The X stands for extreme, indeed. | Image: Vivo
Vivo announced a trio of new flagship phones today, and sitting at the top is the X90 Pro Plus, complete with the brand-new Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset announced just last week. The 8 Gen 2 is expected to appear in plenty of Android flagships over the next year, including Samsung’s S23 series, but the X90 Pro Plus has the honor of being the very first to market. It also includes some serious camera hardware, putting it up there with the most ambitious smartphone cameras to date. Unfortunately for us, it’s only launching in the Chinese market for now.
Vivo doesn’t outright name the X90 Pro Plus’ chipset as the 8 Gen 2, likely because of its partnership with MediaTek, but looking at the specs, you can connect the dots. The other two models in the series — the X90 and X90 Pro — use a MediaTek Dimensity 9200 system (similarly, the previous-gen X80 Pro used a Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 and the X80 used a Dimensity chipset). All three models feature a 6.78-inch, 120Hz OLED panel, ship with Android 13, and come with up to 12GB of RAM. Serious stuff.
Image: Vivo
The X90 Pro Plus comes in two colors and includes an absolutely massive camera bump.
The three phones also include camera systems with Zeiss branding, with the Pro variants sporting a large Type 1-sized main sensor. Vivo uses low-dispersion glass in its main camera lens. The company claims that this, combined with a wide f/1.75 aperture, transmits 24 percent more light to the sensor than the “public” version of this Sony IMX989 sensor. All three have a fixed-focus, 2x telephoto camera designed for portrait photography. The Pro Plus gets a second, 3.5x telephoto with a 64-megapixel sensor, along with a high-res 48-megapixel ultrawide; the X90 and X90 Pro make do with a 12-megapixel ultrawide.
The Vivo X90 Pro Plus starts at ￥6499 (about $910); the X90 Pro and the X90 will sell for ￥5499 (about $770) and ￥4499 (about $630), respectively.
Presales for the X90 and X90 Pro start today, with the X90 shipping on November 30th and the X90 Pro on December 6th. The X90 Pro Plus goes on presale on November 28th, and it’s slated to arrive on December 6th.