Last year, we were discussing two lines of development for folding screens, whether to stack as much material as possible to achieve full functionality, or to reduce weight to create a better feel. This year, it seems that manufacturers have finally reached a tacit agreement and have started their own journey to reduce weight, such as the vivo X Fold2 that we are going to talk about today, which has made a significant weight reduction to achieve a balance of feel and functionality. So what new experience does it offer? Let's take a look.
More than the new design of the sky is round
The vivo X Fold2 follows the previous generation's "Heaven is Round" design concept, which means that the square phone form is made with a rather design round image module, so that the multi-camera can be harmoniously arranged on the back of the phone. The difference is that they have moved the image module slightly to the upper left corner this time, giving it a more square-circle feel.
It also seems that the Vivo X Fold2 has a stitching process on the right side of the back, where the Huaxia Red colorway we received is a dual material stitching of vegan leather and glass. This dual-material treatment adds a sense of layering to the back cover and balances the texture and feel of the grip end and the phone as a whole, a very pleasing and good design.
Interestingly, the glass part of the back cover of Vivo X Fold2 is still made of matte glass, with a hidden "rivers and mountains" lurking underneath, echoing the "Huaxia" in the color scheme name, which has a unique flavor.
Lighter and thinner, but still fully functional folding form
vivo X Fold2 this time, of course, the focus of the upgrade on the folding form of upgrade. The weight has been reduced from 311g to 278g, and the thickness of the folded device has been reduced from 14.57mm to 12.9mm, which is a significant improvement in the feel of the device.
Of course, although the feel is indeed much improved, but we can not ignore that, compared to the current market of folding flagships, the advantage of Vivo X Fold2 is obviously not in the simple weight and thickness figures, but in its folding "ability".
First of all, it carries an 8.03-inch internal screen with a more conventional aspect ratio of 4:3.55. This size and aspect ratio actually makes an invisible distinction in form and is more in line with vivo X Fold2's pursuit of "omnipotence".
With the "world's only" ultra-durable and lightweight hinge, the inner screen of the Vivo X Fold2 has an amazingly flat look and feel, and it is hard to see the creases at a glance unless the angle is tricky.
In addition, it also retains many configurations that "should have been discarded", such as wireless charging, such as the hinge's hovering ability, such as 3D ultrasonic dual screen fingerprint, etc. The previous generation's silent button has also been retained. The addition of these configurations brings it closer to a straight flagship in terms of experience, and weight seems to be a minor regret that can be ignored.
The strongest performance of the current folding flagship
Performance should have been a relatively insignificant part of the package, but considering that the vivo X Fold2 is the first folding screen with the second-generation Snapdragon 8 mobile platform, it's worth testing a few more points.
In terms of theoretical performance, the Vivo X Fold2 can run over 1.33 million points in Rabbit, which is considered the top level of the current second-generation Snapdragon 8, which also reflects the advantages of a larger horizontal folding body.
As for the actual performance, we also directly invited the "original god", the test scene is currently the most can squeeze the performance of the early grapefruit night orchid full speed Sumeru city run map.
The average frame rate was 58.6 fps, and the body temperature was surprisingly low, which made it feel extraordinarily cool. Clearly, the new generation platform does bring performance and experience advantages to it, and being the first folded flagship with the second generation Snapdragon 8, debuting in April, also means it can grab a certain lead and wait for the next challenger to arrive.
Streamlined image module, unchanged good experience
To be honest, the image module of Vivo X Fold2 has some concessions in some configurations compared to its predecessor. First of all, it has replaced the sensor at the ultra-wide angle end with IMX663, which is the same as the portrait lens end; secondly, the 8-megapixel periscopic telephoto lens of the previous generation is not present this time, and the whole module is streamlined into three cameras. This reduction in focal length will of course bring shortcomings, but to evaluate its image capabilities, or to see the specific performance, let's take a look at it.
Although there are not many upgrades to the image module, the main camera performance of vivo X Fold2 is still quite good in daytime scenes, the color reproduction in the default mode is very good, and the various details in the picture are also very clear, which is a good performance that can satisfy people at first glance.
As for the two secondary cameras, their color consistency in daytime scenes is also quite good, and the details are also in place, so you can see that vivo X Fold2 has really made an effort to tune it.
