This top Android phone camera just got even better

There are some segments of the smartphone market that are still hammering home the message about how great their cameras are. While Samsung seems to have switched to AI, we’ve seen some monstrous efforts from the Honor Magic 7 Pro, the Xiaomi 15 Ultra and that other Chinese giant, Vivo.

T3’s Tech Editor Mike Lowe has spent plenty of time with the Vivo X200 Pro, saying “this Vivo has totally blown my mind”. Well, the Vivo X200 Pro isn’t the company’s top offering in this family, with the Vivo X200 Ultra due to be announced on 21 April in China - where this phone is likely to remain.

That could be a huge shame, because it’s going to take the cameras up a notch with an accessory that might pique your interest. I had to double-check the dates to make sure this wasn’t an April Fool’s prank, but Vivo has teased an external telephoto lens for this phone.

The base phone is expected to come with 3.7x periscope zoom sitting on a 200-megapixel sensor, but this lens accessory from Zeiss is said to offer an f/2.3 200mm lens, the equivalent of 8.7x optical zoom.

The details have been shared by Han Boxiao, Vivo product manager, on Weibo (via Android Authority). It’s said that there are 13 lens elements in the lens which effectively doubles your zoom range. The source says that 35x is "highly usable”.

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It does appear that the Zeiss long lens simply slots over the existing camera and it’s not clear if there’s anything to hold it in place, or if you just use it like a telescope. The sample images shared are impressive, although by the time you get to the 70x zoom, you can see the limitations in the system.

It’s also been confirmed that the Vivo X200 Ultra will have an imaging kit, giving you a grip for the phone to extend those photography skills. All these accessories are great, but if you’re lugging around a grip and a lens, then perhaps you’d be better off just buying a camera instead.

What to expect from the Vivo X200 Ultra

The Vivo X200 Ultra is said to have a 6.8-inch AMOLED display and be powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite, which some would argue is an upgrade from the Dimensity 9400 chip that powers the Pro.

The cameras are said to include a 50-megapixel 35mm main camera, with a 200-megapixel periscope telephoto and 50-megapixel ultrawide. There’s another 50-megapixel camera on the front.

A 6000mAh battery is expected to power it, with 100W wired charging. Whether this phone will ever make it out of China remains to be seen, but there’s certainly something interesting going on for photographers.