The South Korean giant Samsung is now the fastest and biggest foldable smartphone brand in the world as the company has managed to create a record sale of last year’s Galaxy Z Fold 3 and Galaxy Z Flip 3. This year Samsung has released both the latest generation Galaxy Z Fold 4 and Galaxy Z Flip 4 models as successors. So, no one is even close enough to Samsung Galaxy foldable devices right now in terms of display quality, hardware specifications, and overall software support. But the Chinese OEM Vivo has managed to make the foldable smartphone competition quite hard by releasing Vivo X Fold Plus.
The Vivo X Fold+ is the successor of its predecessor Vivo X Fold (launched in last year) and comes with some minor upgrades overall. But it seems that the X Fold+ model by Vivo has a better hardware specification than the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4 model on paper. If you haven’t checked it out yet, make sure to go through this article.
Vivo X Fold Plus Specifications
This new foldable smartphone from Vivo has a quite faster and more reliable Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 SoC out-of-the-box. It also includes an ultrasonic fingerprint sensor, a bigger battery, faster-charging support, and so on. It offers a 6.53-inches OLED cover display with Full HD+ (1080p) resolution, 120Hz refresh rate, etc.
Whereas the internal foldable screen offers an 8.03-inches size that features an LTPO 1Hz-120Hz display panel with HDR10+ support. It has 2x 16MP selfie cameras placed on the cover screen and one on the internal folded screen.
Talking about the rear side, the Vivo X Fold+ model has a 50MP (ISOCELL GN1, 1/1.57-inches) primary camera which is the same as the Galaxy Z Fold 4 model. But the bigger ultrawide camera 48MP, 1/2-inch + 12MP telephoto camera (2x zoom) + an 8MP telephoto camera (5x periscope zoom) makes a big difference as compared to only one telephoto lens on the Galaxy Z Fold 4.
However, the primary camera on the Vivo X Fold+ records up to 4K@60fps videos apart from the 2x telephoto, and ultrawide cameras. Whereas the selfie cameras and 5x telephoto cameras are only capable of recording up to 1080p resolution videos. The Vivo X Fold+ handset runs on Android 12 on top of OriginOS Ocean UI.
It also offers stereo speakers, Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.2, NFC, GPS, USB 3.2 Type-C port, a 4,730mAh battery, and more. If we take a quick look at the Galaxy Z Fold 4’s battery capacity, the Vivo X Fold+ has a 330mAh larger battery capacity on paper which may offer additional standby time or usage time.
While the Vivo X Fold Plus model also supports 80W faster charging which can be fully charged in 35 minutes apart from the faster 50W wireless charging support.
What’s the Catch with Vivo X Fold+?
Well, it looks like that Vivo isn’t interested or capable enough to increase its reach outside of the Chinese market right now. Though Vivo has a huge market in Asian countries and some other regions too, the Vivo X Fold+ model is currently available in China. But what’s the big deal?
Vivo X Fold+ doesn’t have the IP rating for water resistance at all which can be a deal-breaker for a huge number of people. Whereas the handset won’t be released anytime soon in other regions which means global people won’t be able to buy this device. So, the competition for Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4 or even its upcoming foldable devices will become narrowed down drastically due to the lack of Vivo’s global appearance.
Vivo X Fold Plus costs around CNY 9,999 ($1,415) in China which is basically around $200 cheaper than the Galaxy Z Fold 4 model right now. But Samsung will still have the benefit of manufacturing millions of units and selling them across the globe quite respectfully. Meanwhile, Vivo’s OriginOS Ocean UI won’t be as optimized and eye-catching as Samsung’s One UI 4.1 or higher skin based on Android 12L.
So, this can also be a huge barrier for people to go with Vivo as Samsung has nailed in the software department too. Additionally, Samsung offers 4 years of security patches and 3 years of major Android OS updates are worth mentioning.
