vivo X70 Pro review

Versatile quad-camera setup

The cameras are the biggest upgrade over the vivo X60 Pro, and we can draw more similarities between the X60 Pro+ and the X70 Pro in this regard. However, the majority of the hardware on the latter differs. The main 50MP camera, for instance, isn't using Samsung's big, 1/1.31" S5KGN1 sensor and instead employs a custom version of Sony's IMX766 imager, which is a tad smaller in size - 1/1.56" and has 1.0µm pixels. The lens provides a wide f/1.8 aperture and gimbal OIS. The unit is aided by Laser AF for faster focusing.

The gimbal OIS has allowed vivo to implement another interesting piece of tech called Pixel Shift. This has been around in the DSLR world for quite some time, and it has first been introduced with the X60 generation of vivo's flagships. We won't be going into much detail but essentially, instead of using interpolation to fill in the blank space between the missing pixels, the gimbal moves the sensor just a little, and the latter takes 8 consecutive RAW shots before stitching them together. The software chooses the best one and extracts the color information from the rest to produce images with superior color accuracy and detail. Perhaps the image below can help you understand that better.

And since the green channel covers about 50% of the image (the human eye is more sensitive to green) while the red and blue channels go up to 25%, the shift of the sensor boosts all of those to 100% once it moves one pixel up, down, left and right.

Moving onto the telephoto cameras - the X70 Pro has two of those covering 125mm and 50mm focal length equivalents. Or, in other words, true 5x and 2x optical zoom. The 5x lossless zoom is achieved through a periscope system, as it's usually the case, as the lens provides an f/3.4 aperture and OIS. The sensor used for the setup is 8MP OmniVision OV08A10, 1/4.4" in size and has 1.0µm pixels. It's the same one used in the X60 Pro+ and X70 Pro+.

The 2x telephoto camera is notable as it has a wide f/2.0 aperture. That's a fairly big number for a telephoto unit. The sensor behind it is Sony's 12MP IMX663 measuring 1/2.93" in diagonal with 1.22µm pixels. Unfortunately, there is no OIS for the 2x telephoto.

The ultrawide camera isn't anything out of the ordinary as it uses a reasonably common Samsung S5K3L6 sensor measuring 1/3.1" in size with 1.12µm pixels. The chip is paired with an f/2.2 lens with 16mm focal length equivalent and offers a 116-degree field of view. Since the camera has AF, too, you can also use it for extreme closeups.

Last but not least, all camera lenses are Zeiss branded and have that special Zeiss T* rated coating that eliminates glare and improves overall photo clarity. Nighttime images should look better, especially the ones with light sources.

The camera sitting inside the punch-hole is the already familiar 32MP Samsung S5KGD1 (1/2.8", 0.8µm pixels) unit with f/2.5 aperture.

Camera menus

No changes (or at least no major ones) were made to the default camera app coming from the X60 series. And that's probably a good thing. This app is a big step forward compared to the previous iterations that were quite confusing. Now all of the toggles you need, 0.6x, 1x, 2x and 5x are on the viewfinder. The Super Macro mode kicks in automatically as you get close enough to the subject but you can always rely on manual switching. The toggle is right next to the so-called hamburger menu that holds a couple of other options and settings.

Default Camera app

The main modes are arranged in carousel formation, and you can switch between them by swiping. The More sub-menu lists the rest of the modes. The Pro mode gives you all the freedom to adjust the autofocus, white balance, shutter speed, ISO and exposure. You can do so on all of the four cameras too. There's helpful information explaining all of the options above in case you are just getting into photography. Shooting in RAW is also an option.

Default Camera app

Among the usual options you'd expect from the general settings menu, there's also an automatic gimbal calibration and a nifty stabilization feedback feature. A small ball appears in the middle of the screen, and you have to keep it centered and still to make sure you are not capturing blurry photos. This only works with the gimbal OIS available between 1x and 1.9x zoom levels using the main camera.