Smartphones
Vivo

Vivo X80 Pro review

Camera in a smartphone’s guise

₹ 79,999

Sambit Satpathy 19 May 2022 01:01 PM

Do you remember the last time you carried a point-and-shoot camera anywhere? Smartphones have reached a level that has made such cameras redundant. But ever so often we come across a device that makes us question whether it's a smartphone or purely a camera with smartphone-like features. Case in point the new Vivo X80 Pro. 
Just a few months back, we crowned the Vivo X70 Pro+ as the smartphone of 2021, and it was a relatively easy decision given its photographic chops. With the launch of the X80 Pro, Vivo seems to be in the mood to retain the crown this year. 
We’ve spent the last few days using the smartphone’s cameras to capture any and everything that comes in our line of sight, and also do a few phone things on it. Here’s our Vivo X80 Pro review.

Design

From the front, it is near impossible to tell the Vivo X80 Pro apart from its predecessor. It’s so similar in fact that we managed to momentarily confuse our teammate who uses the X70 Pro+ as his primary phone. In short you get the same long and slim design with a lovely curved display.

But turn it around, and you’ll see the big differences. It’s hard to miss the massive camera module at the back with a mirror finish. Here’s a pro tip – instead of using the selfie camera, you can look at yourself in the reflective module, and use the rear portrait camera to click a photo of yourself. 
You’ll find three lenses inside the circular housing, and a fourth sensor outside. It’s a slightly strange design decision to keep a sensor away from others. You almost feel sorry for this sensor, which seems like an introvert trying to get into the cool college gang.

The rest of the back panel gets a frosted finish, which looks good, offers decent grip, and does a fine job at hiding fingerprints. If you want the safety of a case, the bundled vegan leather adds to the premium-ness of the device. 
The device also carries IP68 certification, making it resistant to water and dust. In other words, you can safely take it with you to shoot photos at that crazy pool party you’ve been invited to.

Cameras

Speaking of shooting photos, it’s the X80 Pro’s highlight feature – in case the abundance of Zeiss branding wasn’t enough of a clue already. You get a quad-camera setup at the back, starting with a 50MP main sensor.

The primary sensor is capable of shooting brilliant photos in ideal lighting conditions. These photos are rich in details with excellent colour accuracy and dynamic range. One of the results of Vivo’s partnership with Zeiss is a setting in the camera app called ‘Zeiss Natural Colour’. When enabled, the camera tones down the overly saturated colours in order to make the photos look more natural. So the sky will look less blue, the grass less green, and some might even say that the photos look less exciting.

The camera is equally capable after the sun goes down. The app automatically switches to night mode in such scenarios, and the photos you shoot have impressive amounts of detail, colour accuracy, and without noise. The best results will need you to hold your breath for up to six seconds, since the smallest of movements will cause blurring. 
The 12MP portrait lens gets gimbal stabilisation, which Vivo says is important when shooting portraits in low light. Photos shot in portrait mode have good edge detection and natural looking bokeh effect. You can play around with the bokeh effects a bit by switching between different Zeiss-made bokeh filters. 
The periscope lens can do 5x optical zoom, and up to 60x digital zoom. Despite the sensor being low on pixel count, you can get decent shots of subjects at a fair distance. That said, we did feel the zoom lens on the Galaxy S22 Ultra did a better job at capturing things at a distance. 
Lastly, the 48MP ultra wide-angle lens fits a lot into a frame, and can pack in a lot of details too. It does a decent job of maintaining colour accuracy, exposure and whilte balance, without a lot of barrel distortion. 
On the video front, the X80 Pro can shoot up to 8K resolution videos at 30fps, and the built-in horizon line mode is an interesting addition. While we still prefer iPhones to shoot videos, Vivo’s flagship has come a long way and doesn’t disappoint.

Display

The X80 Pro’s curved display looks good when switched off, and a whole lot better when switched on. At 6.78 inches, it’s not the smallest device out there, but the slim profile makes it easy to grip and use. 
The QHD+ AMOLED display is a treat for the eyes, and offers punchy colours, deep contrasts, and an eyeball searing 1,500 nits of brightness. Needless to say, everything from images, text to videos look fantastic on this display.
There’s support for 120Hz refresh rate, which makes everything silky smooth. And yes, it’s adaptive refresh rate, which lets the screen drop to as low as 1Hz when showing static content in order to save battery life.

Performance

There’s more power under the hood than an American muscle car. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chip easily handles day-to-day tasks, OTT bingeing and graphics-intensive gaming without breaking a sweat. Even when pushed to its limits, the thermals are kept in check, and at no point does the phone try to burn your fingertips. 
Such power and the QHD+ display is a match made in heaven for gaming. Whether you’re racing through twisty mountains in Asphalt 9: Legends or trying to blow the head off another player in CoD Mobile, the experience is top-notch.

A 4,700mAh battery onboard might seem a bit underwhelming at first, but it does a decent job. With basic phone use, the battery will easily last the day and more before you need to hunt for the charger. Push the phone a bit, and you’ll find yourself looking for an empty power socket by bed time. 
When it’s time to juice up, there’s support for 80W wired charging, which takes a little over 30 minutes for a full top-up. While not the fastest around, this speed is impressive. If you hate wires, the phone can also be charged using 50W wireless charging.

Software

The X80 Pro runs Android 12-based FunTouch OS, which is a mixed bag of sorts. Some might find the colourful UI with plenty of customisation options appealing. While others might find it a bit jarring, and not as polished as some of the rival UIs. 
Then there’s the issue of ads, and by ads, we mean lots of ads in the UI. Wallpaper ads are extremely annoying, and something that you don’t expect in a ₹80K flagship phone. While you can switch if off, the process is far from straightforward, and is something non-techy folks might not do.

There are also a whole lot of preloaded apps on the phone, including Byjus, Dailyhunt, Josh, and more. They can all be uninstalled in a jiffy, but are still annoying to come across when you boot up your new phone for the first time.

Verdict

The Vivo X80 Pro is by no means a revolutionary phone, but an evolution of the already excellent X70 Pro+. It retains everything that we liked about last year’s phone, and also some things that we didn’t like (UI). The onboard cameras again set new benchmarks, and will make you fall in love with photography. Vivo’s rivals have their work cut out to match these levels. 
Despite everything on offer, Vivo has once again stuck with its aggressive pricing strategy. In these times when the best of flagship smartphones cost upwards of ₹1 lakh, it is refreshing to see one that is priced at the right side of ₹80K.

Stuff Says

Vivo X80 Pro picks up from where the X70 Pro+ left off, and is already the smartphone camera phone to beat.
Good stuff
Bad stuff

  1. Great design and build quality

  1. Eye-catching display

  1. Plenty of power to tap

  1. Fantastic cameras with tons of features

  1. Aggressive pricing

  1. FunTouch OS needs polish

  1. Camera UI needs the touch of a designer

Specifications
Screen: 6.78in, 3200×1440, AMOLED, 120Hz refresh rate
Chip: Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 octa-core
Memory: 12GB RAM / 256GB storage
Rear cameras: 50MP + 8MP telephoto + 12MP telephoto + 48MP ultra-wide
Front camera: 32MP
OS: Android 12 (FunTouch OS 13)
Battery: 4,700mAh, 80W wired charging, 50W wireless charging
Dimensions: 165 x 75 x 9.1 mm
Weight: 215g