We won’t pretend that Vivo’s V30 so-called ‘flagship’ didn’t leave a bad taste in our mouths. It was an overly expensive piece of tech that slapped a few LEDs on the rear before calling it a day. We knew that for Vivo to truly win us back, it would need to dazzle, and dazzle us it has. Vivo will officially bring its latest flagship – the X200 Series – to South Africa, being one of the first smartphones to debut the MediaTek Dimensity 9400 SoC.
That’s a big deal, even if all you see are a couple of numbers changing like those on the cover of EA FC once a year. The X200 Series, once confined to China and comprising the X200, X200 Pro, and X200 Pro Mini, is coming to South Africa – though MediaTek has only confirmed the Pro model in SA, and hasn’t said when it’ll turn up, either. A launch can’t be far off considering the 19 November international release slated for Malaysia.
Find the X(200)
“In 2023, vivo joined hands with MediaTek to usher in the all-big-core era. This year, we are proud to collaborate with MediaTek to define the second-generation all-big-core 3nm Dimensity 9400. The SoC delivers excellent performance across all productivity, gaming and media experiences,” said Tony Shi, GM of Vivo SA.
While the Dimensity 9400 makes gaming and photography a breeze, it’s the SoC’s 8th-generation NPU that’s hogging all the attention, supplying all the artificial intelligence companies are frothing for right now. It’s also the first chipset to offer “on-device LoRA training, high-quality on-device video generation, and developer support for Agentic AI,” as well as an 80% boost to overall LLM prompt speeds.
Those join the rather large boosts to the single- and multi-core performance speeds compared to the last-gen 9300, 35% and 28% respectively. It’s also 40% more energy-efficient, apparently, thanks to the 9400 being built on TSMC’s (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) 2nd-gen 3nm process.
Read More: Vivo’s newly-launched Watch 3 will dent your wallet to the tune of R6,000
Vivo hasn’t given anything away about the specs South Africa can expect by the time the X200 Series turns up locally, nor which of the models will land on our shores. We know the X200 Pro at least is slated for South Africa, so we’re assuming the cheaper, less-capable model will arrive, too. As for the Pro Mini… don’t hold your breath.
No matter. We have a pretty good idea of what to expect from each phone thanks to GSMArena, which lists the three devices as featuring 6.78in and 6.31in LTPO OLED displays with all the fixings (120Hz, HDR10+, 4,500 nits), though the Pro stands out with Dolby Vision support.
Expect some halfway-decent photography and battery tech in there, too. Even the smallest of the lot features a 5,700mAh battery, while the Pro finds room for a 6,000mAh – on top of 90W charging. As for the cameras, each smartphone is fitted with a triple-camera array, featuring a 50MP main and ultrawide sensor, though the Pro weeks out its siblings with a 200MP telephoto lens.
We reached out to MediaTek South Africa to clarify the launch details for the X200 Series in South Africa but hadn’t heard back by the time of publication. We’ll update this article accordingly should we hear any news.
