The Vivo X50 Pro 5G series sports unique gymbal camera stabilization and Samsung's new 50MP sensor

The subheading here is the slogan of the new X50 series, and while it sounds like just another marketing cliche, it's in fact relevant this time around. The Vivo and Oppo brands have been at the forefront of phone innovation in the last few years, introducing dual-screen phones, pop-up and "shark fin" cameras, half-screen fingerprint readers, and plenty of other forward thinking experiments.

For Vivo, said experiments are usually test-driven first with its Apex series of concept phones, and the Apex 2020 that was previewed back in February showed what may be in store for Vivo's flagships this year. Besides the impossibly curvy screen sides and the under-display front camera wishful thinking, the Apex 2020 concept featured a "48MP gimbal camera," and that new image stabilization idea is now likely to make it in a commercial device.

Vivo was quick to move from concept to reality, and the Vivo X50 Pro is the pioneering gymbal-bearer among phones. It, however, will get something else entirely, not the 48MP sensor of the Apex 2020. The "50" in the title doesn't denote 5G connectivity, albeit sereies has it, but clicks with the new 50MP Samsung sensor that is on the X50 Pro+.

Samsung's brand new ISOCELL GN1 that is the company's first sensor that allows Tetracell (four physical 1.2 micron pixels make one virtual 2.4 micron unit) pixel-binning AND Dual Pixel phase-detection autofocus. The 108MP sensor of the Galaxy S20 Ultra has Nonacell (9-in-1) binning, but it is struggling to focus from very close distances, and Samsung may remedy that with the new GN1 sensor technology.

That "gimbal camera" will be the showstopper when the phone gets announced in the next two weeks or so, as it will allow the lens to basically float around a single axis for unprecedented stabilization while shooting video, or focusing during stills. Here's how it will work, according to the teaser that leaked on Weibo.

While detailing the Apex 2020 concept, Vivo advised that the gimbal approach can improve lens fluidity with up to 200% compared to the more orthodox optical image stabilization solutions that are in phones now. It took Vivo months of time and a lot of R&D team efforts to develop and miniaturize the module as the kit takes five times the area of your average phone camera, and more than three times the space that a periscope zoom camera, like the ones on the Galaxy S20 Ultra or P40 Pro take.

To wit, the gimbal system consists of "a limit mechanism, dual ball suspension, lens, voice coil motor, dual S-type FPC lines, T-FPC, magnetic frame, and protective cover," whatever all those mean, but the gist of it is that it is able to compensate for hand movements up to 300% better than the current optical image stabilization solutions.

Given the better main sensor stabilization, overall the light sensitivity has increased 39%-220%, depending on how steady you have to hold the phone, i.e. the increase is larger in night shots when your camera has to be extremely steady for a decent picture. Here's an OIS vs the X50 Pro gimbal system comparison.



The gimbal suspension will be useful in freezing moving objects for perfect shots without edge blurring, too, so, overall, color us excited to take this baby for a spin when it is launched globally.



In addition to the gimbal thingy, the Apex 2020 concept smartphone presented something called Continuous Optical Zoom, in a world's first. The idea is to continuously zoom between 5x and 7.5x thanks to a “4-group lens combination” with two fixed lenses and two movable ones. It still has the periscope zoom design seen on recent 5x-10x optical zoom cameras, and maintains a thickness of only 6.2mm, ensuring it easily fits inside the smartphone.

While the Continuous Optical Zoom didn't make it into the X50 Pro and Pro+ models, they both do sport 5x periscope zoom lens which coupled with the large main sensors allows Vivo to boast with up to 60x Hyper Zoom levels.

The print on the phone's camera island says it covers 16mm-135mm equivalents, and that's after throwing in the ultrawide angle and macro lenses of the quad camera on the back in the X50 Pro series equation.