Coming in at just R17,000, the Vivo X50 `pro offers far more than just a decent smartphone experience. The camera is up there with the greats, and functionality is ace. If you’re not keen on bloatware and annoying OS skins, the experience may be a bit tainted. But looking at the specs, the wacky built-in gimbal, battery life and 33W charging should convince you this is a mid-ranger worth checking out.
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Battery Life
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Design
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Camera
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Turns out Vivo’s first flagship in South Africa is also one of the most interesting devices of 2020. A gimbal built into the phone’s body? Why not?
Vivo squeezes a whole gimbal into a smartphone camera and the world goes mad. For good reason. The Vivo X50 Pro looks just like any other 2020 flagship but produces some fire pictures and very stable video footage. The main camera sensor sports a unique gimbal system that shifts the lens along two axes using electromagnetic induction. And guess what? It really works well.
Even more, it’s a beauty. Smartphone designs have become increasingly similar in recent years, so when someone does something unique, it’s a standout feature. But don’t get us wrong — the Vivo X50 Pro isn’t a flagship that’ll cost upwards of R20k.
The only non-flagship sign is the fact that the X50 Pro is powered by a mid-range Qualcomm Snapdragon 765. Up front you get the 6.5in display with the ‘3D screen’ that drops off the edges and with tiny bezels around the edges. We can’t downplay the attention to detail in design here. It’s a beautiful piece of tech. Let’s get into it.
Almost alien
Its 6.56in Full HD+ OLED display has small bezels, and a slight curve around the left and right edges. You get a punch-hole front-facer here for the selfie cam. The display is speedy too, and doing even the most medial of tasks on a 90Hz display makes it worthwhile. Alternate between 60Hz and 90Hz according to your needs that day, while an adaptive mode switch it for you based to your use. Lazy bastards.
Okay, it’s not like the company invented ‘frosted finish’, but hell, did they do a good job of this one. The perfectly velvety back with top and bottom “chokers” look premium, with the words ‘5G Professional Photography’ subtly printed on the top.
The display features HDR10+ support, which is brilliant, especially when you start playing with the live wallpapers and customisable options in Vivo’s Funtouch OS on Android 10. Also. We really dislike the FunTouch OS, but we’ll get to that later.
In its Stable
On to the moneymaker. The X50 Pro goes all-in on photography and videography. As you’ll find with most devices launched in the year 2020, a lot of it is software tweaking, but this time you’ve got an actual gimbal built into the camera module and that’s wild.
The X50 Pro takes great pictures, right? But its inherent tendency to oversharpen and overexpose is consistent throughout the system, no matter which mode or lens you choose. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing since along with the added noise, it also does deliver on detail and resolution — but pop those pics over to the PC and you pick up some oddities.
You’ll find random blurry spots, overexposed spots and oversharpened spots in some cases. But you know what? If you’re gonna use your smartphone pics for social media all of this is not relevant, and your photography will look bomb. One place where Vivo really shines, is its true-to-life colour reproduction. Very few Android cameras manage to keep saturation natural, but Vivo really does well here. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_images_carousel images=”53042,53043,53044,53045,53046,53047″ img_size=”large”][vc_column_text]Obviously, video is the tell-all here. Stabilisation is brilliant, thanks to actual hardware helping along smoothness. In other devices, stabilisation tech is software-related. Because this device has a gimbal, stabilisation is akin to that you’ll find with an external gimbal.
The choices continue in the 32MP selfie cam, where you can do everything to your face every plastic surgeon ever dreamt of (or didn’t). Expect softening of skin texture and removal of most blemishes but that’s only in Portrait mode. Switch to regular mode and you get a crisp, as-is selfie that is on par with some top tier phones, if a little overexposed.
Power to the Vivo
We wish Vivo would bin its Funtouch OS skin for good, with previous models featuring a ton of bloatware. This time, however, Funtouch seems more refined on Android 10. With a battery that lasts almost two days, we’ll deal with an average Android skin. But there is quite a bit of bloatware you’d need to deal with, and it can’t just be removed from the phone. Well, not all of it.
The quest for thin bezels means that only a bottom-firing speaker could be installed and while there is no headphone jack, a dongle is provided in the box. The audio is loud and clear though, so unless you watch a lot of streaming content on the phone, it won’t be a concern.
Vivo X50 Pro Verdict
Video quality on the X50 Pro is just… exemplary when captured at 4K 60fps. Not many smartphones can rival the smoothness you get from an actual gimbal. Also not lugging additional gimbal accessories around is a great advantage.
Coming in at just R17,000, the Vivo X50 Pro offers far more than just a decent smartphone experience. The camera is up there with the greats, and functionality is excellent. If you’re not keen on bloatware and annoying OS skins, the experience may be a bit tainted. But a look at the specs, the wacky built-in gimbal, battery life and 33W charging should convince you this is a mid-ranger worth checking out. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column][/vc_column][vc_column][/vc_column][/vc_row]