GoKawiilTushar Mehta / Android Authority
TL;DR vivo has started officially teasing the X500 series, featuring its upcoming camera-centric flagships.
The vivo X500 Pro will use a custom Sony sensor that offers 17 stops of dynamic range, producing well-lit shadows even with bright highlights.
The Pro is also claimed to be the first phone to capture slow-mo at 4K@240p.
It’s been mere months since we took a good look at vivo’s colossal Ultra camera masquerading as a phone with one of the farthest-reaching zoom lenses. Come September, major phone giants will keep us busy with new releases. Among them, vivo is set to launch a new flagship camera phone with some serious upgrades previously unseen on phone cameras.
In a recent Weibo post, vivo’s product manager Han Boxiao revealed camera upgrades coming for the upcoming vivo X500 series. Boxiao writes that while previous devices have aced at phone photography, the upcoming X500 series “aims to take mobile video to another level.” When I tested the X300 Pro from earlier this year, I found it to outpace the iPhone 17 Pro in video, and the upcoming phones could take a major leap, as the representative suggests.
Among the improvements vivo teases for the X500 series, the first is its new custom sensor. The vivo X500 Pro will feature a custom “Ultra Dynamic Camera” developed by vivo in collaboration with ZEISS and Sony. The Phantom 500 sensor (as translated by Google) will support 17 stops of dynamic range, previously unseen on a phone camera. Sony recently launched the LYT-910 LOFIC sensor capable of 17ev stops, and we could be looking at a slightly modified version adapted for vivo.
The camera sensor should let the vivo X500 Pro capture details on a person’s face, even when sitting right in front of a bright light source. This would extend to video, not just photos, effectively bringing professional-grade capabilities to the phone’s camera and delivering “cinematic quality frame by frame.”
vivo / recreated with Gemini vivo X500 series' camera upgrades. Image translated from Chinese to English using Gemini.
The next major upgrade the X500 Pro would bring is support for 4K@120p recording with HDR (the X300 Ultra currently supports 4K 120p with LOG) and 4K@240p slow-mo, making it the first phone to support both. The phone will also support CIPA 7.0 stabilization for gimbal-style steady video. The vivo X300 Ultra previously supported a similar level of stabilization, but only on the telephoto lens. With this generation, however, it could extend to the primary camera as well.
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