The Vivo X80 gets some pretty good hardware like the MediaTek Dimensity 9000 SoC, a triple camera setup with Zeiss computation and a big battery with 80W fast charging. Is the Vivo X80 as premium as it sounds? I tested it to find out.
Vivo X80 Price in India
Vivo X80 The price of the phone in India starts at Rs 54,999, in which its base variant comes with 8 GB RAM and 128 GB storage model. I had this variant for review. Its other variant comes with 12 GB RAM and 256 GB storage, which is priced at Rs 59,999. The company offers the phone in two colors – Cosmic Blue and Urban Blue.
Vivo X80 design
The Vivo X80 is well designed and has all the elements you would expect from a flagship smartphone. It has a large display with curved edges. This reminded me of older Samsung flagship smartphones that had a similar design. The frame of the X80 is made of metal which gives it a premium look. The power and volume buttons are placed on the right side, and these are also made of metal. They feel solid and clicky when pressed.
The phone has a flat frame at the top and bottom. The SIM tray slot, USB Type C port, primary microphone and loudspeaker are provided at the bottom of the phone. At the top is the infrared emitter, secondary microphone and two words written in English – Professional Photography, which indicates that the company has focused on the camera.
The camera module at the rear of the phone is quite large and occupies one-third of the rear panel. It is also slightly protruding but due to its large size, it does not affect the stability of the phone. The module has three camera sensors as well as laser autofocus hardware and a dual LED flash.
The back panel of the phone is made of glass and on the Urban Blue variant, Vivo has given it a matte finish. This finish does not allow fingerprints to appear on it easily. The color of the phone is quite unique and the phone stands out from the rest of the competitors. If you do not like too bold colors, then you can also go with Cosmic Blue. The company has also provided a case inside the box which has a faux leather finish.
The Vivo X80 is a big phone and comes with a weight of 206 grams. The weight of the phone is felt when used with one hand, but the company has balanced the weight well so it does not cause much fatigue to the hand.
Vivo X80 Specifications and Software
Vivo X80 has a 6.78-inch AMOLED display with a resolution of Full HD Plus. It has a refresh rate of 120Hz and a touch sampling rate of 240Hz. It uses Schott’s Xensation Up glass for scratch protection. The phone also has an in-display fingerprint scanner.
Vivo X80 is the first smartphone to come to India that is equipped with MediaTek Dimensity 9000 processor. This chip is built on 4nm technology and has an octacore design. It has a single ARM Cortex-X2 core clocked at 3.2GHz, and three Cortex-A710 performance cores clocked at 2.85GHz. Apart from this, it comes with four Cortex-A510 efficiency cores clocked at 1.8GHz. The X80 has Vivo’s V1+ imaging chip. The company says that it has installed a large vapor cooling chamber in the phone, which keeps its temperature under control. Both variants have the option to use 4GB of storage as RAM.
Vivo X80 has a 4,500mAh battery and supports 80W fast charging. The charger is available in the box itself. For connectivity, it has Bluetooth 5.3, Wi-Fi 6, 9 5G bands, dual 4G VoLTE and NFC. It has a 6 satellite navigation system with NavIC. The phone is rated IP53 for dust and water protection. The phone does not have a wireless charging feature.
Vivo X80 comes with Android 12 based Funtouch OS 12. My unit had the May 2022 security patch. Funtouch OS 12 offers a variety of customization options, including custom themes. Its user interface is quite easy, but the phone has a lot of bloatware apps which I did not like. Most of these can be uninstalled. Vivo’s own apps like browser etc. annoyed me a lot. I kept getting spam notifications throughout the day.
For gamers, Funtouch OS 12 has an Ultra Game Mode. It can be accessed from the side bar by going into any game. It has a frame interpolation feature which helps in increasing the frame rate during gaming. It has an Eagle Eye View enhancement feature which enhances the viewing experience during gaming. An Esports mode is also provided in the phone which frees up the CPU for gaming by blocking UI gestures, notifications. The company has promised to provide three generations of Android and security patch updates for three years with this.
Vivo X80 performance and battery life
The Vivo X80 has all the features of a modern flagship smartphone. It has a punchy AMOLED display with good viewing angles. The phone has stereo speakers. I found the bottom firing speaker to be louder than the earpiece.
