Every smartphone company wants a slice of share from Apple and Samsung in the flagship category. Vivo has been trying hard for a few years and has definitely upped its game in the camera department with the X200 Pro but is it enough to make people move away from an iPhone or a Galaxy S series device?
Quality of hardware
The phone is all-camera on the back and weighs 223g. That may not seem a lot on paper but when you hold the phone, there is some amount of heft, which is not a bad thing when taking photographs. But what could have been better is weight distribution. While scrolling, the phone’s upper half exerts slightly more pressure than we would like. Further, the camera module is big and gathers dust around it.
The display is bright but once you unlock the phone, you will find some unnecessary apps that come preloaded
On the display front, there is a 6.78-inch QUAD AMOLED display, offering 4,500 nits of peak brightness. At night, the display is comfortable to the eye and it can certainly handle the brightness of the winter sun. Keeping the display company is a well-tuned set of speakers.
The USP: Camera
The most talked about feature is the camera. There is 50MP Sony LYT-818 f/1.57 sensor and the ultra-wide is 50MP f/2.0 sensor and a telephoto 200MP Zeiss APO f/2.67 HP9 sensor. With the telephoto you get 3.7x optical zoom and 100x hyper zoom.
Photos under daylight come out sharp under any condition. If you are asking whether this is better than, say, Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra or the iPhone 16 Pro Max, the answer would be “almost the same”. Each has its colour reproduction science and technique. Usually, we take 1x or 3x or 5x shots... here all the cameras fare well. Under uneven lighting, the quality of photographs is good but iPhone wins by a mile for consistency.
What I like about the phone is no matter the lens I chose — 0.6x, 1x, 2x, 3.7x or 10x — there is no colour shift. Where Vivo manages to up the game is how quickly it can capture a frame. With Snapshot mode, pictures of fast-moving objects can be taken. Equally interesting is the Landscape mode that has all the presets you could be looking for. Also, try taking macro shots; you will be amazed.
No matter what camera you use, noise is handled efficiently and even if you zoom in, pictures don’t turn up grainy. In portrait mode, edge detection has improved, allowing better separation of strands of hair from the background.
Coming to video, you can take 4K HDR cinematic portrait videos in which you can change the focus and blur level after you have shot the video. Reminds me of the Cinematic Mode on the iPhone. You can also shoot up to 4K@120fps on the rear camera (besides 8K@30fps). Vivo also offers the option to shoot 4K@60fps high-res log but more on this in a future article.
Selfie department: There is a 32MP f/2.0 snapper and it can finally record 4K@60 fps. Selfies come out clear but under low-light conditions it struggles.
How does it perform?
An early morning view of Victoria Memorial, captured with a 3.7x zoom
Powering the phone is MediaTek Dimensity 9400 coupled with 16GB LPDDR5X RAM and 512GB UFS 4.0 storage. It’s a powerful chip but can it keep up with the pace of advancement for the next three or four years, especially AI features? For day-to-day tasks, and playing games, the Vivo phone is quite good and with Android 15 coming preloaded, you get to enjoy many of the latest features from Google. On top of Android 15 is Funtouch OS 15. Search for pictures is better, for example, you can search by “coffee” and come across all the photos with coffee cups in them. Also good is the AI eraser feature, which we are seeing on almost flagship phones.
Present on the phone is the Vivo V3+ chip that helps with imaging. It enhances computational imaging, delivering more clarity and vibrance in both photography and video.
The phone has a big 6,000 mAh battery (90W FlashCharge and 30W wireless FlashCharge), which makes the phone last 1.5 days easily. But if you are shooting a lot of videos, battery will drain out after five-odd hours of screen-on time.
Make the call
After having used the phone for slightly over a week, I don’t feel the necessity to use filters to tweak photos. But what about the question we asked at the beginning… about making the switch?
When it comes to the iPhone or a Galaxy S device, one has to consider the ecosystem — everything works seamlessly. Ask yourself if Vivo is offering that. Second, software upgrade cycle. I can be assured that the latest iPhone will continue to run for years and offer most of the latest software upgrades because of the powerful chipset. Can the MediaTek processor deliver? Further, this is not an inexpensive phone but when I see preloaded apps like Snapchat, Netflix, Myntra and PhonePe, I hear myself use the word “why”.
Colour reproduction on Vivo X200 Pro is almost perfect
But that doesn’t take something important away from the Vivo device — it’s a killer camera system that is challenging every brand. If camera is reason enough to upgrade, Vivo X200 Pro ticks many boxes.
At a glance
Moving objects are captured well and you rarely miss a moment
Device: Vivo X200 Pro
Price: ₹94,999 for the 16GB RAM + 512GB storage version
High notes
Excellent camera performance
Telephoto lens among the best
Battery meant to last for a long time
Good quality display
Muffled notes
The phone is top heavy, which doesn’t help when you are scrolling for long hours
There is bloatware even though this is a flagship phone
Android upgrade cycle could have been longer
