Vivo’s X200 Ultra, the upgrade on the already substantial X200 Pro, is set for launch in China shortly. It’s justifying the name — and the attendant price increase — by creating and releasing something called a Photography Kit.
As the name suggests, the collection of peripheral bits will turn Vivo’s new high-end smartphone into something more like a camera. One of these bits is an external zoom lens that ratchets up the phone’s optical zoom from 3.7x to 8.7x.
One X200 Ultra, and make it snappy
The add-on was revealed by the company in a post to Chinese social media website Weibo, which detailed some of the features the new kit entails. The external zoom is the main thing, but unlike the cheapie versions that exist abundantly on the internet, this one will be purpose-built for a single phone’s periscope lens.
It’ll work in concert with a new battery grip cover that adds physical controls to the phone as well as a place to mount that barrel-shaped lens. That means that the X200 Ultra will function more like a camera than most phones (unless you buy the Leica Lux, we guess).
Beyond the few images and details shared by the company’s Han Boxiao, there’s little other information. A tripod mount on one side of the case would make sense but we can’t see the relevant edge in the available images. More detail, both on the X200 Ultra and its Photography Kit, will turn up on 21 April when the smartphone launches in China. Once there, it should only be a short time before it winds up in other places. Like… South Africa, maybe?
