Vivo

The smartphone market has been in a bit of flux in the past year and a half. In addition to the COVID-19 pandemic, Huawei's exodus from the world's top five vendors has caused a shift in the grand order of things. The industry is now facing another major disruption that could last it well into 2022, but, at least based on one market analyst's figures, Apple has been able to take advantage of the situation and regain its place as the world's second-biggest smartphone maker.

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When choosing a premium camera-centric smartphone, the choice is not as simple as it seems. It purely depends on user preference such as point-and-shoot photography, clicking portraits, shooting self-obsessed selfies, the love for telescopic zoom or video shooting requirement.

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Photography has been a core focus of smartphones for the past years, with companies competing on imaging features that often revolve around pixel counts. Both consumers and manufacturers have become smarter and have started putting the focus on other aspects of digital photography, like HDR, low-light performance, and, of course, the all-famous portrait mode or bokeh simulation. Smartphone makers have even partnered with known camera or lens companies to back up their claims. Of all the major phone brands, Vivo has been working hard on raising its profile in that category, so we took the new Vivo X70 Pro+ for a test drive to see if its camera chops are all that the company makes it out to be.

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Like any other big player in the smartphone market, Vivo has quite a number of device families catering to different audiences. Since last year, the Vivo X series has been making headlines in mobile photography, particularly with its unique yet odd miniature gimbal system. Just less than a year after it launched the Vivo X60 series, one of the world's top five smartphone brands is coming with a new Vivo X70 with some new photography tricks up its sleeve while maintaining one important marketing detail.

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The big Chinese brands are making waves in the smartphone market, but not all consumers might be aware these have sub-brands catering to specific audiences. Xiaomi's Redmi has long targeted the affordable mid-range market while OPPO's realme tries to appeal to younger audiences. iQOO, by comparison, has its roots in Vivo and has been catering to mobile gamers since it launched two years ago. That objective is reflected in the latest iQOO 7 Legend, mixing performance with the aesthetic marks of a car brand best known for its sports cars.

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Vivo is gearing up to flex its mobile photography muscles in just a few days, barely a year after it launched the Vivo X60 series. In contrast to the last two X flagships, however, it seems that the Vivo X70 will be a bit more low-key, preferring internal upgrades over spectacular features. The Vivo X70 Pro+, however, could be the exception, relying on what some might see more as an unnecessary gimmick than a feature to die for.

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Photography is still a critical element in smartphones today, but the game has shifted away from simply bigger sensors or megapixel counts. More and more smartphone makers are developing new silicon in-house to meet their image quality requirements when off-the-shelf image signal processors or ISPs just aren't enough. Vivo is the latest to jump on that trend, with a new V1 image processor that's will debut in the Vivo X70 series coming soon.

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Vivo has been aggressively pushing its smartphones in global markets in the past few years, and its strategy may have paid off with its rise among the world's top five brands. Of course, it has also littered the market with innumerable models, though a few manage to stand out because of some novel feature or design. The Vivo X50 Pro+ and X60 Pro+ may be remembered for their unique mini-gimbal systems, and the Vivo X70 Pro+ might stand out from the crowd with a small screen on its back.

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A new Vivo patent has turned up that shows a strange and very unique pop-up camera system that may find a home in future smartphones. The patent shows cascading extendable camera with four lenses that pop out the top of the smartphone. Each of the four segments of the pop-up camera has its own lens inside.

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Although Samsung seems to have the lion's share of the niche foldable phone market, it might not be the only noteworthy game in town soon. A couple of new foldable devices are rumored to be launching within the next 12 or so months, but, ironically and unsurprisingly, Samsung will also benefit from those indirectly. Its display panel business will be the one providing foldable screens for these phones, and those screens might even boast fast refresh rates usually seen on conventional phones.

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The past 18 months have been somewhat unstable for the smartphone market, especially if you take into account the market shares. In addition to the chaos that the COVID-19 pandemic brought to the whole world, Huawei's ongoing US sanctions also caused a reshuffling among the world's top smartphone makers. The first quarter of 2021 saw Huawei absent from the top five for the first time in years. Now Xiaomi has taken its spot in the second quarter, becoming the world's number two smartphone maker for the first time in its history.

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Many use their smartphones to capture anything anywhere, sometimes even in difficult or dangerous locations and positions. One thing our powerful smartphones will never be able to do is to take aerial photos, at least not without some help from a drone or any other flying contraption. Never say never, as they say, and Vivo seems to be thinking of something to solve that problem. Its latest patent shows a smartphone that houses an honest-to-goodness quadcopter drone to take pictures from above, almost like in the movies.

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