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Vivo X Fold 3 Pro review: This modern-day foldable phone comes at a premium
Summary
The Vivo X Fold 3 Pro checks most boxes for what you want in a foldable smartphone but its hefty price tag might make customers thinkVivo isn’t new to the foldables space, having released several book-style and flip phones, none of which made it to India. The Vivo X Fold 3 Pro changes all that, arriving fashionably late to a still emerging market that has the likes of the Samsung Z Fold 5 and the OnePlus Open. In doing so, Vivo has leveraged its late mover status to the fullest, packing the X Fold 3 Pro to the gills with several segment firsts, including that of being the thinnest and lightest book-style foldable.
Design and build
At ₹1,59,999, it certainly looks the price, with a sleek 5.2mm thickness when unfolded, barely thicker than the USB-C port on the bottom edge. Even when closed, the X Fold 3 Pro’s slimline 11.2mm thickness and 236g weight give it a very regular candy bar phone feel, one that fits easily in palm or pocket without weighing them down.
It has Schott Xensation scratch resistance, IPX8 water resistance and a display hinge that’s certified for 500,000 reliable folds and unfolds for added peace of mind.
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The hinge does double duty, ensuring not only that both halves fold flat against each other without a discernible crease, but also keeping the screen propped semi-open at various angles, to watch content, take selfies or use it laptop-style with half the screen working as a keyboard.
Display
It’s the massive 8.03-inch 2K+ resolution inner display that gets the foldable its biggest screen bragging rights. Along with the 6.53-inches outer display, both are top-tier AMOLED displays, with 120Hz refresh rate, tack sharp details and vivid colours, up to 4500 nits of peak brightness for excellent outdoor visibility. There are two in-display fingerprint scanners—one on the outer display and another on the folding display on the bottom right. The slightly rectangular inner display is good for viewing HDR10+/Dolby Vision content, although the speakers lack depth, expected from such a slim chassis.
Under the hood
Powering the X Fold 3 Pro is a 2024-flagship Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset paired with 16GB and 512GB of top-spec memory and internal storage. Gaming and everyday tasks were handled just fine, albeit with the occasional throttling under stressful gaming, and Vivo has optimized apps like Instagram to work better on the larger screen.
The sheer expanse of the inner display allows the device to accommodate multiple windows simultaneously in split-screen or floating window arrangements. I quite liked the ‘Fold to Split’ feature that quickly lets you move an app into split screen mode by gently folding the display (OnePlus’ Canvas feature is still the gold standard for foldables, though).
Keeping up with the times, Funtouch OS 14 includes a number of AI features, including note summarization, voice transcription and summaries and live translation of on-screen content, although I do wish Vivo would pare back some of the pre-loaded first- and third-party apps. Software upgrades support is a bit of a letdown at 3 years of supported upgrades, particularly for a flagship phone at this price point.
Cameras
With the prominent Zeiss branding and the very prominent camera module on the rear, it comes as no surprise that Vivo has packed the X Fold 3 Pro with a formidable camera setup—a 50megapixel main camera, a 64MP ZEISS telephoto lens that’s capable of 3x optical, 10x hybrid and up to 100x digital zoom (along with macro shots), and a 50MP wide-angle lens. You’ll also find identical 32MP selfie shooters on the outer and inner displays.
The primary camera takes excellent shots with good details and colours, both in daylight and low light conditions, and the level of details captured at 10x zoom on the telephoto allows you to really get in on the action. Selfies are passable, though.
Verdict
What may come as a surprise is the size of the battery Vivo has managed to pack into such a slim device, and the 5700mAh unit takes the X Fold 3 Pro well past a day and half, even with heavy usage and screen times of well past 7 hours. Fast charging support at 100W speeds gets you from empty to full in under 40 minutes.
Save for a little polish that the user interface sorely needs, the X Fold 3 Pro checks most boxes of what you’d want to find in a foldable today—good performance, sleek dimensions, bright displays both within and without, excellent battery life, great cameras.
Vivo has gone the distance in ensuring the big bragworthy numbers play out well in day-to-day use. The ₹1,59,999 price tag will give customers some pause, particularly with the new Samsung foldables lineup just around the corner. We’d recommend waiting to see what Samsung pulls out of the hat before pulling the trigger on the Vivo.
Tushar Kanwar, a tech columnist and commentator, posts @2shar.
