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Even in tiny smartphone cameras, lenses matter. Vivo seems to agree since lens improvements are a major emphasis on its new flagship smartphones: the Vivo X100 and Vivo X100 Pro. They launched in China first on November 13th, and now Vivo is releasing them internationally with matching 6.78-inch 120Hz OLED screens. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n
The X100 will be available in Southeast Asian markets, including India and Indonesia, and the higher-tier X100 Pro will also be available in European markets. And no surprise \u2014 the US isn\u2019t getting either of the devices.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Like the X90 Pro<\/a> before it, the X100 Pro offers a 50-megapixel one-inch-type main camera \u2014 a huge sensor by smartphone standards. Vivo says it\u2019s been tuned with \u201cOptical Precision Calibration\u201d for \u201cconsistent sharpness and quality.\u201d The X100 Pro\u2019s 50-megapixel telephoto camera also gets a bump up to 4.3x optical magnification versus 2x on the previous model. It comes with a new APO designation, which is Zeiss\u2019 terminology<\/a> for a lens designed to reduce chromatic aberration. There\u2019s also a floating lens element \u2014 which, no, doesn\u2019t literally<\/em> float<\/a> \u2014 to enable close-up photography with the tele lens. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n The X100 has a more pedestrian 50-megapixel 1\/1.49-inch-type main camera sensor, as well as a 64-megapixel 3x optical telephoto. There\u2019s no floating element here, but Zeiss coatings have been applied to lenses on both devices. Both phones have 50-megapixel ultrawide cameras as well as a secondary imaging chip, but the X100\u2019s is an older V2 while the Pro gets the newest V3, enabling 4K cinematic portrait video.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The X100 and X100 Pro are both built on MediaTek\u2019s Dimensity 9300 flagship chipset. Most other flagship series put a smaller screen in the \u201clesser\u201d model. Not so with Vivo \u2014 both use that same 6.78-inch OLED panel with a 120Hz refresh rate. They both come with an IP68 rating for dust and water resistance, too. So the primary differences are the camera ones detailed above.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Vivo\u2019s X90 Pro showed a lot of promise when I tested its camera earlier this year<\/a> against the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra. The company is sticking with the big image sensor strategy, which has certain advantages like better baseline noise performance and more natural bokeh. But at the time, Samsung still came out ahead in most situations with its more-pixels-more-better ethos and savvy computational processing. It\u2019s nice to see Vivo doubling down on lens quality \u2014 in my tests, the X90 Pro showed some lens aberrations that spoiled some of my images. In any case, it probably won\u2019t be too long<\/a> until the X100 Pro and the seemingly imminent Galaxy S24 Ultra meet for a rematch.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Vivo declined to share European pricing information under embargo but said that the X100 Pro will retail for HK$7,998 in Hong Kong, which translates to around \u20ac937 or $1,024. The non-Pro X100, meanwhile, will cost HK$5,998 (around $768 \/ \u20ac702). <\/p>\n<\/div>\n