We may have forgotten it but it was Vivo that brought us the in-display fingerprint sensor, the first pop-up camera and the use of the whole screen as an ear-piece. Now, it’s come in with another innovation on its X50 series of smartphones. We’re looking at the X50 Pro because the X50 Pro Plus hasn’t been launched in India — just the X50 and the X50 Pro. The innovation has to do with one of the things that users love most about a smartphone: the camera. What Vivo has done is to build in a gimble into the camera. What it does is to move around to compensate for shaking resulting in silky smooth video footage. So good that it outdoes the iPhone 11 Pro in the stabilisation department — for the most part.

The X50 Pro is a good looking device, though it isn’t entirely standout. It’s very slim and feels more so because of the curves they’ve put in. It has a lovely matte finish satiny back in a beautiful shade of grey they call Alpha Grey. The light falls on it to make it shine in a way that just tells you grey is a colour too and sometimes a very pretty one. The smooth finish doesn’t overly show finger smudges, which is a nice bonus. But what is most unusual and noticeable on the back is really the camera assembly. It looks immediately different from anything else you’ll have seen and tells you this phone is serious about its photography.

Three degrees every way

Smartphones

use all they can to make up for handshake and stabilise photos and video. They have some degree of optical stabilisation, electronic stabilisation and even use AI to help out. But Vivo has put in a physical element that actually moves the sensor, a fact that can even be seen in the camera system at times. The gimble in the camera actually compensates for 3 degrees of movement either way. So as you walk around on a bumpy path or go down the stairs you’ll find the footage way smoother than usual. It actually compares with the top video phone right now which is the iPhone 11 Pro and can often come up with smoother results, though of course that doesn’t mean it can beat it on every other quality parameter of video shooting. But yes, it works, and no, it’s not a gimmick. The gimble helps with night photography as well. It’s more likely to be the start of something we will see on more phones in the future and no doubt it will be perfected.

More camera smarts

The X50 Pro boasts of really good night photography — and that too turns out not to be bad at all. Vivo says it isn’t just low light but no light that its cameras can tackle, but while I didn’t find the no-light claim to be quite that accurate, it certainly is true that given just a little light, the camera comes up with an image that can show what the human eye can’t see. Google’s Pixel phones have been doing this for a while now as well. The camera app has a ‘Starry Sky’ mode which I couldn’t test out on any stars since I really couldn’t find any in the Delhi sky, but which I found does a nice job of reducing blown out highlights if you’re shooting at a light source at night. The night images obviously have a bit of noise, specially if you zoom in, but on the whole are quite nice. I even used it to read things like car numbers in the night way up from the second floor.

The main camera is a 48MP Sony IMX598 and it’s the one with the gimble. There’s an 8MP ultra wide angle lens which doubles up as a macro lens. It’s nicely distortion-free. There’s a 13MP depth sensor for portraits and an 8MP telephoto lens with 2X zoom and a zoom in a periscope arrangement. The front camera is a 32MP and does its bit to beautify you, like it or not. I suspect most will. I certainly thought my selfies looked better than usual, without taking away from the sharpness.

The X50 Pro has a really gorgeous 6.56 inch Full HD screen — not surprising when you find it’s a Samsung AMOLED. It’s crisp and has the expected deep colours and contrasts adding hugely to the experience of using the smartphone. It’s a 90Hz refresh rate screen which is really quite fast enough. The display supports HDR-10 content. It has a tiny punch hole top left and it’s barely noticeable long enough to be objectionable. There’s a single speaker at the bottom on this phone and while it sounds quite nice and undistorted, you have to be sure you don’t cover it up with your fingers. There’s no 3.5mm headphone jack.

This phone runs on the Snapdragon 765G not the 865 which is reserved for the top of the line X50 Pro Plus. It’s powerful enough, combining as it does with 8GB RAM and 256GB of storage. It works on Android 10 and Vivo’s FunTouch OS 10.5 which I’m afraid I’m not fond of but am getting accustomed to specially as it comes across quite neatly on this phone. There’s a 4,315mAh battery which holds up very well over the day and anyway charges fast with its 33W charger. This also happens to be a 5G phone. Overall, there’s a lot on offer for the price and for what is essentially a mid-range phone or a ‘pre-premium’ phone.

Price: ₹49,990 (₹34,990 and ₹37,990 for the X50)

comment COMMENT NOW