The Vivo X100 Will Be Available on January 4th

Vivo has officially announced the debut of the Vivo X100 series in India. On January 4, the smartphone maker will release the Vivo X100 and Vivo X100 Pro in India. The phones have already been introduced in China, therefore we are aware of their specifications.

The Vivo X100 series, like all prior X series smartphones, includes camera-focused phones. The Vivo X100 and Vivo X100 Pro include Dimensity 9300, a strong camera configuration, and other features.

This is a wonderfully competent cameraphone, with a floating periscope telephoto lens that may make it the best zoom and portrait camera on the market. Its abilities are not limited to photography. There’s a huge battery, quick charging, and an insanely brilliant display, and it’s powered by MediaTek’s latest and best Dimensity CPU.

That might make it the odd man out among the 2024 flagships, which I predict to favor Qualcomm chips. The Vivo X100 Pro will also be difficult to obtain in all markets. But I still believe it is well worth your time.

Design & build: The square is given to the circle

If that introduction didn’t already make it apparent how essential photography is to the Vivo X100 Pro, one look at its frosted glass back would. The spherical camera bump is enormous, jutting far from the main phone body and boldly bearing the Zeiss logo in its center.

Other changes include less obtrusive metal trim at the rear and narrower screen bezels up front, compared to last year’s Vivo X90 Pro. The company’s fixation with the “Xtreme Imagination” branding persists, appearing in distracting cursive type beneath the camera module. The regulatory labels on the bottom are likewise a touch jumbled, but the “Professional photography” label on the top edge is more subtle. Aside from that, this is a stylish phone.

My Asteroid Black sample has a frosted, almost sparkly glass back that hides fingerprints well. However, it does not give much grip. The included rubber case adds greater grip. Start rail Blue will also go worldwide, although the white glass and orange vegan leather varieties will remain exclusive to China for the time being.

I understand that curved edge displays aren’t for everyone; in 2023, numerous high-profile manufacturers abandoned them in favor of flat glass. At the very least, Vivo has kept the X100 Pro’s curves minimal.

The under-display fingerprint scanner is quick and accurate, however it is located near the phone’s bottom edge. With so much weight at the top due to the camera module, I found it difficult to unlock one-handed while maintaining a strong grip. This is due in part to the fact that this is a large 225g handset.

IP68 water resistance isn’t a must for a flagship phone, but I’d be unhappy if it wasn’t included. Fortunately, Vivo has delivered. There’s also an IR blaster, which is still ubiquitous on phones targeted for the Chinese market but is less common in the West.

Screen & sound: glow brightly

If you’ve heard this one before, please stop me. The X100 Pro shares a 6.78in AMOLED display with curved edge glass, a somewhat opaque 28001260 resolution, and a 120Hz adaptive refresh rate utilizing LTPO technology with the X90 Pro from last year. But the phone had a fantastic screen, so I’m glad to see it’s mostly intact.

The colors are bright, the contrast is nearly endless, and the viewing angles are outstanding. Videos and photos feature incredibly deep blacks, and HDR10+ support ensures highlights on compatible material are extremely powerful. There isn’t as much color customization as I’ve seen on prior Vivo phones, with only a few presets, but the adaptive option does an excellent job of balancing things to match the ambient lighting.

The refresh rate is set to dynamic by default, with 60Hz and 120Hz choices available if desired. Both still appear when the screen displays static material, thus I was pleased to remain with the default. Swipes, scrolling, and movement were all appropriately smooth in every app I tried.

Vivo has also dramatically increased panel brightness this time around, with a stated 3000 nits peak being on par with the finest smartphones. I don’t think it’s exactly so bright in everyday use, but it was bright enough that I could see it plainly when outside. Although a rainy December in the UK isn’t the finest test of sunshine, it performed exactly as well as the Google Pixel 8 Pro I was previously using.

To accommodate higher frequencies, there’s a down firing primary speaker and an earpiece tweeter. It’s sufficiently loud, with a clean presentation that’s ideal for podcasts or catching up on YouTube video. It’s hardly unexpected that there’s no significant bass presence on a smartphone.

Cameras:

It’s insane that a lead snapper with a huge 1in sensor isn’t even the Vivo X100 Pro’s main photographic talking point. Instead, the 50MP periscope telephoto with ‘floating lens’ enables 4.3x optical zoom and 4.5 stops of optical image stabilization at a fast f/2.5 aperture. Vivo’s strong software algorithms, which have quietly been up there with the finest smartphones for some time, then manage everything via a specialized co-processor.

