vivo X Fold2 review

Standard triple-camera setup

The vivo X Fold2 features a fairly standard triple-camera setup and by standard, we mean in the context of foldable smartphones. While most flagships nowadays go beyond even 5x optical zoom, modern foldables rarely go past 2x. Interestingly enough, the original X Fold had a 5x telephoto unit, albeit with a smaller sensor and with lower resolution too. It's still a capable setup, though, and it provides the bare minimum of focal lengths.

The primary camera on the back uses the Sony IMX 866 sensor and hardware apps report it as 866v, so it could be a vivo-specific variant. Technically a 1/1.49" 54MP imager in an unusual 1.43:1 aspect (8,768x6,144px), it's being treated as a 50MP unit here (8,192x6,144px). It's an RGBW/Quad Bayer design and it outputs 12.5MP images by default, binning four 1.0µm pixels into one. A relatively wide 23mm-equivalent lens with an f/1.8 aperture is in front of it, and it's a stabilized one.

The 2x zoom camera uses the 12MP Sony IMX 663, 1/2.93", 1.22µm sensor, paired with 47mm lens and wide f/2.0 aperture. Curiously, the same Sony IMX 663 sensor is used for the ultrawide camera but with a 16mm, f/2.0 lens. This one also supports Dual Pixel PDAF, so you can take close-up macro shots with it.

The cover screen selfie camera, on the other hand, uses an unnamed 16MP sensor with f/2.5 lens and the internal one is the same, so it doesn't matter with which camera you take your selfies.

Camera menus

The Origin OS camera app is essentially the same as the Funtouch one and if you've seen a recent vivo (or an iQOO), things should be very famliar. Of course there are some extra bits here that deal with the cover screen implementation, and we'll get to those in a bit.

The basics are straightforward. There's a zoom selector with 0.6x, 1x and 2x steps. Accessing the Macro mode is done from the flower icon next to the settings cog icon.

Camera modes

The main modes are arranged in a carousel formation, and you can switch between them by swiping or tapping on one of the visible modes. The More tab lists the rest of the modes, and from there, you can also customize the modes you have available in the viewfinder.

Camera settings

The Pro mode gives you all the freedom to adjust focus distance, white balance, shutter speed, ISO and exposure. You can do so on the primary and ultrawide cameras. There's an 'i' button where you can get helpful information explaining all of the options in case you are just getting into photography. Shooting in RAW is also an option.

Folding the screen just a little bit will split the Camera app in two - the left side shows the last photo you've taken and allows you to swipe between the photos in the gallery app. The right side of the screen is taken by the camera controls and the viewfinder itself. Of course, flipping the phone horizontally moves the camera controls along with the gallery widget to the bottom half of the screen for convenience.

Viewfinder changes depending on orientation

The granular hinge adjustment allows you to use the phone as a tripod when shooting photos or videos in almost every angle in both - horizontal and vertical position.

Daylight photos

Main camera

The daylight samples from the main camera are pretty solid. They offer a high level of detail, excellent sharpness and wide dynamic range. Some of them tend to be on the brighter side as the software seems to favor brighter exposure, but we don't see it as a big issue. Colors are pretty close to natural, unlike the vivo X Flip, which likes to reproduce a bit juicier colors. Activating the Zeiss mode may blunt colors even further, so if you are going for a "juicier look", keep the Zeiss processing off.

Main camera daylight samples

The camera maintains excellent performance indoors as well, with virtually no noise and sharp enough subjects. No significant loss in fine detail either.

Main camera daylight samples

The 50MP mode brings a tad more detail to the scenery, but you get narrower dynamic range and potentially more noise in sub-optimal lighting conditions.

Daylight 50MP samples

2x zoom camera

The 2x zoom camera adopts a similar to the main camera's overall rendition, except for the more accurate exposure. The images are also a bit more contrasty and with more lively colors. We are particularly impressed by the level of detail, sharpness, and the camera's ability to maintain that good performance indoors where lighting conditions are more challenging. The wide f/2.0 aperture is most definitely of help.

Daylight 2x zoom camera

Ultrawide camera

The ultrawide photos are sharp and with a good amount of detail, as far as ultrawide cameras go. It's also fairly consistent with the main camera's processing, which sometimes includes the brighter-than-usual exposure. Detail and sharpness are slightly affected indoors, which is understandable, but noise is well-controlled.

Daylight ultrawide camera samples

Low-light photos

Main camera

The X Fold2 applies Night mode processing by default. You can sometimes tell by firing a bunch of shots in rapid succession and one of the photos may end up without the frame-stacking treatment. In real-life scenarios, however, the auto Night mode action is very dependable. One small caveat is that you can't turn it off. The dedicated Night mode displays a countdown timer next to the shutter release while Photo mode does its thing more incognito, but on the main camera in particular, we didn't notice meaningful differences between the results obtained in the two modes.

