Samsung has been resting on years of delivering smaller updates for its customers in India. So, a new player (in the foldable market) like Vivo literally needs to reinvent the wheel to get a premium smartphone buyer’s attention. After using the phone for several weeks, I can conclude that Vivo has not exactly reinvented the wheel with its X Fold 3 Pro. But it does take things to the next level, offering plenty of value and features compared to the competition. As feature-packed as it may seem, it’s not perfect. Read on to find out why.
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Vivo X Fold 3 Pro Daylight Camera Samples. Top to bottom – Ultra-wide, primary, 3x telephoto (Tap images to expand)
The Vivo X Fold 3 Pro’s telephoto camera can also be used for shooting close-ups or macro photos, and these come out really well and pack in plenty of detail thanks to the high-resolution sensor. Zoom was also quite useful despite switching to hybrid after 3X, as the photos are perfectly usable up to 10X zoom, beyond which there is a noticeable drop in detail and some purple fringing as well.
The ultra-wide camera is not as impressive as the other two, but it gets the job done in daylight. There’s noticeable barrel distortion, and the colours don’t match the results from the other two cameras. In dim street-lit settings, the image quality takes a drop, with aggressive noise removal messing up the details. Moreover, colours also appear a bit dull.
Vivo X Fold 3 Pro camera samples. Top – close-up, bottom – Super macro (tap images to expand)
Both selfie cameras produce average results with textures that aren’t as detailed as most flagships at and below this price point. However, since this is foldable, it was possible to use the primary camera as a selfie camera, and the results from this camera were top-notch, with excellent detail, sharpness, and edge-detection. Low-light selfies from the primary camera also came out equally impressive.
Vivo X Fold 3 Pro Low light camera samples. Top to bottom – Primary camera, telephoto camera, Selfie from Primary camera (tap images to expand)
The phone captures good 4K video at 30 or 60fps with good detail and dynamic range in daylight and low light. The videos offer a steady bit rate as well and are well-stabilised. The T* coating sure helps cut down on lens flare when shooting video in low light. 8K 30fps footage turned out to be the best of the lot and even managed excellent quality in dim lighting. Unfortunately, it’s a bit too shaky, and at 200MB for 20 seconds of footage, it’s not feasible to shoot at this resolution all the time.
Vivo X Fold 3 Pro Battery: Bigger is better
- Battery Capacity – 5,700mAh (dual-cell)
- Wired Charging – 100W
- Wireless Charging – 50W
- Charger – 120W (in the box)
Battery life is shockingly good for a foldable and quite impressive for a regular premium phone as well. The phone easily managed more than a day with heavy usage, even with the AOD on, which included mixed use of both displays. With casual use, you can get past 1.5 days of use.
The Vivo X Fold 3 Pro’s hinge makes it slimmer and lighter than the competition
In our video loop battery test, the phone managed to run for 19 hours and 56 minutes on the cover display and an equally impressive 16 hours and 4 minutes on the main display. And even when I ran out of charge, the included charger juices up this foldable’s massive battery (from zero to fully charged) in just 43 minutes, managing an 82 percent charge in just 30 minutes.
Vivo X Fold 3 Pro Verdict
Samsung has been delivering every single foldable that has been launched globally in India year after year. The brand surely has its following, so it will be really hard to convince a Samsung smartphone owner to switch to another brand, let alone a Vivo-branded device.
However, there’s enough value with bigger (high-resolution) displays, plenty of raw performance, more features (with a sprinkle of AI), and better overall camera performance available on the Vivo, making the X Fold 3 Pro stand out. Vivo seems to have done enough to get any brand-loyal smartphone buyer’s attention. Just so you know, this phone is also manufactured in India. Oddly, Vivo does not offer any paid care program to extend the warranty of the foldable, as Samsung and OnePlus do. This means you will have to really take care of the device (or pay for damages yourself in full) in case your display or hinge gets damaged beyond the warranty period, which can get expensive.
If you are very picky about the software experience, then the OnePlus Open (Review) is definitely a better choice at a lower price, but it lacks several features that the Vivo X Fold 3 Pro offers. Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 5 (Review) will still be the go-to foldable for many buyers as it also provides S-pen stylus support, but it has now come to a point that it’s hard to ignore the massive hardware and feature upgrades that are being offered by the growing competition this year.
