For years, foldable phones have been sold with an unspoken condition: a large display at the cost of a worse camera and weaker battery. vivo X Fold6, which will go on sale in the Czech Republic on October 27th, shows that this equation no longer applies as naturally as it used to.
The reason is simple and physical. A flexible phone has two halves of the body, with a hinge between them, and when unfolded, it is about four millimeters thick. For a long time, neither a large sensor with optics nor a battery with the capacity that owners of regular flagship phones are used to could fit into such a space. Therefore, manufacturers cut back where it was least visible in the table of parameters: on the telephoto lens and on the endurance.
The telephoto lens used to be the first to hit the market
The main camera has become a full-fledged feature in smartphones in recent years. However, when users got closer, they usually reached for a telephoto lens that was a class below what was offered by classic flagship cameras. That's where the X Fold6 saw the biggest change.
In addition to the 200MP ZEISS main camera with a Samsung HPB sensor and CIPA 4,5 level stabilization, the phone has a periscope telephoto lens with a Sony LYTIA 602 sensor, 3x optical zoom and 70mm equivalent. According to vivo, this is the first ZEISS APO-certified telephoto lens in a foldable phone - that is, an optic that monitors the color defect at the edges of the image. It can also handle macro and digital zoom up to 100x.
Accessories that jigsaws have never had before
More interesting than the numbers themselves, however, is what is related to the telephoto lens. X Fold6 is the first vivo foldable phone to support an external teleconverter – the vivo ZEISS Telephoto Extender Gen 2 with a 200mm equivalent. The same attachment is also supported by the new X500 models Pro and X500 Pro Maxwhich vivo introduced in China.
The foldable phone is entering an accessory ecosystem that has previously been reserved for classic camera phones for the first time. The attachment works in eight camera modes, including Portrait, Stage or ProAnyone who takes photos of concerts or sports gets a tool that has never existed before with a flexible phone.
Large battery in a thin body
The second long-standing compromise is durability. X Fold6 has a battery with a capacity of 6,900 mAh in a body that is 4,4 mm thick when unfolded and weighs from 228 g. This is made possible by BlueVolt technology with a silicon anode, which allows more energy to fit into the same volume than a classic lithium-ion cell.
Added to this is resistance that folding phones have not offered at all for a long time: IPX8 and IPX9 against water and IP5X against dust. IPX9 means resistance to a stream of hot water under pressure, which is a non-trivial discipline for a phone with a hinge.
Display as a desktop
The internal ZEISS Master Color display has a diagonal of 8,02″, the external 6,51″, both reach a local brightness of up to 5,000 nits. OriginOS 7 system Fold tries to use a large area for work: the Origin Workbench and Multi-Split Screen functions allow you to have up to four applications open at the same time. The performance is provided by the Dimensity 9500 Super Edition chipset, which vivo developed together with MediaTek specifically for this model.
The range of foldable phones in the Czech Republic is still relatively narrow. X Fold6, which arrives here on October 27th and whose pre-sale starts on October 16th, expands it with a model that has a large display nestIt doesn't matter whether it's against the camera or against endurance. If you take this approach, the main question will stop being what you give up in a puzzle - and start being about what you get in return.
