Highlights
- vivo X50 is available in India at a starting price of Rs 34,990.
- At its price, the vivo X50 offers a capable camera, a vibrant screen, and sports a gorgeous design.
- Despite lower price, the vivo X50 has many of the features that vivo earlier put in X50 Pro.
What do you need in a phone? Great design, a fantastic set of cameras, smooth performance, and good battery life. Right? More or less, this is what people are looking for and if all of this is available at a more affordable price rather than at a price of Rs 60,000 or Rs 70,000, it makes sense to go for it. Well, the vivo X50 could be one choice, even if it is not the only choice.
vivo launched two premium phones last month the vivo X50 and the vivo X50 Pro. We had earlier focussed on the Pro phone, largely because that is the phone with a unique camera, equipped with "gimbal" technology. The reality, though, is that the vivo X50 is no less dazzling. Sure, compared to the Pro phone it has fewer special features but it also costs significantly less.
The X50 promises more of the same in terms of all that has been liked by consumers about vivo phones in the recent past. It offers a beautiful design, powerful internals, and even cameras that punch well above their weight. To cut a long story short, here are 10 reasons why the vivo X50 could be your next phone.
Superb price
The vivo X50 has been made available in India in two variants: 8GB RAM plus 128GB storage and 8GB RAM plus 256GB storage. Right off the bat, the combinations are great. 8GB RAM is more than enough for almost everything one is likely to do on a phone and up to 256GB storage even 128GB is fantastic and good enough for a phone you are going to use for a couple of years is more storage than you will be able to fill unless you are shooting hours long 4K videos.
The vivo X50 starts at Rs 34,990 for the entry variant and goes up to Rs 37,990 for the higher end one. It packs a lot of technology that vivo has also used in the X50 Pro, and yet its price is almost 33 per cent lower. These are significant savings for a user looking to get vivo quality and features without spending Rs 50,000. The X50 is available for purchase across offline stores, on vivo India e-store, as well as on Flipkart and Amazon for those who prefer e-commerce purchases.
Improved custom IMX598 camera
The vivo X50 comes with a primary camera that uses a reliable Sony IMX598 image sensor, which can click 48-megapixel images. This is a new-gen sensor, and compared to the IMX582, it handles low-light scenarios better. The camera uses vivo's customized lens which is specially designed to be more sensitive to light hence the F1/6 lens aperture -- something that also helps in clicking better photos. In fact, we found the primary camera quite fantastic in our limited use so far. Check the photos below. They have great colours, low noise and tons of details.
Extreme Night Vision
Although in general low-light performance of the vivo X50 is quite impressive, the phone also packs in the Extreme Night Vision feature, something that the vivo X50 Pro too has and something that found incredibly useful for clicking shots when there was very little light in other words almost dark to illuminate the subject.
This feature automatically kicks in when the user is clicking photos in very dark scenes and works by using the OIS to extend exposure time and then using the phone's AI noise reduction algorithm to achieve higher brightness, better tone, and less noise under extremely dark conditions. For example, check this night shot.
Night Portrait
The X50 also brings features such as Night Portrait which give it an advantage over the competition. While Night Portrait isn't a feature we're seeing for the first time on a phone, what impresses us on the vivo X50 is its implementation.
For this feature, the X50 uses an advanced algorithm to separate the subject from the background, which are each then optimized independently. The feature also sees the phone enhance facial brightness while maintaining overall quality and tone. There's also a light-speckle bokeh effect in these shots that uses dual-camera bokeh to optimize the separation of in-and-out-of-focus areas, as well as bokeh gradient effects.
3D soundtracking
Another reason to get yourself a vivo X50 is its ability to record really detailed videos, which not only impress when it comes to picture quality but also has incredible sound quality. This is because the X50 brings some premium sound recording features to enhance video recording performance. These features make use of three microphones in the X50 -- two of which are for picking up sound, and one is for tracking sound.
