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vivo X Fold Review: A Near Perfect foldable smartphone

vivo X Fold Review: The vivo X Fold is one of the best foldable phones of 2022. In fact, it’s a near-perfect foldable smartphone with just one feature short (we’ll talk about this feature in the conclusion). There are a couple of things that make the vivo X Fold stands out and we’ll talk about all that in this review.

Adopting the same folding factor as the Galaxy Z Fold 3, the vivo X Fold comes with an even more usable outside display. But, it’s not just the display that makes this phone unique, vivo X Fold also comes with flagship cameras. So, in this vivo X Fold review, I’ll be showing you all the specs, the good stuff, and the one area the company needs to fix.

See Also: vivo X Fold Price in UK and Availability

vivo X Fold Review

Display, Design, and Build

The unfolded display of the vivo X Fold is 8.03-inches, it has an AMOLED panel, 1916 x 2160 pixels resolution, 120Hz refresh rate, and HDR10+. When folded, the phone has a 6.53-inches display, the same AMOLED panel, the same 120Hz refresh rate, and a 1080 x 2520 pixels display resolution.

The outside display is wide and is more usable even though it’s tall. The inner display (when unfolded) is big and gives room for more work. This placed it between the smaller more squared OPPO Find N display and the taller more rectangular Galaxy Z Fold 3. There is still small grease from folding and unfolding the phone but it’s very subtle especially when the brightness of the phone is increased.

vivo X Fold Review

Both the outside and inner display of the vivo X Fold have a punch-hole design. The punch-hole houses the selfie cameras for the smartphone. The rear camera is placed on one half of the phone and when properly turned, can be used as a selfie camera.

The build of the vivo X Fold is a Glass front, eco leatherback, and an aluminum frame. The back of the phone is leather and feels very comfortable to hold. The design of this phone is beautiful, the display is very colorful, and the build material is durable. But, the phone is not certified to be IP68 water and dustproof.

It seems vivo could not find a way to cover the hinges that folds and unfolds the screen. This is something Samsung was able to achieve with the Galaxy Z Fold 3. Although the hinges of the vivo X Fold close perfectly well, it seems water and dust can still find their way through.

See Also: vivo X Fold vs OPPO Find N: which’s Better?

Camera

The vivo X Fold is arguably the best camera foldable smartphone you can buy in 2022. It’s the only foldable phone that features a flagship camera setup. It has a 50MP primary camera with Dual Pixel PDAF, Laser AF, and OIS features. It also has an 8MP periscope lens with PDAF, OIS, and 5x optical zoom. Then there is a 12MP telephoto lens with 2x optical zoom and a 48MP ultra-wide lens. It has a 16MP selfie camera.

vivo X Fold Review

The cameras inside the vivo X Fold are all useful. The 50MP primary camera can shoot videos in 8k resolution, the 8MP periscope lens can take photos of objects from a far distance, and then you have a 48MP ultra-wide camera to take photos of wider areas.

In addition to night mode, other camera features inside this phone include Zeiss optics, Zeiss T* lens coating, Dual-LED flash, panorama, OIS, optical zoom, digital zoom, and gyro-EIS.

See Also: vivo X Fold vs Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3: which is better?

Chipset, CPU, and GPU

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chip inside the vivo X Fold makes it one of the best and most powerful foldable phones you can buy in 2022. This chipset features an octa-core CPU that has a 1x Cortex-X2 core with a speed clocked at 3.00GHz. The CPU also has 4 efficiency cores to help cool down the temperature of the chipset when under heavy use.

vivo X Fold Review

The GPU inside the chipset is the Adreno 730. This GPU is very powerful and paired with the octa-core CPU, playing graphics-intensive games becomes very smooth without any lags. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset also features a very powerful ISP that process image on a whole new level.

Although the chipset inside the X Fold is very powerful, it appears vivo did not use it to its full potential. From tests, we can see that the phone’s performance falls below those of regular phones using the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chip. In real-life use, the vivo X80 Pro and vivo X Note perform better than the vivo X Fold even though all three phones have the same chipset inside.

See Also: vivo X80 Pro Price in UK and Availability

RAM and Storage

The vivo X Fold comes in two storage configurations. It comes with 12 + 256GB and 12 + 512GB of storage. There is no room for storage expansion via a microSD card. Aside from not having room for a microSD card, the phone does not also have the 3.5mm jack port but features stereo speakers.

Battery

vivo X Fold is powered by a 4,600mAh battery with support for a 66W fast charge. You can charge this device from 0 to 100% in about 38 minutes. Other charging features are Fast wireless charging 50W (100% in 50 min) and 10W Reverse wireless charging.

Depending on usage, the battery of the vivo X Fold can easily carry you for a day. The auto-refresh feature of the display also saves battery and keeps the display at a low refresh rate when the display is not in use.

Software

The vivo X Fold boots Origin OS Ocean based on Android 12 out of the box. vivo is promising three years of major software updates and four years of monthly security patches for this phone. This phone also has support for Google Mobile Services and you can download software updates, apps, and games from the Google Play Store.

vivo X Fold Review

The software experience of the vivo X Fold is not great. Some apps don’t open quite well on the foldable screen and multitasking with the foldable screen is not a very good experience. But, this is something a good software update can fix and we hope vivo roll out a software to fix the issues related to multitasking and viewing apps when the phone is folded.

Other sensor features are Fingerprint (under display, optical), Google Assistant, GPS, proximity sensor, NFC, Bluetooth 5.2, Wi-Fi Direct, Infrared, etc. The available colors of the vivo X Fold are Grey and Blue.

See Also: vivo Pad price, specifications, and release date

vivo X Fold Review: Conclusion

The review of the vivo X Fold shows that it’s a worthy 2022 foldable phone. It has an excellent display, features a powerful chipset, incredible cameras, a very beautiful design, a comfortable build, and decent battery life. But, it’s not certified to be water and dustproof and its software experience is not that great especially when multitasking with the unfolded screen.

vivo X Fold Review

From the vivo X Fold review, you can clearly see that it’s close to perfection but not quite. While there are so many things that are well planned out on this phone it still falls short in two major areas. One, it lacks water and dustproof certification, and two, its software needs to be optimized to enjoy the multitasking feature with the foldable display.

See Also: vivo X Note is now available for purchase for $1169

vivo X Fold Review: Price

The starting price of the vivo X Fold is $1,799 for the 12GB + 256GB storage. The vivo X Fold model with 12GB + 512GB storage is priced at $1,999. You can buy the vivo X Fold using the link in the table below.

Buy vivo X Fold
vivo X FoldPriceYou Save
Buy on Giztop$1,399.00$400.00

Alternatives of the vivo X Fold

There are just two foldable phones with a similar design that you can buy instead of the vivo X Fold. The alternative phones to the vivo X Fold are;

  1. Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3
  2. OPPO Find N

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