The Vivo X100 Ultra was one of the best camera phones of 2024, but sadly the phone was not launched outside China. At its launch, it was the smartphone with the largest sensor for a telephoto camera. It had a 1/1.4″ 200MP Samsung HP9 sensor, which we now have on phones including the Vivo X200 Pro, Xiaomi 15 Ultra, etc. Today, the Vivo X200 Ultra was launched in the Chinese market, and Vivo has made some notable improvements versus its predecessor.
Design-wise, the Vivo X200 Ultra resembles the Vivo X100 Ultra with a large circular camera module on the rear with triple cameras. But unlike its predecessor, the phone has a flat-frame design. While the display on the front is almost flat, the glass on top is slightly curved on the sides. The phone comes in three colors, one of which has a two-tone design. The phone has Armor Glass protection, an IP68 + IP69 rating, an ultrasonic under-display fingerprint scanner, wireless charging, a USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-C port, an IR blaster, and stereo speakers.
Under the hood, the Vivo X200 Ultra has the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset with LPDDR5X RAM and UFS 4.1 storage. The Vivo X100 Ultra had a pretty big 5,500mAh battery last year, but the company went one step further this year and added a 6,000mAh battery inside the Vivo X200 Ultra. There is 90W wired charging and 40W wireless charging support.
Let’s talk about the cameras on this phone. The Vivo X200 Ultra has three rear cameras. The primary camera uses a 1/1.28″ 50MP Sony LYT-818 sensor with an f/1.69 aperture lens and CIPA 5.0 stabilization. It is worth mentioning that the Vivo X100 Ultra featured a 1-inch Sony LYT-900 sensor last year with an f/1.75 aperture lens and CIPA 4.5 image stabilization. So, while the sensor size has reduced this year, there are improvements in the aperture and stabilization.
The ultrawide camera on the Vivo X200 Ultra uses the same 1/1.28″ 50MP Sony LYT-818 sensor as the primary camera, and this should make it the most powerful ultrawide camera on any smartphone. This one has an f/2.0 aperture lens and features the same CIPA 5.0 image stabilization as the primary camera.
Finally, we have the periscope telephoto camera with a 1/1.4″ 200MP Samsung HP9 sensor with an f/2.27 aperture lens, an 85mm focal length, and CIPA 5.0 image stabilization. While the Vivo X100 Ultra had the same sensor for the periscope telephoto camera, the lens had an f/2.7 aperture. So, the periscope telephoto camera on the X200 Ultra should offer a better low-light performance than the Vivo X100 Ultra. Vivo says the wider aperture results in a 38% increase in light intake
All three cameras can shoot 4K 120fps videos and 4K 60fps Dolby Vision videos.
Vivo says there is an improved ZEISS T* coating, which reduces the light reflection even more than last year. There are two image-processing chipsets under the hood – the Vivo VS1 chip for pre-processing and the Vivo V3+ chip for post-processing.
The selfie camera has a 50MP sensor.
If all this hardware was not enough, then Vivo also launched an external zoom lens, which you can attach to the camera module of the Vivo X200 Ultra, and this one increases the overall optical zoom by 2.35x, resulting in an overall focal length of 200mm.
As for the rest of the specifications, the Vivo X200 Ultra features a 6.82-inch Quad-HD+ 10-bit 8T LTPO OLED panel with a 120Hz refresh rate, 4500 nits peak brightness, Dolby Vision, and 2160Hz PWM dimming. The phone runs on Android 15-based OriginOS 5 out of the box.
Here is the pricing for the Chinese market –
- 12GB + 256GB – ¥6499 (~$890)
- 16GB + 512GB – ¥6999 (~$960)
- 16GB + 1TB – ¥7999 (~$1100)
- 16GB + 1TB Photographer’s Set – ¥9699 (~$1330)