When Xiaomi and Realme both rocked up to February’s Mobile World Congress with concept smartphones featuring attachable camera lenses, Vivo’s executives must have had a quiet chuckle knowing they were ready to launch the real thing just two months later.
Its flagship X200 Ultra went on sale in China a few weeks ago. Even by itself, it’s probably the best camera phone in the world right now, but it’s made even better by a unique accessory: a custom-made 2.35x telephoto extender lens, which attaches to the phone’s existing 3.7x telephoto for a total of 8.7x optical zoom, or the equivalent of a 200mm lens. It sounds (and looks) absurd, but it’s arguably a natural move for Vivo, which has built its brand around a long-running partnership with Zeiss and a growing reputation for crafting some of the best camera systems in any Android phone.
From a design standpoint, Vivo has split the difference between the two concepts I saw in Barcelona earlier this year. Realme imagined attaching full-size DSLR lenses on a phone’s existing camera, and Xiaomi pitched a custom, compact lens with its own built-in sensor that could magnetically snap onto a phone’s back.
Vivo echoed Xiaomi in cre …
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