The Vivo X50 Pro is the first addition to the company's X-series in a very long time. The last phone to be added to the X series was the Vivo X21, which I reviewed way back in 2018. The new Vivo X50 Pro features a gimbal camera system, which is the first of its kind in a smartphone, and is meant to help stabilise video and still shots by compensating for the movement of your hands. I put the Vivo X50 Pro to the test to find out if it's worth your money
Vivo X50 Pro design: Premium looking
The Vivo X50 Pro is very well designed. It looks premium and feels sturdy in the hand. Vivo has opted for a curved display with thin bezels all around, which give it the impression of having an edge-to-edge display. At first glance, you could mistake it for a Samsung device, as it has a curved display similar to many premium Samsung smartphones, but the similarities end there.
Vivo has gone with a thin, metallic frame for the X50 Pro, which is sandwiched between the curved display and the curved rear glass panel. This phone looks sleek and gets cold to the touch in an air-conditioned room. Vivo has used Schott's Xensation Up glass on the front and back for scratch protection. I like the thin frame and the positioning of the power and volume buttons, which are easy to reach.
While the sides of the frame are curved to help the phone sit well in the hand, the top and the bottom of the Vivo X50 Pro are surprisingly flat. It has a USB Type-C port, SIM tray, primary microphone, and speaker at the bottom. The primary microphone is too close to the SIM tray, so it could be mistaken for the ejector mechanism. On the top, there's a secondary microphone along with inscriptions that say “5G” and “Professional Photography”.
The Vivo X50 Pro has a hole-punch display
The Vivo X50 Pro is available in a single colour called Alpha Grey. You will notice a slight shift in colour when light bounces off the back panel. It has a matte, frosted finish which helps hide fingerprints and smudges quite well. The rear camera module will definitely grab eyeballs, as the primary camera lens is one of the biggest I have ever seen on a smartphone in recent times. The entire camera module protrudes slightly, so I would recommend that you use the case provided in the box.
The Vivo X50 Pro does not have a 3.5mm headphone socket, but comes with a pair of regular headphones and a USB Type-C to 3.5mm dongle in the box. It also comes with a 22W Flash Charge 2.0 charger.
Vivo X50 Pro specifications: Future ready
One of the first things that caught my attention on the spec sheet of the Vivo X50 Pro was the Qualcomm Snapdragon 765G SoC. The Vivo X50 Pro was the first smartphone to launch in India with this processor, which we later saw in the lower priced OnePlus Nord ₹ 27,999 (Review). It is a 5G-ready SoC which delivers very good performance, if the Nord is any indication. There is only one configuration of the Vivo X50 Pro in India, which has 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. You don't have the option to expand storage but 256GB should be enough for anyone. Vivo has used the UFS 2.1 flash storage format, which is slower than the UFS 3.0 storage found in the OnePlus 8 ₹ 41,999 (Review) and Xiaomi Mi 10 5G (Review).
The Vivo X50 Pro sports a 6.56-inch AMOLED display with a 90Hz refresh rate and 180Hz touch sampling rate. It is also HDR10+ certified. The display gets bright enough outdoors and has good viewing angles. You do have the option to tweak the colour output of the display too.
The Vivo X50 Pro runs Funtouch OS 10.5 on top of Android 10
There is support for Bluetooth 5.1, dual-band Wi-Fi, three satellite navigation systems, 5G, and dual 4G VoLTE. This phone lacks an IPrating for dust and water resistance, and wireless charging; features that I expect from a smartphone priced at around Rs. 50,000 today.
In terms of software, the Vivo X50 Pro runs Funtouch OS 10.5 on top of Android 10, and my unit initially had the May 2020 Android security patch, but I received a software update during the review period with the July patch. I found a number of preinstalled apps on the smartphone such as Facebook, PhonePe, Amazon, VivoCloud, and V-Appstore, which is an alternative to the Google Play store. There's a GameCenter app which offers a curated list of games to download. There is also an ‘Ultra Game Mode' which clears memory when you launch a game, and lets you mute incoming notifications and calls while gaming.
Vivo X50 Pro performance: 5G ready
The Vivo X50 Pro offered very good performance and I never noticed any lag or stutter while using it. The UI felt smooth, especially when I enabled the 90Hz refresh rate for the display. I did not have to wait for long to load heavy apps, and I was able to multitask between different apps very easily. The fingerprint scanner was quick to unlock the smartphone, and face recognition never required more than one attempt to work . The display produced crisp details and I enjoyed watching videos on the Vivo X50 Pro. The bottom-firing speaker got quite loud but stereo output was missed.
The phone also posted some impressive numbers in benchmarks. In AnTuTu 8, it managed 2,63,410 points. It also scored 624 and 1899 points in Geekbench's single-core and multi-core tests respectively. It isn't the most powerful smartphone in this price range; the OnePlus 8 packs in a more powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 SoC, which managed 5,78,289 in AnTuTu 8 and 912 and 3362 points in Geekbench. As for the GFXBench graphics benchmark , the Vivo X50 Pro managed 18fps and 32fps in the Car Chase and Manhattan 3.1 tests ,respectively.
The buttons on the Vivo X50 Pro offer good feedback
I played PUBG Mobile on the Vivo X50 Pro, and it defaulted to the ‘High' quality preset, with graphics set to ‘HD' and the frame rate set to ‘High'. The phone could handle the game at these settings without any issues and I did not notice any stutter while playing. It did not get too hot and even after a 20 minute match, the phone only registered a three percent battery drop.
Battery life on the Vivo X50 Pro was very good, and it lasted beyond a day, without needing to be charged. I did notice that using the gimbal camera system drained the battery slightly faster. In our HD video loop test, the Vivo X50 Pro lasted for 15 hours and 40 minutes, which is fairly good. The supplied 22W Flash Charge 2.0 charger is quick to charge the device, getting it to 50 percent in 30 minutes and 91 percent in an hour.
Vivo X50 Pro cameras: Revolutionary or just a gimmick?
The Vivo X50 Pro has a quad-camera setup at the back like most smartphones these days, but the highlight feature is the gimbal stabilisation system for the 48-megapixel primary camera, which can reduce shakes while shooting photos and video. The sensor is also physically bigger than most other sensors used in phones in recent times. This gimbal system allows the camera sensor to move and rotate slightly, compensating for accidental shakes.
The primary camera sports a gimbal stabilisation system.
The other cameras are a 13-megapixel sensor for portraits, an 8-megapixel ultra-wide-angle camera, and an 8-megapixel telephoto camera. The camera app has lots of features and you get multiple shooting modes to choose from. The gimbal camera system can be toggled on or off from the camera settings, and when it is enabled the viewfinder gives you an overlay of a small circle with a white ball in it. Vivo says that as long as the tiny ball is in the circle, the Vivo X50 Pro should deliver a well-stabilised shot. On the front of the phone, you get a 32-megapixel selfie camera.
The artificial intelligence (AI) on the Vivo X50 Pro is quick to recognise a scene and set the camera up accordingly. It also offers recommendations for which sensor to use, based on the scene.
Image Credit-Gadget 360
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