Weekly poll: vivo X Fold2 and X Flip - hot or not?

30 April 2023

vivo unveiled its first clamshell foldable last week, the vivo X Flip. It features a large 3” cover display and benefits from the company’s refinements of hinge design. The second generation horizontal foldable, the vivo X Fold2 was announced as well and it brings a number of refinements (and some downgrades).

The two foldables launched in China, vivo has not shared any plans to sell them in other markets for now. And if it does, will it offer both of them or will it do what Oppo did and only offer the Flip to a wider audience?

We can only speculate for now and while we’re on the subject, do you feel that it would be a missed opportunity to not sell the X foldables globally? To put it another way, would you buy one if it’s available in your region?

vivo’s new hinge design helped the X Fold2 slim down to 12.9mm when folded, down 1.7mm compared to the X Fold+, even though the unfolded thickness of the two is fairly similar (6.0mm and 6.3mm). The phone is 33g lighter to boot.

The company also upgraded to the new Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset and boosted wired charging to 120W (up from 80W), so a full charge takes 26 minutes instead of 35 minutes like on the old model (with comparable battery capacities of 4,800mAh and 4,730mAh).

The X Fold+ had some of the best cameras on a foldable, the X Fold2 takes a step back in this respect. Gone is the 125mm periscope, replaced by a simple 47mm portrait cam (with only 12MP resolution its sensor doesn’t offer much in the way of digital zoom). Also, the 48MP ultra wide camera was dropped in favor of a 12MP unit with a narrower field of view (16mm vs. 14mm).

vivo did this for a reason – the company addressed a key concern about foldables, namely the price. The X Fold+ base model (12/256GB) was CNY 10,000, the X Fold2 with the same memory configuration starts at CNY 9,000. But is that 10% discount really worth losing the excellent tele and ultra wide cameras? And is the price drop enough to entice people who wrote off foldables as too expensive?

A quick look at the competition shows that the Xiaomi Mix Fold 2 also starts at CNY 9,000 for a 12/256GB model, while the Oppo Find N2 is cheaper at CNY 8,000 (for a 12/256GB model, CNY 9,000 gets you 16/512GB). Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold4 has the biggest footprint in terms of availability and goes for a hefty CNY 13,000 in China (12/256GB).

With all that in mind, are you interested in getting the vivo X Fold2?

The vivo X Flip has a cover display that’s large enough to actually be usable (it can handle texting, maps, social networking apps and so on) and it features an LTPO panel for the main display, unlike a certain Galaxy. It uses the older Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chipset and arrives with 50+12MP camera duo (basically the X Fold2 setup without the portrait lens). vivo used a waterdrop hinge, which is designed to hold the phone at different angles.

The vivo X Flip starts at CNY 6,000 for a 12/256GB unit, doubling the storage is just a CNY 700 upgrade. An Oppo Find N2 Flip in a 12/256GB configuration goes for a bit more, CNY 6,400, a Galaxy Z Flip4 (8/256GB) is CNY 7,500, while the Motorola Razr 2022 (8/256GB) is cheaper at CNY 5,600.

What do you think – vivo X Flip, yay or nay?