A new era of camera phone

Design, build and accessories 

• Huge camera bump
• Clever camera accessories
• Heavy premium build

There’s no getting around the fact that the Vivo X300 Ultra is a hefty phone, with one of the biggest camera islands I’ve ever seen on a phone. To the point where if you measured it, I’m sure you’d find it’s almost as thick as the phone body all on its own. 

Considering the camera tech that’s been stuffed into this phone, it’s not really all that surprising to see such a big camera bump, but when you compare it to the Oppo Find X9 Ultra’s, and notice how minimal Oppo’s is by comparison, it feels like a bit of a missed opportunity. 

Like the Honor Magic 8 Pro and Oppo Find X9 Ultra, Vivo is pitching this phone as a camera-first experience. And so, as part of that push, there’s an accessory kit that effectively turns it into a compact camera. 

It’s a well-thought-out kit, too. The base is a phone case with a lovely grippy texture on the back and a mount for external zoom lenses. There’s also a detachable camera grip that slides over the bottom end and connects via USB-C, featuring a red recording button, a shutter button with half-press focus, a flash control button, a function button, and a jog dial for zooming in and out. It even has a scroll wheel for quick exposure comp adjustments. 

All of these work just by clipping it on the case; there’s no Bluetooth pairing required, and it can pass through power to the phone when you plug it in to charge it. It’s a lovely size for holding your phone in one hand, and lovely and grippy too. And if you don’t want to use it, or want to stow your phone away in a pocket, just clip it off. I like it a lot. 

As a bonus, the grip also contains a 2300mAh battery, effectively acting as a miniature battery pack to give you a bit more juice. And let me tell you, if you ever spend an afternoon out shooting video and photo, testing the limits of the camera, that extra juice is very much appreciated. 

The accessory bundle also contains mounts for screwing on external filters over the camera island, and a lens collar for mounting the phone, with attached lens, to a tripod. 

As for the two zoom lens options, there’s a 200mm and a 400mm equivalent. Effectively, that would be either an 8x or 16x optical zoom equivalent on a regular 24mm smartphone camera.  On this particular phone, because it doesn’t have a regular 24mm camera, it’s more like 5.7x and 11.4x. Or in other words, 2.35x or 4.7x the magnification of the built-in telephoto zoom lens. More on that later though.

Otherwise, it’s a solid, and pretty hefty, phone. And it has IP68/69 dual water resistance. Let’s move on. 

Screen

• Sharp AMOLED panel
• Bright outdoor visibility
• Smooth 144Hz refresh

With its 6.8-inch (or technically 6.82-inch) 1440p panel, the Vivo has, unsurprisingly, a very accomplished display. It’s incredibly similar to the screen on the Oppo Find X9 Ultra, and is easily one of the better displays on the market. 

Out of the box, it’s not set to its full QHD+ resolution by default. And, to be honest, I didn’t particularly feel the need to enable it either, aside from testing purposes. Its default is between 1080p and 1440p, so clearly sharp enough for pretty much anything. 

Add that to the fact it’s very bright, can reach up to 144Hz refresh rates in games and can drop all the way down to 1Hz when required to save battery when it doesn’t need to refresh. Combine that with a peak brightness of 4500nits and it’s very hard to find fault with. 

It’s a bright, colour-rich canvas for watching movies, gaming and casual social media. In its default, natural setting, it has a good balance of vibrant colours that aren’t over-saturated too much, but there is a professional setting for those who want a flatter, studio-clean look. 

The brightness is enough to ensure that even if you’re out shooting photographs and video in bright daylight conditions, you’ll be able to see well enough to frame your subjects. It also has one of the best built-in ultrasonic fingerprint sensors, so unlocking your phone is a breeze, and setting it up takes only a couple of seconds. 

Cameras

• Best-in-class versatility
• Superb ultrawide quality
• Impressive zoom options

Cameras have long been an important focus for Vivo, especially on its top-tier models. But there is one thing worth mentioning that makes the Vivo’s makeup quite different to most other smartphones on the market. 

The main, or primary, lens, if you want to call it that, has a 35mm-equivalent field of view. Most smartphones, by comparison, typically have 23mm or 24mm. So it’s noticeably tighter, effectively giving you what, on most other phones, would be classed as a 1.5x zoom by default. But to help those accustomed to the ‘x zoom’ labelling, it’s labelled as 1.5x, even though – for this camera – it’s 1x. 

It can get confusing trying to figure out what the zoom labelling means in the Vivo camera app, at which point I sometimes felt it was better off just to switch to the equivalent field of view measurement in millimetres. Because – confusingly – when you switch to the telephoto zoom camera, that’s labelled as 3.7x zoom, but it’s not 3.7x the zoom level of the main sensor, it’s 3.7x the zoom of 23mm. Confused? Yeah, me too. 

