Vivo is one of those brands that sometimes goes under the radar in the West, but the announcement of the brand new Vivo X80, featuring MediaTek Dimensity 9000 superpower, could be about to change that.
I'd like to think so anyway: the brand's X70 Pro was (and still is, really) one of the best camera phones I've ever used, thanks to a genius gimbal stabilisation system. The X80 series, as the next-gen upgrade to that, also features a gimbal system.
Oddly, however, the X80 insteads to put this gimbal support on the 12-megapixel Portrait lens rather than the 50MP main sensor (there's a further 12MP wide-angle to make up the phone's trio of rear snappers). If anything, I think it's kind of a shame the gimbal system can't support the full camera unit in total, now that would be amazing.
Vivo X80 & X80 Pro: What's new?
Unlike previous X-series devices from Vivo, the X80 comes as a duo: the X80 and X80 Pro. There's no Pro+ variant here to add confusion, giving a greater sense of unity to the pair, I feel, as their differences are more defined.
Indeed, how does the X80 differ from the X80 Pro? Well, the Pro adds a fourth camera, an 8MP resolution periscope zoom, and ups the wide-angle resolution to 48MP. The Pro also switches from MediaTek to Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor – arguably a questionable choice, as I've heard various testers saying that the MediaTek could be as much as 10 per cent more powerful.
While there's no difference in screen size – both X80 models feature a 6.78-inch panel with 120Hz refresh capability – the Pro does up the resolution (it's 3200 x 1440 compared to 2400 x 1080). Both models also feature 80W charging, although the Pro has a greater battery capacity (at 4700mAh, more than the X80's 4500mAh).
I think both sound like really interesting handsets. However, I always think that Vivo's release cycle is way too behind. The brand has launched a whole raft of phones in a really short period of time: the X60, X70 and now X80. But you can't even buy the X70 yet, let alone the X80, so here's me hoping for a quicker turnaround from announcement to release to make these great camera phones all the more accessible.
