This is the Vivo X70 Pro Plus, and I think we finally reached a stage wherein can say it’s a camera with the same phone. This X70 Pro Plus is just a serious, unique, and interesting phone. So, I want to show you my top 10 coolest things about it. So let’s get it started!
UNBOXING
You’ll notice immediately that it is a chunkier package than most. Then, inside, you can see a glossy strip on the right. You’ve got this photography refined text and more curiosity, this ridiculously huge camera module picking out the middle. That would be the phone, and then below that, you get a 66watt fast charger, a pair of earphones, a pretty nice hard-backed but soft to the touch, a case SIM ejector tool, and a USB-C cable. Okay, within two minutes of talking about this phone, I already knew what number 9 was going to be. This feels incredible for starters, I’ve got no idea what they’ve coated it with but, this might be the greatest finish I’ve ever seen on the phone. Like, black is usually the first color to attract fingerprints, right? This thing is not just resistant but practically immune – You can’t make it dirty even if you try.
FEELS
Most phones have these clicky feeling buttons, and I didn’t realize that I didn’t like them until I use these. They’re still tactile but it’s almost like there’s a layer of cushioning which makes the impact softer. And then the last thing is that this is incredible, well, shaped – I noticed it immediately but I couldn’t quite tell what it was. So, pulled a whole bunch of phones and realized what they’ve done is while most phones have either completely flat sides or they have some curve on the back with flat sides or they have some curve on the back and the screen or sometimes both the curve on the back and the screen; Vivo’s built this phone such that the curvature radius of the front exactly matches with the curvature radius of the back whilst also making the scene between also follow that same arc, or in other words, a completely continuous phone all the way around. The only thing that I would say is that I think Vivo should have dropped this glossy section entirely, and then pivoted the cameras so that they’re horizontal because as it stands, your fingers can overlap with this module and you know how I feel about that.
POWER
Right off the bat, this might just be the most powerful Android phone on the market. It comes with a snapdragon 888 plus the fastest chip available, 256Gigs of the fastest UFSn3.1 storage, and 12GB of the fastest LPTDR RAM, all on the base model, plus an interesting feature called extended RAM, which allows the phone to use 4GB of its normal memory as back up RAM if the phone ever runs out of the 12GB. If you’re into benchmark, it’s hitting over 50,000 more points than my maxed-out snapdragon version of the Samsung Galaxy S21 ultra. But the reason that I haven’t put this power further up on the list is that as fast as it is, this isn’t a fundamentally different spec sheet to other top-end flagships.
FUNTOUCH 12
Also, the number on this list is kind of crazy but where it does start to diverge is the customization features of the peculiarly named fun touch 12. It was already one of Vivo’s stronger features on their last phone. With the previous software, you could pick everything from the fingerprint scanner icon to the face unlock animation to how charging is displayed. But you can now delve even further being able to adjust things like how you want Apps to exit and how you want your home screen to appear when you unlock your phone. It’s stuff that you don’t even think to ask for, but when it’s there, it’s just yet another way to make your phone tours. But I think this next thing might be even cooler.
So, we’re not short of fantastic displays on flagship phones nowadays, but this screen is quite possibly the most jacked panel you’ve seen in your entire life. Listen to this; it is a 6.8’’ AMOLED, Quad HD display with a 120 Hertz refresh rate. Okay, that’s all the expended stuff but then also, full support for 10-fit color or over a billion different shades with LTPO technology which allows the refresh rate to not just be high, but also to go as low as 1Hertz to save battery anytime you’re looking at something still, and this is one of the first screens to be made with E5 material, which enable higher brightness and reduce power consumption by a further 25%. You would need a really good eye, though, to discern the difference versus other high-end flagships.
GLASS-LENS
Alright, I think it’s time to talk about the ‘’Elephant in the room’’. It’s pretty clear from the way, this thing looks that the primary selling point here is the cameras. And to give them credit, there is quite a lot of stuff that you probably haven’t seen before. Even this shot right here (above) is taken on the phone. So, the X70 Pro plus takes everything from Vivo’s last flagship; the large sensor and wide aperture for lots of natural background blur. The intense levels of dynamic range, which probably aren’t for everyone, but I’m a fan – the advanced focus modes like eye-tracking long-range zoom, and the ability to refocus portrait mode shots after you’ve taken them. A lot of stuff! However, this time around, they swapped out the main camera’s plastic lens which is what most smartphones tend to use for a high transmittance glass lens. They’re saying that it’ll mean purer images, and while it’s pretty tough for me to conclusively say that this is what’s making all the difference. I love the concept of it and I can say that photos do look better.