Low-light main camera samples

Having said that, the photo quality during the night is excellent. There's little to complain about - excellent sharpness, high level of detail, no visible noise, punchy colors and great highlight/shadow balance achieved through the image stacking. On the other hand, some may find these shots a bit over the top and we understand that. Like the X flip, the X Fold2's processing is a bit aggressive, with plenty of sharpening all around and exceptionally bright shadows. So, in short, the shots do look attractive, but anyone who desires more natural-looking scenes will probably dislike the processing.

Night mode main camera samples

And since you can't turn off the automatic Night mode, you are forced with these heavily-processed stills. Here are the dedicated Night mode samples to see for yourself, but we struggle to find any difference apart from the lower ISO and sometimes brighter shadows if the scene is particularly dark. Notice the second scene, for example, which has brighter exposure overall.

2x zoom camera

The zoom camera's performance strongly depends on the scene. You can get pretty good-looking shots in brighter scenes with plenty of ambient light and light sources. However, most of the time, the zoom camera struggles to deliver decent enough stills. They are often fuzzy, lack fine detail and look as if they are out of focus. The dedicated Night mode doesn't help at all, as it produces the same images.

Low-light 2x zoom camera samples

Ultrawide camera

There's no difference between the standard Photo mode and Night mode on the ultrawide camera either. In both cases, you get decent-looking night photos with a wide dynamic range, good contrast, and quite a bit of detail but a bit on the soft side. Two reasons for this - the nature of ultrawide cameras in general and the noise suppression algorithm. The latter seems to be acting up and smears fine detail in order to keep the noise in check.

Low-light ultrawide camera samples

Macro samples

Since the ultrawide camera supports autofocus, the X Fold2 uses it for close-up macro shots. The results are pretty good - quite a bit of detail, excellent sharpness and good performance even in sub-optimal lighting conditions.

Macro samples

Portraits

The device can take portraits using the main camera and the "telephoto" one. If the lighting conditions are ideal, you get sharp, detailed portraits with lively colors, albeit a bit exaggerated, and believable faux bokeh. However, shooting people using the main camera in the default Photo mode produces considerably sharper and more detailed images. Especially when the ambient light is a bit dimmer. The Portrait mode samples look soft in low indoor lighting.

Portraits: Normal • Portrait mode

The zoom camera follows a similar pattern and delivers soft images in sub-optimal conditions but does a perfect job in good lighting.

2x zoom camera portraits

Selfies

Just like the portraits, the regular selfies are excellent in good light. Colors are natural, dynamic range is excellent and the same goes for sharpness and detail. Unfortunately, though, the slightest drop in ambient light results in soft stills with lacking detail.

Selfies

Here's how the primary camera on the vivo X Fold2 stacks against the rest of the competition in the controlled environment of our Photo Compare Tool.

vivo X Fold2 against the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold4 and the Huawei Mate X3 in our Photo compare tool

Video recording

The device can record 2160p videos at 30fps with all of its cameras on the back and only 1080p using its selfie camera. The main sensor can also go up to 60fps if you so desire. Vivo has included a couple of stabilization settings and you can even turn off stabilization altogether. Alongside the standard and advanced action camera-like stabilization, there's also Horizontal Leveling Stabilization, which is pure magic to our eyes. The phone maintains absolutely perfect horizontal leveling no matter how you hold the phone, even if you flip it vertically.

The 4K footage from the main camera leaves little to be desired. It's sharp, detailed with good color reproduction, wide dynamic range and great contrast. We really can't think of a reason not to like the video below.

The ultrawide camera produces 4K videos with similar quality, albeit just a tad softer, which is normal for an ultrawide lens. Overall, though, the clip below looks almost identical to the main camera's rendition.

To our surprise, the 2x zoom video mode crops from the main camera instead of using the dedicated 2x zoom camera and the end result is awful. It's extremely soft and lacks detail.

Even though there's no dedicated low-light video mode, the footage below is of the better ones we've seen. There's almost no noise even in the darker areas of the scene, colors are nice, sharpness and detail are good and the light sources are well-contained, albeit clipped. Dynamic range is truly impressive.

Naturally, the ultrawide video is softer and noisier, but it's still decent enough and we can see someone using the ultrawide camera for low-light videos. Dynamic range isn't ideal, though, as the highlights and light sources are obviously clipped, while the dark parts of the scene have no detail.

Once you are done with the real-life scenarios, take a look at our video compare tool to see how the vivo X Fold2 stacks against the other phones we've reviewed.

vivo X Fold2 against the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold4 and the Huawei Mate X3 in our Video compare tool