That 3.7x zoom is actually the equivalent of 85mm, so technically only 2.4x zoom over the main camera. And if you want the wider 24mm “1x” view, you’re switching to the ultrawide sensor on the back. 

It’s a good job then that this ultrawide camera, in comparison to most others, is a very good one. It’s a 50MP 1/1.28-inch sensor, which is a far larger sensor with far bigger pixels than the ultrawide sensor in the Galaxy S26 Ultra. In fact, it’s almost double the size. It’s even bigger than the sensor in the Oppo Find X9 Ultra’s ultrawide camera. And, as something of a rarity, is equipped with all the features you’d typically only see in main or telephoto zoom lenses. 

It’s got dual-pixel PDAF and even OIS, so it’s one of the best ultrawide lenses around for handheld shooting, making it better for taking those low-light shots away from the tripod. When I say it’s one of the best ultrawide cameras on any smartphone, that’s not an exaggeration. And it goes beyond the stats on the spec sheet. 

Shooting in its widest field of view, it delivers images with clarity and sharpness usually reserved for the main camera on a phone. And even at this widest setting, you only get minimal distortion and warping right in the very corners of the images, but nowhere else. There’s no excessive grain or noise, not even in the grey clouds or in poorly lit scenes at night. 

Combine that with the stabilised 200MP primary sensor that’s also very large, and an also large 200MP telephoto camera, which is, again, stabilised and has PDAF, and you have three cameras that are incredibly strong in most scenarios. It even has an autofocus, tracking feature where you can double-tap on an object or person on screen to track it as you shoot. Keeping it in focus, even if it (or the camera) moves. 

Images on the whole look incredibly good. There’s so much colour data, great sharpness and contrast, and the gradients and subtlety in the changes between dark and light, and different shades of colour is sublime. You can tweak this if you want using a number of preset looks, so if you find it a little cool, you can make it warmer. But on the whole, I’ve been pretty blown away with the photos and the video that come out of this smartphone. 

The built-in zoom lens also doubles as a macro camera and focuses reliably and easily on subjects close to the camera, even when you hit the 7.4x zoom button, achieving close-ups of tiny objects like ladybirds, flower buds, leaves, and the like. All with an often delicious narrow depth of field and background blur. It often means being quite patient and precise about where you focus, but it’s definitely worth it. 

That zoom is very good in most conditions for punching into far-away scenes, delivering sharp photos all the way up until about the 7.4x mark, at which point you can see the machine learning/AI processing kicking in to make things smooth and clean. Its only real weakness was that it struggled with motion blur and focusing during the nighttime shoots. Even using the night mode algorithm, there were times when I struggled to get a steady/in-focus shot. Both the ultrawide and primary lenses were a lot more reliable at nighttime. 

If all of that wasn’t enough, there’s the aforementioned camera kit available, which includes the option of an extra 200mm or 400mm zoom lens, which both screw onto the case over the periscope zoom lens. 

I spent most of my time with the larger of those two – the 400mm lens which mounts over the 3.7x telephoto (or 85mm equivalent lens) – effectively offering 4.7x zoom on top of the zoom offered by that camera. 

There’s no additional optical zoom on offer past that 400mm equivalent, and so while you can zoom further using digital cropping mixed with the usual AI/machine learning processing, the best images are achieved at its lowest 400mm setting.

Again, because once you go beyond that, particularly at the higher settings past 800mm to 1600mm, you can see the tell-tale signs of AI processing. Details and lines are too smooth, and the struggles the telephoto zoom lens can sometimes have with motion blur and focusing are ramped up. 

As with any extreme-zoom camera, patience is required – particularly when shooting handheld, with all your unsteadiness and minor shaking magnified. But with that patience, you can be rewarded with photos you’d never be able to take – and achieve the same quality – with any other smartphone. Shooting photos of the moon at night with the lens and phone mounted to a tripod, you can get great-looking shots of the lunar surface, complete with its scars, shadows and craters. 

Using the camera in its default automatic setting, I sometimes found the 400mm lens would struggle with blowing out highlights when there were particularly bright spots, but using the exposure compensation to reduce that, you can get some stunning results. And – like the zoom lens without any lens attached – it was often difficult to shoot without any motion blur creeping in. 

Admittedly, it took many, many attempts to get a shot that was completely free of blur and in focus, but once in every 10 shots or so, you’re rewarded. 

It’s also a wonderful tool for any aspiring nature photographer. Letting you get closer to animals and plant life that are a little too far out of reach. Or – in the case of animals – you can get close to them, without physically moving and potentially scaring them away. Whether you’re shooting video or photo, that’s a versatility that makes you fall in love with your phone camera all over again. 

I did test the 200mm lens as well, and for closer objects, this is a good lens to start practising shooting those zoomed images and video with. It’s better at focusing in my experience, and isn’t subject to the extreme hand movement magnification. Using it, you can effectively get what looks like a really nice close-up shot – almost macro-like in its appearance – of plants, bugs and other things right down by your feet, or more than an arm’s length away. 

