Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “The Vivo X Fold Puts The “Wow” Back In Folding Phones”.
This video is sponsored by surf shark when i review a smartphone that isn’t built for my part of the world. The question i’m usually trying to answer is: do i wish it were offered in my part of the world? Late last year, oppo released a smartphone, for which my answer was a resounding yes, a device called the find n that blended the best of large and small format foldables, and this here, oppo’s sister brand vivo, has gone the opposite direction, with a truly extravagant smartphone called The x fold: well, this series is about exploring all the different kinds of flexible display devices and after a week with the vivo x fold, i’ve found it gets so much right that if it were offered here, it would easily take samsung’s place as the new go To in full size, foldables now hold your horses before you, click that buy button. If you live in the u.s like i do buying this phone is a recipe for disappointment. For one reason, the prime directive of any phone is to you know, give you notifications and, like many smartphones meant for the china market, this one just isn’t good at that. When it’s loaded up with apps meant mainly for other regions, you won’t get your telegrams. You won’t get your gmails, you won’t get your facebook messages, at least not on time, no matter how many apps you force to stay running in the background or set to open on startup. In my experience, it doesn’t matter you’re gon na miss notifications, no matter what you’ll also occasionally run into region-specific corners of the software that don’t appear to have english translations available and there’s also the lack of 5g band 71 and the criticality of which will vary depending On where you live, but you know for my part, i found that t-mobile in brooklyn has enough coverage in bands two, three and four that i actually did.
Okay on coverage, and while i really don’t like the iphone-inspired interface paradigms used by vivo’s origin, os flavor of android, i did find a lot to like elsewhere. For one thing, most foldables treat the inner and outer displays as completely independent home screens, but vivo almost seems to consider the outer display a window into your inner home screen when you open the phone you’re, given the same app and widget layout, you’ve chosen on the Right side and then, of course, you can fill out the left with whatever you want. I think that’s an interesting choice and it’s echoed by the decision to mount two fingerprint sensors on the phone one outside and one within, i’m not sure it’s necessarily better than the side-mounted fingerprint sensor of samsung’s galaxy fold. But it’s certainly no worse.
It’S just different here in the united states that galaxy fold 3 is the standard, the benchmark against which all other large format foldables are measured and the vivo has it beat in three important ways. The first of those is also the most subjective, the aspect ratio ever since that first galaxy fold, some commenters have complained that samsung’s cover displays are too tall to comfortably use. This, i don’t agree with. I prefer a narrow outer screen, because it’s a better one-handed experience for me and when i have two hands-free, i generally open the phone anyway, but after a week on the vivo i can see where people are coming from.
The x-fold’s wider 21×9 cover panel offers a lot more breathing room which can make a big difference when it comes to an app like instagram, and that difference is even bigger on the main screen, while there’s only about a half inch in diagonal size difference. The vivo’s screen works out to be around 14 larger in surface area, and i know that may not sound like a lot but trust me in person. You notice it now that does make the vivo bigger and heavier sure. But it’s not like the fold. Three is terribly portable either. I i kind of feel like this is a case of in for a penny in for a pound, but not everything’s, bigger on the x-fold.
In fact, vivo’s second win comes from shrinking something the crease, while both these displays use ultra-thin glass. As a cover, material vivo joins almost every other manufacturer in its approach to bending that glass, which is to say it uses a wide teardrop fold. Samsung’S, the only notable company insisting on a narrow radius fold and the consequences become apparent when you put these side by side, the vivo’s crease is visible absolutely, but it’s nothing. Next to the deep gutter that bisects the fold three’s display a gully, that’s apparent to eyes and fingertips alike, as i’ve said before, it’s not a deal breaker for the fold 3 by any means, but given the choice, i think most would agree that the less crease The better [ Applause ], of course the opposite is usually true when it comes to smartphone cameras, the bigger the bump, the fancier, the photography well, samsung’s 12 megapixel trio on the fold.