BIOTAR PORTRAIT MODES
Now, the other camera facet that Vivo loves talking about is their partnership with the imaging company – ZEISS. How do you use Zeiss’s T-sized stars glass coating to reduce reflections from bright lights? Or how they’ve created a special portrait mode called BIOTAR that mimics the rotational bokeh of Zeiss’s iconic bio star lens? Well, with the X70 Pro plus, they’ve gone a bit crazy with these 3 new Zeiss inspired modes;
>>Distagon – which is inspired by Zeiss lens known as Hollywood Distagon because of how much it used to be used in Hollywood;
>>Planer – inspired by a lens that’s over 100years old, believe it or not. And this one is meant to be the natural lens – a kind of interpretation of how our eyes see the world, and then;
>>Sonar – which delivers what they call creamy bokeh, which sounds gross, but it’s just referring to the smoothness of the background (behind you), less about bokeh specifically more about just separation.
HORIZONTAL LEVELING
They’ve then got a whole bunch of non-Zeiss portrait modes, and my favorite – party modes, which first uses the flash to take bright photos of the person’s face, and then, it tells you to shake the phone so that it can use the flashing lights around the subject to create this vibe of the ultimate messy night out. I don’t know whose idea this feature was. It’s very nutty, but have I had fun with it? Yeah! And Vivo has now also added the option to use Zeiss’s natural color science in the camera, but to be honest, I am struggling to tell the difference – its normal colors are nice, though; it’s not going for raw realism, and I like its style.
ADVANCED ULTRA-WIDE CAMERA
Here’s something that I’ve never seen a phone do, so, you might know that the company’s last flagship already had possibly the most advanced ultra-wide camera out there: it was 48Megapixel, reasonably large sensor with a gimbal stabilization system that allowed the cameras to physically move more than normal to counteract your hand movements. You get all that here too, but this time around, there’s one of their super stabilization options – they’ve also added the ability to level the horizon. Or in other words, it won’t even matter if you would take the phone in 360°, you still capture orientation locked, gimbal-stabilized footage. That said, slightly heartbroken by the fact that this mode is capped at 1080P. Oh! Also, though, side perk of having one of the best macro cameras when you bring it close to subjects.
V1 CHIP
Okay, this is where things get kind of special. Vivo has built their custom chip. It sits inside this phone completely separate from the main Snapdragon chip to specialize in imaging tasks. It does things like;
>>reduce noise when you’re shooting in the dark;
>>brightens images;
>>reduces blur, etc.
And because it’s made for this one purpose, it’s only apparently quite efficient to doing so. Again, a pretty hard one for me to test, but Vivo says that depending on what exactly it is that you’re doing with your camera, having this piece of hardware to run these algorithms can reduce power consumption by up to 50% compared to if the software was doing the same thing. Whilst creating a better output. And that brings me to number one.
NIGHT MODE
Everything about this phone; the wide aperture, the large sensor size, full glass lens, T-star coating, V1 chips, software modes are only implicitly created around shooting in the dark. You might have seen this tweet made a week ago that said, ‘’ I just start using a phone that took the best photos I’ve ever seen’’ .that was this – Vivo X70 plus. So what happened was seconds after that unboxing, the phone was turned on. And while skipping the entire setup, ignored every menu, then went straight to the camera and legged it outside to find out if this was as good as Vivo was saying it was. And it was. I mean, daylight shots nowadays are more about preference than proficiency but at night it takes landscapes.
These are moon shots that look like this, and portraits with almost no light that looks like this.
I had the iPhone 13 Pro Max with me at the same time. So, I just started snapping side by side after side by side, and first of all, the difference in brightness is ridiculous. Now I’m definitely in the camp of brighter for the sake of being brighter because it’s capturing more information. Have a little look at the difference in skies in this photo so then I was like, okay, ‘’let’s try the ultra-wide cameras’’. And remember, this is against the iPhone 13 Pro Max, this is with all the upgraded sensors and lenses that they’ve used. The differences are night and day. I also tried video, so with this new V1 chip, the X70 Pro Plus can also do something called super night video. It feels like a nearly exceptional feature, like, its almost brightening power of night mode photos to video but in motion, it breaks down a bit. It’s not as smooth or as refined as it needs to be. But then, I turned the phones up and tried taking a shot of the sky, and the difference is clear.
This is iPhone 13 Pro Max...
This is Vivo X70 Pro+...
There are also different styles of night mode varying vastly in quality.
Some of them look like you’ve just dipped your finger in butter and rubbed it over the lens, others add layers of character but hopefully, you’ve caught my drift here. Vivo X70 Pro plus is possibly the most fun I’ve ever had with a phone.
Do leave a comment below if you’ve enjoyed this. And I’ll catch you in the next one.
