How Vivo Built The Best Camera Phones: Custom Silicon, Zeiss Partnership

I test smartphones for a living, and if you ask me “which phone is the best right now,” I’d have to give you a multi-part answer as each of the top phones has strengths and weaknesses.

For example, the iPhone is the best at recording videos; the Google Pixel has the most feature-packed AI features; Xiaomi’s top phones have the best overall specs and value proposition.

But the best phone for still photos, especially portraits? It’d be Vivo’s phones, whose flagship X series has consistently been considered the best camera phone among mobile photography enthusiasts. Check out the photos I snapped below, all unedited, straight out of the last two Vivo flagship phones.

The thing is, it’s not hard to see why Vivo’s flagship phones would have such strong cameras, because the Shenzhen-headquartered company has always pushed for the newest and best hardware. For example, the last two Vivo flagship phones, the X100 Ultra from early 2024 and the just-launched X200 Pro, use a 200-megapixel, 85mm Periscope zoom lens with a 1/1.4-inch image sensor. This sensor size is significantly larger than the zoom lenses in all other phones right now. The iPhone 16 Pro Max’s zoom lens measures 1/3-inch, and Samsung’s S24 Ultra zoom lens measures 1/2.5-inch. Even other Chinese brands, which tend to push the boundaries of hardware quite a bit, lag behind Vivo in camera sensor size.

Vivo’s also been partnering with Zeiss for the past four years, using the iconic German optic expert’s T* coating to reduce lens flare. Vivo is also always one of the earliest to adopt a new camera sensor. Its X200 Pro main camera uses the barely two-month-old Sony LYT-818. This is a far cry from, say, Google or Samsung, reusing the two-, three-year-old sensors in their latest flagships.

But what surprised me lately was that Vivo’s V series of mid-range phones also offer very strong portrait cameras. I’ve been noticing this trend for a couple of years already from my own testing, but I recently visited Zeiss’ headquarter in Germany where I learned more about just how closely Vivo and Zeiss work together.

Vivo and Zeiss meet on a weekly basis during the development cycle of a mobile phone, and in fact build custom camera lenses that use miniature version of Zeiss’ optics. This means the same 7-lens structure Zeiss designed to handle light

But premium hardware is one thing, Vivo still needs to build a software imaging system that can make the most of the hardware. I spoke to Vivo’s vice president of imaging, Yu Meng, recently about this.

“Hardware determines the lower limits of imaging,” says Yu, who joined Vivo in 2007. “But software opens up the upper limits.”

Essentially, Yu is saying the hardware sets the bar for the floor — the absolute baseline quality of an image — while the software raises the ceiling and allows the image to perform at or even above the hardware’s capabilities.

Yu says his team worked with Zeiss to understand how to best optimize light and how they play with optics, and then his software engineers build algorithms to best utilize the optics, even if the hardware differs.

For example, the Vivo V series phone, being a $400-ish mid-ranger, does not have the industry-leading camera hardware of the X200 Pro, but I was still able to capture some great looking portraits with the V40 Pro.

If you look at the above photos shot with the mid-range V phone and flagship X phones, they look close enough in quality that one may wonder why the flagship is needed. Well, the larger sensor of the X200 Pro does allow the phone to have longer reach and ability to shoot in low light conditions. The V40 Pro with a smaller sensor would struggle more in low light conditions than the Vivo X200 Pro (both of the above portraits by the V40 Pro were snapped with great lighting)

The flagship X phone can also apply the same portrait algorithm into videos, which the V phone does not do as well due to the difference in silicon power. Yu says his team collaborated with silicon maker MediaTek to optimize the ISP (image signal processor) of the silicon used in the Vivo X200 Pro. On top of that, there’s a custom imaging chip built in-house by Vivo, the V3+.

“We use a dual-processor platform,” Yu says, explaining that the flagship X200 Pro uses both chips to handle image processing. “During heavy loads, we leverage the power from both chips. For lighter loads, we use the one with the best efficiency.”

The X200 Pro’s main camera — that aforementioned two-month-old Sony sensor, is built on 22nm architecture (significantly better than 40nm of the last generation), and thus has much greater computational power, including processing millions of pixels of data in real time.

I am still working on my long-term review of the Vivo X200 Pro, but I’ve snapped over 2,000 photos already and I am very impressed by what I see. The X200 Pro is the best camera phone right now for still photos. But competition is coming from Xiaomi and Oppo, who have been teaming with iconic European brands to fine-tune their imaging too.

To that end, Vivo has recently signed a new contract with Zeiss to extend their collaborative partnership.

“We consider Zeiss not just a partner,” Yu says. “But a kindred spirit. We both share a strong passion for optics and imaging.”