vivo X Fold3 Pro first impressions

10 June 2024

The vivo X Fold3 Pro, launched in China in March, but was finally introduced in India and Indonesia a few days ago, making it vivo's first foldable smartphone to launch outside its home country. The vivo X Fold3 Pro comes in White and Celestial Black, but the brand will only be launching the black version in India. We've received one for review, and here are our first impressions of vivo's third-gen foldable.

The vivo X Fold3 Pro comes in a square-shaped box similar to the X100 and X100 Pro. It includes a SIM ejector tool, the usual documents, a charging cable, and a 120W power adapter. Our Indian unit - the subject of this article - didn't come with a protective case, but we are told the retail box will include one.

The vivo X Fold3 Pro weighs 236g and is 11.2mm thick when folded. When unfolded, it is 5.2mm thin. The smartphone's cover screen measures 6.53" diagonally. It's a 120Hz 8T LTPO AMOLED panel with a 2,748x1,172-pixel resolution, 457 ppi pixel density, 4,500 nits peak brightness, and support for HDR10+ and Dolby Vision.

The cover screen is protected by Armor Glass and has a 3D ultrasonic fingerprint scanner underneath for biometric authentication and a centered punch-hole for the 32MP selfie camera. We found the fingerprint reader to be fast and accurate during the short time we spent with the phone.

Turn the phone around, and you see a circular "Big Eye" camera module with a fluted bezel design inspired by luxury watches. It houses a flash and three cameras with ZEISS T* coating - a 50MP primary, a 50MP ultrawide (119˚ FOV), and a 64MP periscope telephoto (3x optical, 100x digital zoom).

The vivo X Fold3 Pro's back panel has an Armor Back cover made of ultra-thin glass fiber and military-grade UPE fiber. The cover has a matte finish, and we found it to be resistant to fingerprint smudges during our time with the phone. It is nice to touch, and the X Fold3 Pro feels quite comfortable to hold in its folded state.

Unfold the vivo X Fold3 Pro, and you are greeted with the main, folding display. It has an 8.03" diagonal, a resolution of 2,480x2,200 pixels, and a 412 ppi pixel density. Like the cover screen, the main display uses a 120Hz 8T LTPO AMOLED panel having 4,500 nits peak brightness and HDR10+ and Dolby Vision support.

The folding display's right half has a 3D ultrasonic fingerprint scanner embedded, which worked well, and the top-right corner has a punch-hole for the second 32MP selfie camera. Also, while the cover screen is protected by Armor Glass, the main display is covered with a Super Tensile UTG (ultra-thin glass) and an impact-resistant film.

vivo has used the Carbon Fiber Ultra-Durable Hinge weighing 14.98 g for the X Fold3 Pro, allowing the folding screen to remain open at an angle of 60˚-120˚ for different use cases. It also does a good job of keeping the phone almost gapless in its folded state.

vivo also claims that the X Fold3 Pro's hinge can last 500,000 folds without developing any crease. The smartphone does have a crease, but it's visible only when you look at it from certain angles. You won't notice it often when looking straight at the screen, and while you can feel it when using the phone, you can get used to it quickly. It will be barely noticeable when viewing the screen and using the phone.

That said, when unfolded, the Vivo X Fold3 Pro is absolutely sleek, making it very comfortable to use.

The phone's right-side frame has the volume rocker and power button, and on the left is the alert slider - something we'd have preferred on the right side with the other buttons for ease of use.

At the bottom is the USB-C port, a couple of microphones, a SIM card slot, and the speaker. Up top is one more mic and speaker joined by an IR Blaster. The smartphone has antenna lines on its frames since they are made of metal.

Under the hood, the vivo X Fold3 Pro has the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC and vivo V3 chip with 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM and 512GB of UFS 4.0 storage. Other memory configurations remain exclusive to China for now. What's also exclusive to the Chinese model is the OriginOS, since the vivo X Fold3 Pro's international version runs Android 14-based Funtouch OS 14 out of the box. The brand has promised to deliver three years of Android version upgrades and four years of security patches for the X Fold3 Pro.

The vivo X Fold3 Pro is IPX8-rated, and fueling it is a 5,700 mAh battery having 100W wired support, advertised to go from 1% to 100% in just 31 minutes. The vivo X Fold3 Pro also has 50W wireless charging, and it can also be used to juice up other devices with its reverse wireless charging capability.

The vivo X Fold3 Pro is an interesting folding smartphone, and it makes the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold5 look pale in comparison with its specs sheet. We'll begin our review process soon, so stay tuned to find out how good the vivo X Fold3 Pro is.