The idea is not new. But what is difficult for companies here is its implementation. For such an advanced system to perform well, particularly in a phone, top-notch software is needed. In the X50, vivo has used an advanced image recognition algorithm that keeps sound and image in sync and fully in focus while shooting videos. It will not be amiss to say that when it comes to recording sound, the X50 is not only the best in its segment but is also better than most ultra-premium phones. And like some other features here, this one too is common, between the X50 and the much more expensive X50 Pro.
Hyper Zoom and wide-angle camera
The X50 lacks the Gimbal camera system that its more expensive sibling has. But not the zoom lens and wide-angle cameras. They are also here. The 13-megapixel zoom camera in the X50 gives users 2X optical zoom, something similar to what the more expensive iPhones have, and 20X hybrid zoom using well-tuned algorithms. Now, the hybrid zoom may not mean much in the real world, unless you are spying on someone or something and are fine with a slightly grainy photo, but the 2X zoom is truly useful in getting closer to what you are shooting. The 8-megapixel camera with a wide-angle lens adds more versatility to the camera system of the X50 and gives users the ability to fill more in their landscape photos. Again, to repeat, in limited use we have found that the X50 zoom and wide-angle cameras click some neat-looking photos in good light. In low light, we feel users will prefer shooting with the main camera.
Beautiful design
Arguably the biggest highlight of the vivo X50 is the focus on design. The X50 brings with itself a really slim profile and lightweight design. It features a rectangular camera module with rounded corners. It looks simplistic and sharp, with the overall phone looking distinctive, sleek, and premium because of the various design choices made by the company. From the frosted glass back to the bezel-less display and even the two-step camera module, the phone oozes understated class and premium. And the most interesting, and useful, bit about the X50 design is its weight. For a phone with a 6.5-inch screen, the X50 is one of the lightest phones in the market at a little over 171 grams. Just to put this in context, the iPhone 11 with its 6.1-inch screen weighs 194 grams.
Gorgeous display
In terms of displays, both the phones the X50 series phone are quite well equipped. The size of the panels is the same, but there is a minor difference. While the vivo X50 Pro gets a 6.56-inch curved 90Hz OLED display with a maximum resolution of 1080 x 2376 pixels, the regular X50 gets a flat 6.56-inch AMOLED panel which runs the same resolution natively, as well as the same high refresh rate. The displays are Samsung AMOLED panels that are a delight to use. Like most other high-end displays, the X50 screen shows brilliant colours and newer, more refined, colour spaces like DCI-P3 is supported.
Good performer
Performance depends on two factors: processor and software. This is also one area where the X50 and the X50 Pro are quite different. Unlike the 5G chip in the X50 Pro, vivo has given the X50 Snapdragon 730, a processor that is quite capable but doesn't have 5G. Though on that note, even India currently doesn't have 5G and will not have it in the near future. We find that the Snapdragon 730 is a fairly competent performer and so far with regular use and not hours-long gaming we find this chip ensures a smooth, lag-free performance. This, largely, could also be due to the well-optimised vivo software on the phone.
Long-lasting battery
Another big highlight of the vivo X50 is battery performance. The promise is that the X50 battery will keep going all day after one charge, and the phone pretty much lives up to the promise if the device is subjected to low-moderate use. The phone's impressive battery life is backed by the vivo X50's 4200mAh pack which is quite big for a phone that is only 7.49mm thick. The phone's battery also supports 33W fast charging to help top up the battery when the phone runs out of juice.
Summarising the vivo X50
Ten 10 points. That's all good, but what is the big takeaway? Well, the takeaway is that X50 is a mighty good phone, and is one of the best and most balanced devices you can buy under Rs 40,000. At its starting price of Rs 34,990, it offers an excellent camera, great design, plenty of storage and RAM, and a vibrant screen. Does that make it an outright winner in the segment? No. But then no phone is the best. They all have their pros and cons. And considering everything that the X50 offers, it is among the best phones you can buy in its segment.