Vivo X70 Pro Plus: Lots Of ‘Pro’ Features, But A Tough Judgement To Make

Smartphone buyers are increasingly willing to spend big bucks on them. Ideally, their popularity can be attributed to their features. The smartphone of today introduces you – it’s the equivalent of celebrities’ airport looks, the one thing that people around you notice when you’re in crowds. The numbers somewhat support my theory, and the validation and gratification are combined. Even the most expensive phone offers value, however, contrary to popular belief. Value is rarely an absolute figure, although it is often relative. 

Gimbal Stabilisation On Vivo X70 Pro Plus

Gimbal stabilization is one feature that you might be interested in purchasing the Vivo X70 Pro Plus for. An average motorized stabilizer gimbal consists of a gyroscope and a motor. The former notifies you of lateral and vertical movement, while the latter attempts to negate this movement by making the camera move the other way. This produces a smooth movement in typical, traditional cameras like what you’d see in movies.

Vivo built a miniature version of this into the X70 Pro Plus, which stands just over half a foot tall and has a thickness of less than 9mm. It would seem clear that this miniaturized gimbal should function since the X70 Pro Plus is much thinner and lighter (213g) than a typical camera. There is a new ‘Horizontal Line’ stabilization mode in the Vivo camera app. The gyroscope and magnetometer of the phone can be used to measure your level from the ground with this. 

You can use this to perfectly straighten your camera, and while the virtual leveler can appear confusing at first (especially to those unfamiliar with professional video shooting), you soon get used to it. With leveling and starting, you’ll be able to take smooth, stable tracking shots as you follow the character down a corridor, or pan and tilt around your surroundings. This means that it simply works. There is a huge sensor crop when you select the Horizontal Line stabilization mode, which means you do not get the widest viewing angle. 

In gimbal stabilization, you cannot change fields of view, so you will have to reshuffle the frame quite a bit when you shoot. You will find it to be almost as smooth as any other phone camera, and certainly better than any commercial camera on the market currently. As a result of this, the DJI Osmo Mobile handheld stabilized gimbals, which are often annoying and buggy, become increasingly irrelevant in comparison to the X70 Pro Plus. But guerilla filmmakers and amateurs may wonder if this phone is more capable, say, than a rig combining a new generation iPhone and handheld stabilizer.

Camera Performance

Gimbal stabilization only works at 30 frames per second with 1080p resolution, which is a limiting setting for professional movies. It is very challenging to deploy the styles you need in post-production even if you can work around the sensor crop. With the Vivo X70 Pro Plus, Vivo builds its virtual reality camera with a custom V1 chip coupled with Zeiss enhancements. While Vivo manages to brighten night scenes well, it doesn’t quite manage to suppress noise effectively. 

As a result, the camera loses a great deal of detail at dim or high contrast lights. The simulation mode is very similar to Fujifilm’s film simulation mode as it includes four simulated Zeiss modes. There are four types of Zeiss, each having a different bokeh style to simulate iconic Zeiss lenses – Biotar, Sonnar, Planar, and Distagon. The fun factor outweighs its gimmick status. Overall, the Vivo X70 Pro Plus is a good camera phone – gimbal stabilization being a major attraction.

Design & Build Quality

In addition to the cameras, the X70 Pro Plus also faces an aesthetic challenge, which can be confusing. Despite looking great from a distance, the matte textured back has a hint of cheap plastic – which is not something you want in a premium phone. Although the surface of the phone doesn’t catch fingerprints, it comes in an impressive shade of near-matte black – this makes it look good once again.

While the phone is large, the design is sleek. Credit must be given to Vivo for this accomplishment. Not only does it look great, but it feels great to hold. As well as being large, the buttons are arranged as ergonomically as possible. The aspect is a design element, and it seems like the Vivo design team ran out of original ideas after this patch, and resorted to whoever came up with the quickest solution. Such a design is instead quite confusing despite its potential.

Display & Software

In terms of brightness, the 6.78-inch LTPO AMOLED screen supports HDR10+ and offers a billion colors. With a 2K+ screen, you can see vivid colors and sharp details, and it has dual-curved edges. In addition to being great for watching stuff on, the 120Hz adaptive refresh rate makes it even better. For a good color balance, you will need to adjust the slightly saturated colors. The Vivo X70 Pro Plus’s display is superb, whether you are using it during the day or at night.

Sadly, the software isn’t much better. Vivo’s OS looks silly – and unworthy of being included in such an expensive smartphone – due to the firmware’s glitches, which include a skewered auto-brightness adjuster. An interface like this should adjust dynamically, but it does not. Another disappointment is the empty, black strip at the top of the settings menu, which doesn’t inspire confidence or excitement. Vivo could have invested more time into the phone’s software design to justify this premium device.

Performance & Battery Life

Performance is what justifies the X70 Pro Plus as a premium device. It has 256GB of storage as well as 12GB of RAM (with 4GB of virtual RAM). It is the first smartphone in India to offer the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 Plus. For a flagship phone, the storage options are rather limited, but aside from that, everything functions exactly as you would expect.

Despite being far off from Apple’s reported Geekbench 5 scores, Xiaomi’s Snapdragon 888 Plus scores are in line with the performance of flagship Android phones like Samsung’s Galaxy S21 Ultra. The Geekbench platform scores it at roughly 1,125 points for a single core and 3,550 points for a multi-core test. The reality of the situation is, you don’t encounter any hiccups with regular apps and how smoothly they run. 

A 120Hz display also produces excellent graphics from games, such as Elder Scrolls: Blades, which produces high frame rates. Neither stabilization nor extended gaming sessions seem to cause any major heating issues. Battery life is also an issue for the Vivo X70 Pro Plus. You can drain the battery of the phone within 7 hours if you set the resolution and refresh ratio of its display to a peak. You will also run out of battery faster if you shoot videos often. 

Even so, over half of the battery’s capacity can be charged within 20 minutes, which should be sufficient for a full day of work. Creating a flagship phone that’s both interesting and useful is no easy task. There are some issues with the camera though, including a low amount of stabilization and a careless interface. The Vivo X70 Pro Plus is still a viable option for those interested in a flagship Android experience without upgrading to a OnePlus 9 Pro or Galaxy S21 series phone.