Looking for innovation in the smartphone camera world? Here it is. The Vivo X50 Pro has a gimbal system inside the camera module for incredibly steady video.
Vivo is always worth paying attention to because of its willingness to showcase innovation, and the new X50 Pro is no exception. The in-display fingerprint sensor, the pop-up selfie camera, and the borderless waterfall screen are all cutting-edge pieces of phone tech that we’ve experienced on Vivo devices first.
So what has the X50 Pro brought us? The camera uses a gimbal for super-steady photos and video, something it showed off at the beginning of the year in its Apex 2020 concept phone.
Gimbals are usually found in high-end cameras, drones, and even on movie sets, but never before in a smartphone. It’s not just a gimmick either, as it makes a genuine difference for video quality. I’ve been using the Vivo X50 Pro for a short while to see if the rest of the phone is as desirable as the camera.
This is where the magic happens on the X50 Pro. The 48-megapixel f/1.6 main lens has a gimbal camera system, which is joined by an 8-megapixel wide-angle lens, a 13-megapixel bokeh lens, and an 8-megapixel telephoto that can shoot at 5x hybrid and 60x digital. In addition to the gimbal, the camera is steadied by electronic and optical image stabilization, plus there’s night mode, macro mode, and an astro photo mode.
You can see the gimbal working. In video mode, the viewfinder shows some “drift” as the gimbal catches up with itself after you stop moving the phone. I shot video of light aircraft coming in to land at a local airfield, using the full extent of the X50 Pro’s capability. Ranging from wide-angle to 15x zoom, it was remarkably easy to keep the tiny planes centered in the viewfinder. The resulting video is incredibly smooth.
I shot entirely handheld using two hands for the plane footage, and one hand for moving around, and then compared the results with another phone I had with me — the Honor 30 Pro Plus. It was almost impossible to keep the plane in the center of the viewfinder using the Honor phone, while the Vivo made the same task easy, resulting in a vastly better video.
It’s not perfect. While it takes great video when standing still or moving slowly, video does blur when you’re running or moving quickly, as if it fails to compensate for the gimbal. This is most noticeable in low light. Despite this, the gimbal is a groundbreaking new video tech for a phone.
