Welcome to WhatGear reviews, you legendary person and welcome to 2025. And I know I'm early, but so is the release of this 2025 Flagship phone from Vivo. And this one is different because unlike many other flagships that try to tick all the boxes…Vivo does not hide the fact that this phone is all about the camera…in fact, I think their mission was to create the best smartphone camera possible in 2025… but have they done it?

Well, I'll let you be the judge in a little blind camera comparison test towards the end of this video.And because they've put so much energy into the camera, does that mean that other important aspects have been watered down? Well, let's find out.

Key Features

So, let's run through the key features first. The display, unlike last year's Vivo X100, is slightly more flat, but now has a quad curved glass. The display panel is, of course, LTPO AMOLED. The screen size is 6.78", 452PPI, 4500nitts peak brightness & the screen to body ratio is 90.3%, and the refresh rate is 120hz. And Vivo has opted for the more premium sonic fingerprint scanner under the glass as opposed to less expensive and arguably less secure optical scanner.

So the display specs in my opinion is undoubtedly at the flagship level; One side note though, is that Vivo’s own IQoo 13 does have a newer 144Hz LTPO AMOLED display, but it’s important to know that that phone is more geared towards gamers, with less of a focus on camera.

The X200 pro has dual stereo speakers and a dual SIM tray. The charging port is USB C 3.2, and the charging speed is up to 90 watts, double the speed of the Galaxy S24 Ultra. It also supports 30W wireless charging. The battery size is better than the 2024 flagship level. The X200 Pro has a capacity of 6000mAh thanks to a new 3rd gen silicon anode tech. So there's been no compromise with power and speed of power delivery.

The overall design of the phone is quite beautiful. There are three colour variants: Titanium, Blue & Black. All of them have official IP68 and IP69 ingress protection ratings.

This one weighs 228g, and quite interestingly, the black model is 5 grams lighter. So far, everything is top-tier in all areas. The display, battery, and charging are at the flagship level, but surely, Vivo must have tried to save some money somewhere to spend more on the camera. Well, check this out.

Performance Specs

Vivo has given the X200 pro 16GB of RAM & 512GB as standard, which is a lot. Instead of going with Qualcomm's flagship chip, the Snapdragon 8 Elite. The Vivo X200 Pro is equipped with MediaTek's champion. We'll return to the Dimensity 9400…and a little secret weapon more on that in a moment.

But was choosing a Dimensity over a Snapdragon chip a compromise? That was actually a question…let me know what you think. And if you're not sure, don't worry because we are about to find out in a head-to-head benchmark test & we'll get a look at the thermals after the test with a bit of predator vision.

Benchmark 

To see a full breakdown of the result & thermal imaging. Watch the full video here.

Camera Specs

All right, so now let's visit the main attraction of this device. The camera. What's different about Vivo's approach is that some companies use decent camera sensors, sometimes just okay camera sensors, and then buff the performance with computational photography tweaks. In some cases, the lenses are an afterthought.

Vivo's approach is quite different. Here's what I mean. The Telephoto camera is, in fact, the largest zoom camera sensor ever used in a smartphone to date. It's a 200MP HP9 1 over 1.4" Samsung Isocell sensor. 

The Primary is a custom camera sensor designed in collaboration with Sony; it's the LYT-818. 1 over 1.28".  

And the Ultra wide is also Samsung Isocell 50MP JN1, 1 over 2.76". 

So, the hardware beneath the surface is top-tier and better than most flagships. But what really elevates this X200 Pros camera is the quality and calibration of the glass, aka the lenses.

Most manufacturers go all in-house when it comes to this. Some manufacturers are very good at this, but their expertise might never be as good as that of Zeiss, a company specialising in lenses since 1846. And this is not a gimmick. It's a real collab, and if Zeiss isn't happy with Vivo's choice of lenses that don't meet their standards, they'll bring the hammer down. And have them re-calibrated.

All three cameras have Zeiss T* coatings, which are said to reduce ghosting and lens flares dramatically. Which is still a problem that some of the most popular flagships in 2024 suffer from.

The third piece of the camera puzzle is image signal processing and computational photography. Typically, the SOC is tasked with this on top of everything it has to handle. But not here because of that secret weapon that Vivo has thrown into the mix.

It's a dedicated chip designed by Vivo, for one thing. Optimise the camera performance on the software side of things. It's called the Vivo V3+. Now, if this wasn't already good enough, the cherry on this cake, so to speak, is Zeiss has taken the time to create a Zeiss Master Colour Profile for the camera software. 

So, it probably sounds like I'm praising the X200 Pro camera setup a bit too much…but I'm looking at it from a technical perspective at this point. So let's see if the X200 Pros camera performance lives up to the specs in a blind camera test vs the S24 Ultra and the iPhone 16 Pro Max.

Blind Camera Test

To see which phone took which photo. Watch the full video here.

I purposely didn't go into all the Android 15 software & camera software features on the Vivo X200 Pro because there's so much to discuss. Instead, a couple of follow-up videos might be better. So let me know if you're interested in seeing that & make sure you're subscribed. And if you made it all the way to the end of this video. Just know I appreciate you guys the most. And I'll see you in the next one. Don't be late.

Learn More About the VIVO / Zeiss Collaboration