For videographers, Vivo teamed up with SmallRig to create a video cage kit with a cooling fan, lens mount, and other cold shoe mounts for additional accessories like mic receivers and LED lights, plus two handles. So clearly, the company sees this as a mobile run-and-gun shooter. 

Sadly, at this moment in time, I’ve not been able to fully test that. At the time I wrote this review, it was stuck in Hong Kong. 

All told, with its kits available and the quality on offer from the built-in ultrawide, primary 35mm and telephoto zoom lenses, it’s got exceptional quality and consistency across a huge range of focal lengths, making it arguably the most versatile camera system around. I’ve loved my time with it. It’s up there with the Oppo Find X9 Ultra in terms of how much flexibility and quality it gives you. 

As for video capture itself, it’s very, very good. It can shoot at 4K up to 120fps across multiple social lengths, and in both 10-bit Log or Dolby Vision, so 4K at 60fps isn’t a struggle at all, and with the camera kit and lenses, it gives you a very versatile mobile video recording device.  

It’s very much geared towards more experienced videographers, giving you a lot of control over the look. Its film-inspired look shows its aspiration, aiming to be the pocketable video camera you can take with you anywhere and get fantastic-looking footage. 

Software

• Improved OriginOS experience
• Useful customisation options
• Inconsistent visual design

I won’t spend too long on the software, because this becomes a ludicrously long review if I do. But just to say, OriginOS, which is similar to Oppo’s ColorOS in some ways, has matured significantly in recent years. 

It’s a flexible Android skin with many customisation features for theming the Lock Screen, Home Screen, and icons. It’s not quite as fully featured as Oppo’s software, though. You don’t get many preinstalled icon packs to choose from, or an easy ability to use your own. 

Vivo has also basically ignored AI and clearly decided that Google’s pre-installed apps and software available on the Play Store are enough. It’s actually quite refreshing in that regard. 

Like so many other Android makers in recent months, you also get the ability to send files and images wirelessly to Apple devices using a feature called Vivoshare. With it, you can AirDrop and Quick Share files with anyone wirelessly. 

There are parts of the Android skin which look like Vivo’s design team borrowed Liquid Glass elements from Apple, and others where they appear to have left Google’s stock or Pixel-like software. It is a bit of a mash-mash of different styles in places, which can be a bit jarring and feels inconsistent. 

So while improved, OriginOS is still the area Vivo needs to work on. 

Performance 

• Flagship Snapdragon power
• Strong sustained performance
• Excellent thermal control

Just like most of the top-level Android phones for 2026, the X300 Ultra is kitted out with Qualcomm’s most powerful processor.

The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 is about as good as it gets for pretty much any task, whether that’s demanding gameplay, AI tasks or video and photo shooting and editing. Especially when paired with the 12GB RAM and 1TB storage found inside my review unit. 

It’s a beefy, powerful phone that finds anything a breeze, and, more crucially, enables some of the high-end camera capabilities available mentioned in the camera testing. 

To get some objective numbers to go alongside the daily experience, we always run our smartphones through a handful of benchmarks, including 3DMark’s graphics benchmarking stress tests. 

What I discovered when running this alongside the same tests as the Oppo Find X9 Ultra was that while they can both hit top performance for short bursts, crunching through demanding scenes without a sweat, the Vivo is slightly more capable of the two at handling long sessions. 

Running the same demanding test 20x on a loop, the Vivo kept the higher frame rates going for longer before throttling and tailing off. Perhaps something to do with the huge vapour cooling chamber inside the phone. 

Battery life

• Reliable all-day life
• Large 6600mAh battery
• Fast 100W charging

Battery life is similarly solid, but not quite as impressive as its Oppo counterpart. With a 6600mAh capacity, it’s more than capable of lasting through even your most demanding days. In fact, if you managed to drain it in one day, I’d be impressed. There is a bit of a caveat here in that in certain European markets, you get a slightly smaller 6400mAh battery. 

Still, neither is as capacious as the 7050mAh on the Oppo Find X9 Ultra. So for someone like me, who’s a fairly light user and barely uses more than 2-3 hours of screen time in a day, it’s the difference between lasting three days on a full charge and lasting until the afternoon of that third day. 

How quickly it drains does depend on how you use it, obviously. Personally, I’m usually playing casual games, WhatsApping friends, and using the camera. It does drink the battery when you’re using the camera to its limits, filming in the top resolutions and frame rates, especially if you have the display set to its highest resolution. 

Still, for the average person, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect two days from this phone. Heavier users might struggle to get it through two days, but a full day isn’t a problem. 

With its 100W charging ability (using a compatible Vivo FlashCharge adapter) refilling it again from empty doesn’t take too long.  In fact, you can get a 50% charge in just over 20 minutes. In half an hour, it’ll do just over 70% charge. With a battery this size, that’s impressive. 

Should you buy it?