All of this adds up to exceptional performance in practically all lighting conditions. The 100mm equivalent focal length allows you to get close to your subjects while still retaining a reasonable level of bokeh blur – all without the aid of software. During the day, 10x zoom is exactly adequate. Portraits, in particular, may be breathtaking, even before playing with the Zeiss-inspired blur effects that mimic the appearance of certain lenses. For the most part, low light isn’t an issue, with plenty of detail visible and little picture noise.

It performs admirably as a macro camera, with an 18cm focus distance allowing you to catch small details without having to be directly in front of your subject. The 4.3x zoom works well in all lighting conditions, but the reduced 8.6x option performs better when exposed to a lot of light.

The 1in primary sensor is a more well-known item, having pleased me immensely on the Vivo X90 Pro last year. It’s just as capable here, if not more so, thanks to a more modern Zeiss T* lens coating that reduces reflection. Daylight photographs are great, with lots of dynamic range to provide both shadow depth and highlight detail. Vivo’s color handling is more realistic than Samsung’s more vibrant approach, with nearly always perfect white balance.

As with other one in smartphones, the depth of field effect becomes more noticeable as you move closer to your subject. It’s amazing if you’re a fan, but it can make using your phone as a document scanner a bit difficult.

At night, the automated low light mode produces similarly outstanding results. Noise is maintained to a minimum, white balance is kept on the realistic side even when confronted with too bright street lights, and there’s a lot of detail. The darkest areas show where the picture processor needs to increase the sharpness to squeeze out clarity, but it’s still on par with what Google, Samsung, and Apple can do in the same settings.

I’ve seen phones with a broader field of vision than the 119-degree ultrawide lens utilized here, but it performs admirably elsewhere. The sensor offers a high pixel count of 50MP with autofocus. Detail, color, exposure, dynamic range, and noise reduction are all superb.

Software experience:

The Vivo X100 Pro comes with one of two versions of Android, depending on where you buy it. China receives Origin OS, while the rest of the world gets Fun touch OS 14. Both run Android 14, and three generations of upgrades and four years of security fixes are guaranteed.

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With a plethora of home screen widgets, always-on display choices, and dynamic animation effects, there’s plenty of room for customization. A pop-out sidebar also makes launching two programs in split screen easier, but I couldn’t discover a method to remember certain app pairings. The Quick Settings panel looks and feels just like stock Android, and Google Discover is only a swipe away from the homescreen.

Even better, Vivo has managed to reduce the amount of pre-installed bloat this year. There are now just a few own-brand applications that copy Google’s own, and no third-party garbage. It’s a night and day difference over the previous Vivo X90 Pro.

Performance: Top-tier performance

For a long time, MediaTek has been second fiddle to Qualcomm, but I believe 2024 will be the year that changes. Based on my experience with the Vivo X100 Pro, the Dimensity 9300 chipset is a true beast. In contrived benchmarks, the octa-core CPU either maintains pace with or marginally outperforms the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, resulting in deliciously quick Android performance.

Apps open instantaneously, games load quickly (thanks to 16GB of fast LPDDR5X RAM), and multi-tasking was never an issue. It outperforms every Android phone released in 2023, and in certain circumstances even MediaTek’s previous-generation flagship CPU. Those are significant advances.

Even better, no sacrifices are made in terms of gaming. All of my favorite native Android games were playable at the highest quality settings and with dependably smooth frame rates. Games that supported it also had a considerably greater chance of attaining the phone’s maximum refresh rate of 120Hz.

The phone does warm up with time, with sustained performance decreasing somewhat, but not much – and no more than I’ve experienced from Snapdragon-powered phones.

Battery life: The New Standard

Despite its high-end internals, the Vivo X100 Pro’s endurance astounds me. This is partly due to the big 5400mAh battery, which is a significant upgrade above the 5000mAh seen in most Western flagship phones. Even with heavy usage of the camera, video playback, music streaming, and gaming thrown in for good measure, it’s comfortable enough for all-day use.

Even after being swept into a Diablo Immortal vortex, I managed to outlast any Samsung, Google, or OnePlus phone in 2023. Expect this year’s flagships to come with equally capacious batteries, so the difference won’t be as wide for long, but for the time being, only Apple’s newest Pro-grade iPhones with their power-saving A17 Pro chipset manage to live significantly longer.

Charging is also excellent, if not the fastest I’ve seen in a phone. The phone comes with a 120W charger, although it is only rated for 100W over USB-C. That means a complete recharge takes half an hour, while a 15-minute sprint charge provides more than 50% power. Wireless charging is supposedly limited to 50W, and while I didn’t have a powerful enough Qi pad to prove this, it worked perfectly with my lower wattage pad.