I have to come clean here, I have been interested in the Vivo X50 for the last month mainly for its unique feature (which I’ll get to later). After playing with the phone for a bit, here are some of my thoughts about Vivo’s newest premium smartphone.
Let’s start with the design. Vivo has definitely made sure that the X50 looks and feels premium. The screen is a 6.5-inch AMOLED display that has a 90Hz refresh rate and HDR10+ capabilities. The body is made of glass and feels premium to the touch. Our model is the Glaze Black color variant and is definitely one of the more beautiful phones to look at, though it’s important to note that with the glass body, the phone is a fingerprint magnet. Vivo has included a clear rubber case which does alleviate the issue of the fingerprints.
Specs-wise, the Vivo X50 is pretty decent. It features a Qualcomm Snapdragon 730 processor with our model mated to 8GB of RAM and 128GB of internal memory which, unfortunately, is non-expandable. The Vivo X50 runs on Vivo’s Funtouch OS 10.5 on top of Android 10.
The Vivo X50 has a 4200mAh battery capable of 33W fast charging. As a light user, the battery lasted me about 2 days with minimal usage (light browsing and a bit of Youtube). Charging the X50 was a breeze, as the phone reached more than 50% in 30-minutes of charging and was 100% full in just over an hour.
The Vivo X50 has a quad-camera setup at the back. The main shooter is a 48-megapixel camera, the secondary is an 8-megapixel ultra-wide-angle camera, the third is a 13-megapixel portrait camera with 2x optical zoom, and the last is a 5-megapixel macro lens. The front camera has 32-megapixel.
What makes the Vivo X50 special is its camera. The flagship X50 Pro is the world’s first smartphone with a built-in “gimbal” on its main camera. Our unit, the non-pro variant, doesn’t have the same gimbal-like feature, but it does have an optical image stabilizer (OIS) so videos are still buttery smooth.
Playing with the cameras was satisfying. Photos came out great and videos were equally good. Like the V19 Neo, Vivo has equipped the X50’s camera with AI and, honestly, it does a great job determining the subject and the scene. Video-wise the Vivo X50 has some great features utilizing its OIS such as the Ultra-stable mode which automatically uses the OIS, and the “movie camera” feature which smartly tracks a subject and keeps it in on the center of the screen.
Here are some sample pictures from the Vivo X50:
The Vivo X50 captures great and sharp images. 
A sample of the phone’s optical zoom. It has the same great quality as the zoom photo. 
The Vivo X50 has the same great AI in its camera. When I was shooting this the phone was quick to identify the subject as a cat. 
Thanks to the 5-megapixel macro lens, close up photos were great with details still sharp. 
A sample of using the fixed macro feature of the camera. 
The macro lens used in daylight. 
The 13-megapixel portrait camera give great subject separation. 
Here’s a phone captured using the “Bokeh” lens feature of the phone. Even on low light scenarios the phone does a great job in subject separation. 
Night mode on the the X50 was great. 
Meanwhile, the night mode using the super-wide-angle lens is definitely not the best out there. 
Even at night, the camera was able to produce decent and bright photos. This was taken around 9:30PM on a fairly cloudy evening.
As of writing, Vivo has not revealed the price of the X50 and the X50 Pro, but after the first few days with it, I think that this phone is great and I can’t wait to fully test it out.