vivo X100 Ultra review

01 July 2024


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  • DiggaNick
  • GLx
  • 03 Jul 2024

No SD card slot no buy! Next!

    Really? This was your review of the x100 Ultra? Where is the street photography part? You know that the photo app has another section, right? When you swipe it up. Why do you even bother to review the phone if you won't do a full review? Or maybe you just can't do it anymore.

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      • Anonymous
      • 0p}
      • 03 Jul 2024

      jiyen235, 02 Jul 2024I haven't seen the X100 Ultra's videos but the X1... more"haven't seen the X100 Ultra's videos but the X100 Pro was very much neck and neck with Apple"

      I has camera 70% larger. It should be miles better.
      Vivo is one of many that use as default multi exposure for videos too.
      No excuse to be in disadvantage.

        Anonymous, 02 Jul 2024I don't see nothing special about night shots, they lo... moreVivo's auto mode likes to bump up the exposure at night compared to Xiaomi's or Oppo's - This is where the Zeiss Natural and Zeiss Texture modes shine, as both go easier on sharpening (especially the latter), maintain the dark portion of the image dark and keep the colours relatively muted.

        "add grain to add additional content into high frequence areas and then denoise it back down"
        "paint in blowouts"
        I don't see a trace of any of these processes taking place. Maybe don't try to make up random stuff if you don't know what you're talking about?

          Anonymous, 02 Jul 2024Frame stacking in video is for spec warriors who's onl... moreThat's not caused by frame stacking but by the following tonemapping process. For instance, iPhone is known for not handling the skin tone of a person lit by strong sunlight, but if you shoot in ProRAW (for photos) or ProRes Log (for videos) then you won't see any of these tonality issues because there's no post-processing that tries to compress the dynamic range into oblivion involved.

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            • Anonymous
            • Sme
            • 02 Jul 2024

            shame no global makes its zero interesting to buy in the west without google

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              • Anonymous
              • UUJ
              • 02 Jul 2024

              I like it vivo x 100 best phone

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                • Anonymous
                • nDx
                • 02 Jul 2024

                Anonymous, 02 Jul 2024I don't see nothing special about night shots, they lo... moreyou have no idea what you are talking about, the night shots look excellent on my 27 inch screen , iphone and samsung uses much more sharpening than vivo and because vivo has a bigger sensor can snap the picture much faster than iphone and samsung making it less prone to blurry pics or moving objects looking weird , the picture has much more details than i can see with own eyes and i repeat, the auto mode has a DAMN SLIDER to customize the sharpness which no other phone have. Iphone is doing pretty well for their small sensor but struggling with dynamic range while samsung is the worst .

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                  • Anonymous
                  • JH0
                  • 02 Jul 2024

                  Anonymous, 02 Jul 2024I am not sure, but I have the impression that the periscope... moreI want to add that another issue could be the microlens array (one microlens above four subpixels, Quad Pixel autofocus). Nobody knows how much it really affects the sharpness. It's actually a surprise that in contrast to dual pixel autofocus (12 megapixel dual pixel sensors actually have 24 megapixel, but due to the microlens array, they can effectively only use a resolution of 12 megapixel), the sharpness doesn't seem to be much lower with the right algorithms.
                  With one microlens per pixel, a point source (a star) should ideally illuminate a single pixel. But when there is one microlens above four pixels, the point source might illuminate more pixels.

                    Anonymous, 02 Jul 2024if you think apple has better hdr than vivo you are crazy, ... moreI haven't seen the X100 Ultra's videos but the X100 Pro was very much neck and neck with Apple and the only thing separating them was some minor differences in processing style and where sometimes Vivo failed, Apple didn't. And by failed I mean they didn't provide a 8+/10 footage, so that's still usable footage. And the other thing is Vivo's oversharpening in videos, they just need to tone it down, their videos are amazing and just need some small adjustments. I watched The Tech Phenomena's videos and I'm not saying Apple is FAR better or anything, just slightly better due to being consistent.

                    Oh and btw, I'm talking about HDR videography. NOT the lowering of highlights in SDR videography. I don't see anyone doing HDR videography on phones that much and can only speak from experience, I tried HDR videography on iPhone 13 Pros and that stuff is just sublime.
                    Also yeah I'd love footage from you, I waste half the day looking at this stuff lmao Would love to see some HDR videos of the X100 Ultra but it's tough to find footage online so maybe you could send that too. HDR is best recorded in places with specular highlights so a moderately dark-dark place with bright lights.

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                      • Anonymous
                      • Yet
                      • 02 Jul 2024

                      Anonymous, 02 Jul 2024if you think apple has better hdr than vivo you are crazy, ... moreI don't see nothing special about night shots, they look exactly what college student would do when reoutching night time photography; bring up exposure on everything, sharpen to oblivion to define edges, boost contrast to define details, add grain to add additional content into high frequence areas and then denoise it back down, boost saturation, paint in blowouts and some other basic tricks.

                      These nightime samples look horrible on big screen but they look great on a mobile screen and that's the point. Whole post processing pipeline is created to suite mobile screen application and nothing more.

