid-rangers out right now.

Let’s talk the gimbal first.

I explained the gimbal camera technology more closely in my previous article, so I’ll just summarize here: a gimbal is a pivot stabilizing system that keeps a camera lens “floating,”

so its video footage would suffer less from the shocks and jolts of our body movement. Most smartphones today already offer two forms of stabilization:

electronic image stabilization (EIS, aka software stabilization) and optical image stabilization (OIS, a.k.a. hardware stabilization), so the gimbal camera really is just another form of OIS.

But whereas the OIS in an iPhone or a Samsung Galaxy only stabilize two axes: vertical and horizontal, otherwise known as the x- and y-axis.

Vivo’s new gimbal tech introduces a third axis of movement (z-axis), that is more akin to moving toward and away from the subject.

Because the gimbal is so tiny, the z-axis movement is subtle, but can actually be seen from the outside if a user looks at the camera lens closely as the phone moves.

A rendering of Vivo's gimbal camera technology.

Vivo.

Does this gimbal camera work? The short answer is yes. However, the more complicated answer is that you’ll really only see the extra stabilization in relatively extreme situations, like filming while running, climbing stairs, or in low-light environments.

This is more a testament to how good EIS has gotten on top phones than a knock against the gimbal system. To see the video tests I did comparing the X50 Pro against Apple, Huawei and Google’s best, please see the video here.

The gimbal inside the phone sometimes needs to be calibrated, just like a typical gimbal.

That the gimbal isn’t a major game-changer isn’t cause for much complaint in my view, because the X50 Pro isn’t selling at a marked up, premium price.

Vivo isn’t charging us extra to try this new tech. Even if the benefits are relatively small, this new gimbal system still brings only positives, no negatives.

And the tech has the potential to be improved in the next generation.

The rest of the phone.

Outside of the gimbal camera, the Vivo X50 Pro is a sleek, well-built glass sandwich smartphone with a high refresh OLED screen that supports 5G:

these are the basic checkmarks every flagship phone has to hit, and Vivo’s hit it despite being priced way below the flagship level.

The Vivo X50 Pro's 6.5-inch OLED screen.

At just a sliver under 8mm and 180g, the X50 Pro is the lightest and thinnest 5G smartphone right now, this is due to the usage of the Snapdragon 765G instead of 865.

The latter is a more powerful processor, but also requires a separate modem which adds weight, bulk and production costs.

The 765G is more than good enough from my testing. Whatever benefits the 865 bring can barely be felt in the real world. Mobile processors have gotten so powerful, I don’t think it’s necessary for brands to keep chasing the top ones, especially since Qualcomm has ramped up pricing.

By going with the 765G, Vivo shaved anywhere from $100 to $200 off the final retail price with the X50 Pro. In fact, Google is rumored to take this same approach with this year’s Pixel 5, and potentially Samsung, too.

The X50 Pro's 90Hz OLED screen.

The phone is sleek and thin.

The X50 Pro is missing some of the extra flourishes that premium phones get, such as wireless charging, IP68 water resistance and stereo speakers.

The haptic vibration engine here is also on the weak side, but these are not dealbreakers to most people.

Optics.

Aside from the main gimbal camera, the X50 Pro has a versatile camera setup with an 8-megapixel ultrawide camera; 13-megapixel portrait lens; and a Periscope zoom camera.

The latter can capture 5x optical zoom and digital zoom up to 60x. It’s nice to have, but Vivo’s implementation isn’t as advanced as Huawei’s or Oppo’s, in that shots beyond 20x start to suffer from a major loss of sharpness.

Still, I’m comparing it against the top zoom phones. Against phones without a Periscope lens, like an iPhone, the X50 Pro’s 10x shots are much sharper.

Two sample images captured by the X50 Pro: the left is an ultrawide angle image, the right a 60X ... [+] zoom.

Two photo samples captured by the X50 Pro.

Two photo samples captured by the Vivo X50 Pro.

The main 48-megapixel camera does a great job of capturing colors and details during the day; at night, there’s more noise and grain as expected, but still very serviceable.

The ultrawide angle camera captures really wide 120-degree shots, but details are not as sharp as other flagships. Against phones in its price range, however, the X50 Pro holds its own and wins in many areas.

Software and performance.

Vivo’s software skin has not been popular with consumers and reviewers in the west in the past, but this latest version is a big improvement.

It behaves a lot closer to Google’s vision of Android, and the overall aesthetic is lively and colorful without going overboard. Software experience overall is fine.

I used the phone as my daily driver for a week, and found the lightness of it to be much welcomed,

considering 2020 flagships are all relatively heavy and bulky. The X50 Pro is a very easy to use one-hand phone.

The 4,315 mAh battery is enough to power the phone all day without much issue, although Vivo’s 44W fast-charging brick is noticeably slower than Oppo’s 65W.

A hardware trendsetter going mainstream.

Vivo may not get much recognition for it on a global scale, but it has set the trends for several hardware and software features that are not standard:

Vivo pioneered the in-display fingerprint scanner; the pop-up selfie camera; and it actually introduced swipe gesture navigation months before Apple did it with the iPhone X.

The X50 Pro is the thinnest 5G phone around.

Whether the gimbal camera system will catch on and become another major hardware feature remains to be seen. Electronic image stabilization has gotten very, 

very good in gadgets, to the point that optical image stabilization is more a luxury than necessity. However, if Vivo fine tunes the hardware and increases its range of movement, it could provide more noticeable stabilization by gen two.

I wouldn’t recommend buying the X50 Pro just for the gimbal camera, but instead,

I’d recommend getting the X50 Pro for a very capable and good looking mid-tier smartphone.
.
iPhone 11 Pro Max Review.
https://engineermoin18.blogspot.com/2020/07/iphone-11-pro-max-review-july-2020-in.html
.
Samsung Galaxy A31
https://engineermoin18.blogspot.com/2020/07/samsung-galaxy-a31-review.html
.

iPhone 11 Pro Max deals - July 2020.
https://engineermoin18.blogspot.com/2020/07/the-best-iphone-11-pro-max-deals-july.html
.
Vivo V19 Smartphone.
https://engineermoin18.blogspot.com/2020/07/review-vivo-v19-smartphone.html
.
Oppo F15.
https://engineermoin18.blogspot.com/2020/07/oppo-f15-tipped-to-get-4gb-ram-variant.html