The phone performs well in everyday use. I didn’t have to wait long for apps to load. I had the 8GB variant and I got the RAM extension feature enabled by default. I didn’t face any issues while multitasking between apps. Even if you are a heavy user, this phone is not going to disappoint you.
Its in-display fingerprint scanner was unlocking the phone in just one go. The company also gives the option to customize the fingerprint animation. The face recognition feature also worked without any problem.
Talking about scores, it scored 983,481 points on AnTuTu. Motorola Edge 30 Pro And iQoo 9 Pro These were almost the same scores as those of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 SoC. In Geekbench 5, it scored 1250 points in single core and 4190 points in multi core test. In GFXBench’s car chase test, it scored 71fps.
I played Call of Duty: Mobile on it and the game ran smoothly even on Very High and High graphics. I played the game for 20 minutes after which the battery drained by 8 percent. The phone did not heat up even after the gaming session. This means that its cooling system worked well.
Along with performance, its battery life is also very good. It lasted me a day and a half which included camera use along with social media apps and gaming. In our HD video loop test, it lasted 15 hours, 42 minutes which is a very good time. Its 80W charger is quite big but Mi 11i HyperCharge It is not as bulky as the 120W charger that comes with the device. The phone was charged 80 percent in half an hour and fully charged in another 10 minutes.
Vivo X80 Camera
Vivo X-series phones are known for their camera performance and there are a lot of expectations from the X80. The phone has a 50MP primary camera which also gets optical image stabilization. It also has a 12-megapixel portrait camera with 2X optical zoom. The third lens is a 12-megapixel ultrawide angle camera. It does not have gimbal stabilization, which is available in the portrait camera of Vivo X80 Pro.
Its camera app has Zeiss Portrait Styles and Zeiss Cinematic Video Bokeh mode. Vivo has provided Zeiss T-Coating on the camera lens so that the lens can be protected from blurring or getting damaged. For selfies, this phone has a 32-megapixel camera.
The camera app is very easy to use. It is easy to switch between different shooting modes. The phone’s camera has a watermark by default, you can disable it if you want. Its daylight performance is quite good and the photos have good dynamic range. Distant objects are visible with good details even in landscape mode. By default, the colors look a bit punchy but after enabling Zeiss Natural Color, the colors appear almost similar to the real scene. Its ultra wide camera gives a wide field of view but a slightly warm color tone is visible in it. The photo quality is not like the primary camera.
Close up shots are quite crisp and the photo background has a good natural bokeh effect. Edge detection is good in photos taken in portrait mode. There are many options to customize the output in this mode. The phone automatically switches to the ultra wide angle camera when you come close to the subject. Macro shots come out very good with details due to the 12 megapixel resolution.
The phone surprised me with its low-light performance. It was quick to pick up the scene and set the camera to take low-light shots. The phone took three seconds to click a shot but the details were very good. Landscape shots had objects easily recognizable. The camera app automatically suggests switching to night mode when the scene is dark. I found that it handled scenes well even in street lights.
It captures selfies in a resolution of 32 megapixels by default. Apart from regular selfies, portrait mode selfies were also captured with details. The quality was quite good in low light with screen flash.
The primary camera in Vivo X80 can shoot 4K videos while the selfie camera can shoot videos up to 1080p. I wish its selfie camera also had the option of recording videos up to 4K. Apart from daylight, videos shot in low-light were quite stabilized and while shooting in low-light, a little shake was seen while walking. This Vivo phone has a Horizontal Line stabilization feature. It keeps the horizontal line locked even when the phone is rotated 90 degrees. However, footage in this mode can only be recorded in a resolution of up to 1080p.
Our verdict
If you are looking for a flagship Android phone and don’t want to spend too much, the Vivo X80 could be that smartphone. It is a little more expensive than the X70 Pro but the improvements made do full justice to its price. This Vivo phone comes as a complete package with strong performance, good battery life, fast charging and powerful camera. The MediaTek Dimensity 9000 SoC is quite powerful and can keep users happy. Software is one area where there is a little scope for improvement. The user experience could be better if there are fewer pre-installed apps and spam notifications.
I would recommend buying its base variant which gives better value for money at Rs 54,999. Those who are looking for an alternative, Realme GT 2 Pro Or you can go with the Motorola Edge 30 Pro. Both offer almost the same performance, with a slightly lower price.