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                        • Anonymous
                        • nDx
                        • 02 Jul 2024

                        jiyen235, 02 Jul 2024idk about the X100 Ultra but look at The Tech Phenomena... moreif you think apple has better hdr than vivo you are crazy, this is by far the phone with best dynamic range i've ever head and my wife has a iphone 15pm , if you want i can make some shoots at night with bright lights and dark areas to see how well vivo handles them comparing to apple

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                          • Anonymous
                          • nDx
                          • 02 Jul 2024

                          Vasra, 02 Jul 2024No single review of any modern top end smartphone reveals a... morewell, i hope in the next 5 years of samsung upgrades they can finally make their face unlock to work properly or the option to keep screen ON while looking at it, or they can finally add a disable button to stop their keyboard for keeping the entire clipboard even when using 3rd party keyboards, I waited already 5 years with no luck, maybe the next 5 are more lucky
                          I use x90 pro+ and now x100 ultra I haven't encounter any bugs so I don't know what you are bubbling about.
                          As for stabilization , take a look at this video at min 15, looks the most stable to me and with the best dynamic range, iphone has ghosting effect due to worst stabilization
                          _ https://youtu.be/MX69wyTS0Rg?t=1026

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                            • Anonymous
                            • nDx
                            • 02 Jul 2024

                            IMX363, 02 Jul 2024The main camera looks unimpressive. The dynamic range is go... morethe auto mode has a slider where you can adjust sharpness, exposure etc manually so it can fit the liking of everyone, if you think the default sharpness is too much I wonder what you say about a samsung which oversharpnes to the sky , in my opinion the sharpness is good and doesn't look like a painting on samsung

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                              • Anonymous
                              • 0p}
                              • 02 Jul 2024

                              YUKI93, 02 Jul 2024"The thing is though, it got so hot that it was imposs... moreUltra has QHD panel, gonna push gpu more than Pro.
                              This generates no heat.
                              Hotter surface means heat is coming out easier

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                                • Anonymous
                                • 0p}
                                • 02 Jul 2024

                                Basically its retail price is no more than 60-65% compared to iphone pro max 256GB, still has not sold 150.000 units so far.
                                Not gonna reach 400.000 before next gen is announced.

                                Only samsung and huawei sell well phones above $1000

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                                  • eemix
                                  • atL
                                  • 02 Jul 2024

                                  Picking a phone by benchmarks is (totally) wrong.
                                  When a battery lasts a heavy day even it charges not that fast as other, is more than OK.
                                  Ultrawide camera from samples of friends is way more than ok.
                                  Vivo x100 ultra is a great camera phone. No need of purchasing if you own a top 2023-2024 smartphone unless you want the extra quality in night zoom portraits where it has no rival (till now)

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                                    • Anonymous
                                    • JH0
                                    • 02 Jul 2024

                                    Anonymous, 02 Jul 2024So what's next in x200 ultra? Higher focal length for ... moreI am not sure, but I have the impression that the periscope camera hasn't reached the full potential. Its effective lens diameter is 8.42mm. The Pixel 7 Pro has 5.43mm. Theoretically, the Vivo should be able to zoom 8.42/5.43 = 1.55 times as much as the 7 Pro regarding diffraction because both phones should be nearly diffraction limited at pixel level (if we neglect the worse Tetra²pixel array). If we just look at the number of pixels per angle, the Vivo should be able to zoom 1.48 times as much (if we neglect again the Tetra²pixel array, but actually we can't neglect the Tetra²pixel array...). The clock in gsmarena's 240mm Pixel 7 Pro sample image (which hasn't used Night Sight, which would have improved the result slightly) only looks slightly worse than the clock in gsmarena's 85mm 200 megapixel Vivo X100 Ultra sample image and it seems that the photos were taken from about the same distance. But it's hard to compare them because the 200 megapixel image maybe didn't combine frames because it looks quite noisy at pixel level and the light conditions are not identical. Sadly, gsmarena hasn't published a 340mm sample image of the clock.
                                    Apart from the noise, other issues could be the sharpness of the lens and obviously the Tetra²pixel array.

                                      "The thing is though, it got so hot that it was impossible to hold at the end of the test".
                                      I looked back at the X100 Pro's Wild Life Stress Test result, and it showed some interesting differences. The Pro only lost 5% CPU throttling performance compared to the UItra, yet it achieved a similar highest frame rate while being 10° cooler than the Ultra. I'm not expecting that kind of difference, especially since there are no efficiency cores in the Dimensity 9300 SoC.

                                      As for the camera, I don't think I miss out much from the Pro version. I can see a good reason to pick the Ultra because of the new large telephoto camera, but the Pro is still a capable monster.

                                        Vasra, 02 Jul 2024The issue is the compression, bit depth and bit rates. V... moreProRes is only for someone who likes to edit. Even someone who's buying this phone is just gonna use the Pro mode at best. Besides, for ProRes iirc you need an SSD. Compression over 30-50 mbps for 4k60 is no issue if done on x265. Blu-ray films encoded at 20 mbps still look fine, granted the frame rate is much lower but for me it's fine. I used to be a videophile looking for super duper high bitrate stuff and sometimes not watching online streamed stuff like on Netflix and stuff but after a while man it gets exhausting and you don't really care as long as you get something good. Netflix level compression is good enough.

                                        Color channel is not necessary for a good video output, you just need a good bitrate, decent dynamic range and a sizable sensor. Besides, it's not like Apple's videos are 4:2:2 by default, everyone gets a raw video footage and processes over it. There's nothing fancy about Apple's capturing, it's all about the optimized processing. And 10 bit videos are great but not necessary, at least for SDR. For HDR I'd say it's a must.

                                        Also, the jello effect is a result of the stabilization, it's trying too hard to stabilize and I've seen that effect on Oppo's Find X7 Ultra and Oneplus 12 so I think I get what you mean ig the X100 Ultra needs updates or Vivo messed up the stabilization. On the plus side, during the day the videos look super crisp.

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