The smartphone market is seeing more and more contenders sporting 200MP cameras. That being said, most of these remain highlights for expensive flagships. Midrangers are usually not so lucky to have this sort of expensive hardware as part of their arsenal. Key word there being “usually”, as there are a few exceptions to the rule out there. And one of them is the vivo V70 FE.
Of course, it’s not just the hardware that the phone boasts. This Fashion Edition device also gets nifty AI features to go with the powerful main camera. Combine theme, and you have what the company describes as Your Go-To Travel Shot Companion.
The 200MP Factor
Being quite the outlier in its spec sheet, this is not just any old 200MP camera fitted onto the vivo V70 FE. In fact, this 200 MP OIS Ultra-Clear Main Camera uses the 1/1.56-inch Samsung HP5 Large Sensor, which boasts the world’s first implementation of a 0.5µm pixel. The larger sensor and pixels mean more light being taken in when shooting, leading to sharper details and more accurate colours – qualities that literally every smartphone camera needs.
So when the time comes for you to take pictures worthy of being printed out, all you need to do is engage the 200MP-specific High Resolution mode. The resulting shots are large and sharp enough for you to crop and reframe as you need to, without sacrificing detail level. You can even zoom into pictures taken this way up to 900% zoom and you will still be able to see the details captured in the shot. Or, for those shots that are truly special, print them as is in large formats and frame them up to mark the occasion.
Of course, photos taken this way can only be as clear as your hands are stable when taking the shot. And to be honest, most of us don’t have hands steady enough for this. Which is why, backing up the impressive sensor of the vivo V70 FE is the brand’s self-developed optical image stabilisation system. The company says that this OIS has been rated at CIPA 4.0. And the short explanation for this is that you can still get clear images even at 1/3 seconds of exposure.
To 3.7x Zoom And Beyond
All that being said, getting a view that you have to capture in all of its absolute glory is not all that common. More often than not, you’d probably just need to capture a subject in its full detail, with the background being accessory to the fact. You may even want the background intentionally blurred out to get the emphasis on your subject.
This is where the 3.7x telephoto zoom lens comes into the picture, pun not intended. The longer focal length means a narrower depth of field, keeping your subject in focus while blurring the background. You can also amplify this effect using the dedicated Portrait shooting mode. Or, if you’re among the minority and want a bit less of the effect, you can use other focal length options in between 1x and 3.7x. 23mm is represented by the base 1x, with 35mm and 50mm equivalents being 1.5x and 2.2x respectively.
The AI Features That Tie Them All Together
Enhancing all of the above is the various AI applications once you’re done snapping your shots. Inherited from the base model V70 are the AI Magic Weather and AI Magic Landscape features. As their names suggest, this allows you to change what appears in the background of the pictures that you took.
After all, no one can control the weather. But you don’t have to let that stop you from moving the rainclouds out of the way of the sun’s rays. Or let the time of day stop you from turning a night shot into one during the daytime, for that matter. You may not be able to control time in real-time, but nobody said anything about doing so after the fact.
You don’t have to stop at controlling the way the sky looks either. With the power of AI, you can make what’s on the ground look more vibrant or muted than they actually are. You can even put snow on the ground and on roofs, in a picture of a place that usually doesn’t get that. And if there’s something – or indeed someone – in the picture that you’d rather wasn’t, go ahead and remove them using AI.
It doesn’t stop at bending the reality of a photo either. With the help of AI Super Zoom, you can zoom in way beyond the aforementioned 3.7x. You’ll need an internet connection for this, you can zoom up to 30x and let AI do the sharpening for you. Useful when you see a beautiful-looking building in the distance, and need a photo of it.
The Rest Of The Package
With all of that being said, the vivo V70 FE is not just good for its camera. The rest of the phone consists of parts that you’d expect from a midranger. Starting from the outside, we have the 6.83-inch 1.5K Ultra Clear AMOLED Display with a 120 Hz refresh rate. Here, we also see an unusual deviation from the smartphone design norm. This comes in the form of a dedicated speaker grille at the top, rather than having the earpiece also be a speaker. Which means the phone gets proper, symmetrical stereo sound.
Inside, it packs a MediaTek Dimensity 7360-Turbo chipset, and a 7,000 mAh BlueVolt Battery. It’s the largest battery to be fitted in the V series of phones, ensuring it has more than just enough juice to last throughout the day. And when the day comes to an end, top it all the way up with 90W FlashCharge, filling it from empty to full in 60 minutes.
On the software side of things, the vivo V70 FE runs OriginOS 6 overlaying Android 16. Notably, it features the Origin Island, one of the earliest instances of an Android version of the Dynamic Island. You can also expect similar use cases, such as it serving as both a shortcut to notifications that pop up, and a makeshift widget for apps with real-time progress updates, such as music playback. The company has promised four years of OS updates and six years of security patches.
The Fashionable And Capable
You’d be hard-pressed to find another midrange smartphone sporting a 200MP camera like the vivo V70 FE. Not only is it uncommon within this price range, it’s also the best-performing within its class. And to top it off, it’s bolstered by AI tech to let it do more than its hardware allows.
For when you’re not snapping photos, the vivo V70 FE is reliable as can be. With the MediaTek Dimensity 7360-Turbo as its brains, you can be sure that the day-to-day user experience is a smooth one. OriginOS 6 is also there to not only make said user experience more intuitive, but also slightly more fun, depending on your mileage with the Origin Island.
With all that being said, if you’re interested in getting a vivo V70 FE of your own, it can be yours starting from RM1,599. Not immediately though, as it is only open for pre-order, from now until 17 April.
This article is brought to you by vivo.
