Vivo X50 Pro First Impressions: Design, Display, Specifications, Camera Samples And Performance

The Vivo X50-series focuses on delivering a premium design and a pro-grade camera experience. The smartphone comes equipped with a miniaturized gimbal camera system for smooth and steady videos, zooming up to 60x, and to capture bright pictures even in extreme low-light scenarios. Before we pen down our detailed review, here's what we have to say about the all-new Vivo X50 Pro in our first impressions.

Vivo X50 Pro Design- Benchmark Design, Aesthetics And Ergonomics

The year 2020 has given us some of the best-looking smartphones of all time. The Mi 10 5G, OnePlus 8, OnePlus 8 Pro, and the Oppo Find X2 Pro are some stunning Chinese flagships that set new design standards. The Vivo X50 Pro is another solid addition to the premium smartphone line-up in the year 2020. The X50 Pro uses a glass back panel with a premium frosted finish that feels quite satisfying to touch. The dual-tone grey color finish looks gorgeous. The phone has an aluminium frame and comes equipped with an in-screen fingerprint scanner. The Vivo X50 Pro has a hybrid SIM card slot that can take one nano-SIM and one microSD card or two nano-SIM cards.

In addition to the stunning looks, the smartphone also gets the ergonomics right. It has almost the same length and breadth of big-screen handsets but is noticeably lighter, slimmer and feels more appropriate for one-hand use. The Vivo X50 Pro has a thickness of 8.04mm and weighs 181.5 grams. Most other smartphones weigh more than 200 grams and feel heavier in hands. The design has one big letdown though. It doesn't offer an IP rating for protection against water and dust. This is disappointing for a phone which is priced at Rs. 49,990.

Vibrant Curved 90Hz AMOLED Display

The Vivo X50 Pro flaunts an excellent 3D Curved AMOLED screen which offers immersive viewing experience for video playback and gameplay. It's a 6.56-inch display with a punch hole at the top-left corner for the selfie camera. The 90Hz refresh rate and 180Hz touch-response rate makes the full HD+ screen very responsive for fluid interactions. The AMOLED panel has good viewing angles and produces vibrant colors and deeper blacks. Overall, it is one of the best displays on a smartphone in the market.

Records Shake-Free Videos

The above image shows the Vivo X50 Pro's highlight feature, i.e. the miniaturized gimbal camera system. The innovative setup is planted to stabilize the 48MP primary sensor for a shake-free video recording experience. The tiny setup applies both OIS and EIS to effectively cut down the jerks while you shoot videos on the handset. Resultant, the Vivo X50 Pro records super steady handheld videos. The results are pretty impressive for a miniaturized gimbal setup placed inside a square inch of a camera module. We will be testing it further and also compare the results with the Samsung Galaxy S10 Lite which also features somewhat similar setup- Super Steady OIS for smooth video recording experience.

Captures Stunning Portraits

The Vivo X50 Pro captures stunning portraits. The 13MP dedicated depth sensor uses a narrow f/2.48 aperture but it works wonders in daylight. The edge detection is decent but the subject separation from the background is excellent. The camera app allows you to control the bokeh effect in real-time by controlling the aperture value and you can also customize the effect after you take the shots. Additionally, the Vivo X50 Pro can also zoom up to 60x, thanks to the 8MP periscope camera that also offers 5x optical zoom. Last but not the least, the camera sensor also offers an 8MP wide-angle lens that shoots pictures with 120-degree field-of-view and also works as a macro sensor with 2.5cm minimum focus distance.

Excellent Low-Light Camera

The Vivo X50 Pro is also a capable low-light shooter, thanks to the bright f/1.6 aperture sensor. The 48MP primary camera with a customized Sony IMX598 sensor captures well-lit shots in challenging light situations.

The phone can also sense extreme low-light and enables the long-exposure mode to capture shockingly bright images. The results are pretty impressive and the best so far on a smartphone camera in the year 2020. The camera app also offers a variety of filters and profiles for night photography to add an artistic effect to photographs. The above shot is captured with game-inspired ‘Cyberpunk' filter.

Overall, the Vivo X50 Pro offers capable and versatile camera hardware that will surely please shutterbugs. Stay tuned for our full review of the smartphone to know more about the X50 Pro's camera capabilities.

Less Frustrating Software, Not So Flagship But Capable Hardware

The Vivo X50 Pro runs on the newest iteration of the FunTouch OS based on the Android 10. It has improved significantly and feels more like Android than an iOS rip-off. The iOS-like control centre is long gone and the shortcut switches have been shifted to the more conventional notification panel which is a relief. The Android 10 navigation seems to be working just fine on the Vivo X50 Pro. The phone ships with a feature-rich Theme store but most of the items are paid. I wonder who is paying Vivo for such not so good theme store items.

The Vivo X50 Pro is the first smartphone in our labs to run on the all-new Qualcomm Snapdragon 765 5G-enabled chipset. It is paired with 8GB LPDDR4x RAM and 256GB UFS 2.1 storage. These are not flagship specs but the phone runs without a glitch. I played some PUBG matches and Asphalt 9 racing sessions and did not face glitches or any other performance-related issues. Games ran without any frame drops and the phone also handles multitasking with ease.

Battery Life And Connectivity

The Vivo X50 Pro is powered by a modest 4,315 mAh battery cell which draws power from a 33W FlashCharge 2.0 fast charger. The bundled charger refuelled the battery from absolute 0% to 100% in about 70 minutes. The battery can last a day with moderate usage.

Powered by a 5G-enabled SD765, the Vivo X50 Pro is a 5G-ready smartphone for those who care. The smartphone supports Bluetooth 5.1, Wi-Fi and ships with a Type-C charging port.

Should You Buy The Vivo X50 Pro?

Vivo is mostly known for its budget and mid-range smartphones in India but has also showcased its expertise in engineering powerful flagship smartphones from time-to-time. Sadly, those smartphones never made it to the top-selling value flagships list. But the new X50-series smartphones seem more promising than the company's previous flagships, especially the X50 Pro which has a lot going for it.

The price is definitely on the higher side for a smartphone which is not powered by the Qualcomm's 8th Gen. CPU. You can easily get a SD865 powered handset in less than Rs. 40,000 in the Indian market in the year 2020. That said, we will push the Vivo X50 Pro to its limits in our detailed review to find out if it justifies the premium price tag.