3 doesn’t set a terribly high bar and vivo clears it easily, with four discrete sensors capable of delivering 48 megapixel ultrawides 50 megapixel primary photos, 12 megapixel, 2x zooms and 8 megapixel telephotos from its 5x optical periscope and like the creases, the photos speak for themselves, while The galaxy fold 3 occasionally produced the preferred shot during my week of testing the vivo outclassed it much more often, including in night scenes where its post-processing did much greater justice to the neon lights of long island city slice shops and the iconic pepsi cola sign. While its zeiss t-star coatings kept the internal reflections from the waterfront food truck lights to a minimum, the cherry on top a bunch of fun camera accessories like custom, zeiss portrait modes and as you can see, video stabilization, that’s excellent. The vivo cameras are not perfect. The video zoom is so limited that i basically consider it useless and witness the oil paintings it produces when you punch in too far on that telephoto, but on the whole, it’s a much more versatile, more tolerant camera package than samsung’s and, more broadly speaking, with these Cameras vivo reinforces the point that huawei made with last year’s mate x2.
It is possible to pack a flagship class camera into a foldable and you don’t even need to charge more to do it i’ll share the exact price i paid for this device, as well as a few clap backs from samsung right after this one of the things I never thought i’d miss about the internet until it was gone, was that it was mostly neutral, but these days your internet service provider can change your speed based on what kind of surfing you’re doing like slowing down your connection. If you’re streaming, video or your employer can restrict certain traffic that it thinks you shouldn’t be able to access and websites can even show you different prices, depending on where you are in the world, even when that doesn’t make much sense. Well, i think all that’s pretty shady, so i’m happy to be sponsored by surf shark. It’S a vpn that keeps your browsing private, safe and yeah neutral, because that’s what the internet should be get surfshark at the link in the description and use code.
Mr mobile for 83 percent off and three extra months, free thanks to surf shark for sponsoring this video just over 1500 euro. That’S how much i paid to trading shenzhen out of the mr mobile review budget for this device. That’S right! Much less than samsung’s launch price! For the galaxy fold, 3.
now look my trusty fold. 3 has taken a lot of hits today. So, let’s give it the credit. It’S due samsung’s four years of experience with foldables give it some really significant edges in software with more apps. That more intelligently take advantage of the folding screen.
For example, no one has yet to duplicate the usefulness of the fold’s main camera selfie mode. Also, i prefer samsung’s camouflaged internal selfie camera to the gaping hole punch cutout on the vivo. The fold 3 supports an s pen stylus, while the vivo does not, and the fold 3 is also ip rated for water resistance, not so the vivo actual spill by actual, but i’m not panicking. Yes, but as significant as those advantages are and as much as i genuinely love my galaxy fold 3, i just as genuinely believe that if the vivo x fold were offered here with at least comparable service and repair options – and you know software that gave me notifications – I would buy this over this, as i said at the top. It just gets so much right.
This beautiful sky blue, skew with the color matched soft synthetic leather back the sliding switch to silence the ringer borrowed from vivo’s sister brand oneplus, the processor being a generation, newer phone calls and speaker performance being neck and neck. The bigger battery that lasted me, 12 hours, even when i spent four of those using it as a mobile hotspot, the faster charging speeds using the 80 watt adapter that comes in the box, a beautiful stitched, pleather package. That also includes usb headphones and a cable. You don’t get any of that in the box with the foldables from samsung. It all boils down to a beautiful piece of mobile machinery.
So why do i sound so bummed? Well, as a lot of us have been saying for the past few years, if devices as good as this remain exclusive to china, the incumbent manufacturers, like samsung, won’t feel as much pressure to keep up the quality of their own products for the us. I hope i’m wrong about that. I hope that samsung does have some kind of i don’t know galaxy fold ultra on its long-term road map to take the large format foldable to the next level. But if it does, i think i know what it looks like.
It looks like a vivo x fold if you’re in the market for a foldable and you live in one of the regions. The vivo is available. I wouldn’t think twice about buying it. This video was produced following seven days with a vivo x fold purchased by mr mobile. As always, these opinions are mine and untainted by any input from the manufacturer, which was given no editorial control, copy approval or even an early preview of this content. If you’d like to see more videos like this on youtube, please subscribe to the mr mobile on youtube until next time from michael fisher, thanks for watching and stay mobile, my friends .