Of course, it is in the night scenes that the advantages of the Zeiss imaging system of the vivo X Fold2 will be reflected. As you can see, in our night scene sample, it first presents a more vivid night image, the light and color processing are very much in the style of vivo's usual excellence. The extreme high light from the street light on the left side was also well recorded. In the face of such extreme scenes, it still did not have a serious glare condition, and no ghosting could be found in the image, which is indeed a very good performance.
The secondary camera of Vivo X Fold2 also has a good anti-glare ability, and the style of restoring night scenes is also very close to the main camera, which is brighter and more vivid, while also retaining a sufficient sense of night. As for the portrait lens sample, because the focal length is elongated, the field of view is small, the metering feeling is also a little different, it looks darker than the other two lenses, but in fact they are still relatively consistent style.
The overall image performance of the Vivo X Fold2 is still very good with the folded form's waist-level framing and hover shooting capabilities, and with the addition of the Zeiss T* optics and the self-developed image chip V2, its performance is still satisfactory.
The absence of the periscopic telephoto is of course regrettable, but we also need to note that the folding screen form is after all different from the straight board machine, before the image performance, the folding screen also needs to do a good job in the hand and other aspects of the basic experience. In the end, we also see that the vivo X Fold2 is still on the road to weight reduction or choose to streamline this configuration, but also can see that want to achieve a thinner and lighter folding body is really a very difficult thing.
The addition of some thoughtful little features
In the last generation of folding flagship, Vivo has brought a lot of impressive folding features, this time they also created some new ways to play, such as more hovering adaptation scenarios, so that the hovering form becomes more useful. I really like a feature called "calendar off screen", so that the folding screen half folded into a tent state, standing on the desktop is a small calendar clock, very intuitive display of the current time.
So far, this feature has a lot of room for development. In addition to simply displaying the time and date information, for example, it can also be connected with the focus mode, half-folded into work mode; or further develop the screen off style to show more schedule or other information, etc. I am very much looking forward to the subsequent version of the update.
This time, vivo X Fold2 also adds the support of the bottom Dock bar, which can appear at the bottom of the screen when entering the application, so it is convenient to quickly drag out the small window or switch between applications, which is a considerable improvement to the efficiency.
In addition, along with vivo X Fold2, there is a new set of Quantum Suite, the most critical new feature of which is the ability to control PC remotely. Unfortunately, this feature was not yet available during our testing period, so we can only look forward to the subsequent performance after the feature is officially launched.
Continuity? Fast charging? The performance is not bad this time
For the last part, let's take a look at the battery life of the vivo X Fold2 as usual. It's a very substantial upgrade in terms of configuration, and while it's reduced in weight, the battery has also improved slightly to a capacity of 4800mAh, which is still not easy.
We also tested the actual battery life of the vivo X Fold2, and interestingly enough, even though we tested it more harshly than its predecessor, its battery life performance improved.
The performance of the fast charging part is even more satisfying. vivo X Fold2 supports 120W fast charging this time, which is extremely advanced among folding models. In the actual test, it was able to charge from 1% to 100% in 29 minutes, and reached nearly 50% of the battery in ten minutes, which is really outstanding.
It's a shame that the 80W GaN PD dual-port charger on the vivo X Fold+ was replaced with a single-port 120W charger, which is a small thing to note for those who travel with multiple devices.
Summary
Let's review the overall performance of the vivo X Fold2. This generation focuses on the "weight reduction without degrading the experience" thing, and has made a lot of efforts to reduce the body weight by 33g while bringing better internal display performance, larger battery and faster fast charging, while some details of the experience have not been cut, such as wireless charging, hovering capability and 3D ultrasonic dual screen fingerprint, etc.
After doing so, the overall experience of the Vivo X Fold2 is really good, especially the almost flat inner screen, which looks stunning when watching videos, and the wireless charging experience that charges as you go makes it more like a "flagship phone" than a "folding phone" that we need to understand and endure.
There is no denying that this new folding flagship does still have regrets, such as its body is still not very thin and light, many competitors on the market have already won in this area, the original periscope lens equipped with the absence of more or less heartbreaking.
But the actual experience, I think vivo X Fold2 is still a very competitive model, rich hover function, excellent Zeiss image and extremely good internal screen display ability, are its strengths, not to forget that this is also the first second generation Snapdragon 8 folded flagship. With such a head start, it may still be a hot seller again, just like its predecessor.
