The vivo X100 series will take better than ever photos during sunset, revealed Jia Jingdong, VP and chief of branding at vivo. The executive revealed key specs of the duo in a long post on Weibo, including a Dimensity 9300 chipset and vivo V3 ISP for the Zeiss-branded T*-coated lens cameras.
He added that phones do not take real shots of the moon; the pictures are “calculation photography” in which the device knows the geographical location and the moon phase. Simply said, the phone is using available data to calculate the state and position of the moon and then uses higher-quality imagery to enhance it.
Jia posted several images of the sun with the periscope lens and two more with the shorter telephoto camera – one of a person and the other of a ladybug on a plant.
vivo X100, X100 Pro camera samples
The executive boldly claimed the vivo X100 phones will take realistic photos of the sun during sunset. The reality is a smartphone cannot take those as well – it needs ideal conditions where the Sun is at its lowest on the horizon, there are no clouds, and light refraction is lowering the overall brightness.
Direct sunlight during the day is over 125,000 lumens, while during sunrise and sunset, it is about a quarter at circa 32,000 lm. However, a powerful SoC, along with a dedicated image signal processor that is developed to take such scenarios, could do a similar trick as the moon shots by using known data about the sun’s position to bring it back in the photo.
The challenge with overall brightness remains, though, as it means other objects are very underexposed. The vivo ISP promises to address this by basically isolating the sun from its calculations, processing the rest of the picture and then adding the enhanced version of the sun itself.
This isn’t a new feature for vivo smartphones. The vivo X90 Pro was already taking stunning photos during sunrise and sunset. We expect the vivo X100 Pro will take it to the next level with this year’s Mediatek flagship chipset.
We also got to see the smartphone’s lovely orange color with a wavy vegan leather finish. We will have confirmation on November 13, and we expect to learn more features in the ten days leading up to the event.
