[Vivo X80 Pro] wimbawaya:
I’m new to the forum (I’ve been loitering for some time but have never posted), but I just bought an X80 Pro (in Spain, so FuntouchOS) and wanted to add my 2 cents / pose a question of my own, as I think I may have gotten a lemon and wanted to ask whether some of the behaviours it’s exhibiting are normal.

I’d been waiting to upgrade for quite some time and had my mind set on the X70 Pro+, but asking prices were way too high, plus I prefer to buy on Amazon or from a well-established vendor, as I’ve had bad experiences with ebay and Aliexpress in the past. So I decided to hold out until the X80 series. Having watched and read every review out there on the X80 Pro, my mind was 100% made up.

So, I’ve had it for 3 days and unfortunately, the plan is to return it on Monday and either exchange it for another X80 Pro, or for another phone altogether.

My main issues are overheating and battery life. Granted, I’m in Spain and it’s summer, but I’m in the Pyrenees, rarely above 28º C, and have my old P30 Pro next to me for reference, which at the same ambient temperature, remains cool. (The X80 Pro heats up at night too, when ambient temperature is 15º C).

On day 1, I charged the phone to 100% before using it, then started the install/customization process (letting it download apps from the Play Store, signing into my apps, rearranging them on the home screen, etc.). After 1h20min of screen time, my battery was down to 49%.

After 3h20” of screen-time, battery was down to 26%.

This seemed out-of-the-ordinary, but I figured it was the intensive first-day use. The phone also got pretty toasty. After charging it (that 80W charging is FAST!), battery drain continued at an alarming pace. This stopped (and the phone cooled down) after Whatsapp finished downloading the chat backup. Battery drain with light use seems to be approximately 10% per hour of screen-time (as long as there's not networking activity going on).

Since then, I’ve noticed a pattern: any kind of network usage (cellular or WiFi) causes the phone to heat up and for battery to drain FAST (as in roughly 20-25%/hour). Downloading offline maps for Gmaps (WiFi, screen off), it became very warm, losing almost 10% battery to download 500 Mb (which took, for some reason, about 10’). The phone is even warm to the touch when idle and with the screen off (while my trusty old P30 Pro is cool to the touch).

After seeing this, I decided to try a more CPU-instensive task. Applying a filter to an 11’ 1080p video and exporting it in Power Director (same resolution) took 5’ 11” and drained 2 % battery. The phone got warm, but no warmer than when downloading or using the camera (which also causes it to heat up considerably).

So...battery seems to drain faster with network usage than with CPU-demanding tasks? Weird...

*Note: none of the testing has ever been done under direct sunlight, always in the shade.

Yesterday I went for a drive in the woods, using Gaia GPS (which has 3D terrain, so it’s somewhat GPU-intensive) on Android Auto, and the phone heated up so much it refused to charge (I tried both wired and wireless A.Auto). When trying to take photos, the camera app stuttered like crazy (the phone was in the shade and air condition was on). My old P30 Pro has always handled this without even a minor hiccup and has never overheated.

I get the impression that overall, the chip runs hot, especially for networking, but even under idle (background network activity?). From what I’ve read, the SD 8 Gen 1 runs hot in general and is a bit of a power hog, but…is it really this bad or did I get a lemon? Maybe it’s Vivo’s bad thermals, maybe bad CPU optimization, maybe a not-so-great chip in terms of power efficiency and thermals…maybe just a bad chip (no two chips are identical, of course)…

Has anyone else experienced something similar?

I’m an intensive user, but I’m not even getting 3h screen-time (down to 20%; I’d probably get 4h if I drained down to near-empty, which I don’t do to preserve battery). And I haven't even been doing video or photo editing. And so far, draining down to 15%, I’ve never even gotten 4h of screen-on time.

Starting the day at 8 AM with 100% charge, by 3 PM I’m down to 20% (with light usage), so there’s no way this phone could get me through a full day, even with light use. And even with the 80W fast charging, what about holidays and days in the countryside? I’m not sure I want a phone that makes me so dependent on having to plug it in to get me through the day. If this is normal for this phone, there’s no way it’s for me.

So, so far my experience with this phone hasn’t been too great, and I’ll definitely be returning it. What I’m not too sure about, is whether to get another X80 Pro or a different phone. I really want to like this phone and give it another shot but…I’m not sure I’m sold (especially at this price point).

While the main selling point for me was the camera, I can’t say I’m as impressed as I expected to be. Detail is excellent and colour consistency between the lenses is pretty good, and it IS an amazing camera. But performance is proving rather inconsistent. Sometimes pictures feel a bit flat for my liking (I know this is subjective), as if the HDR were a bit overzealous and eliminated the punch/depth. It’s also a bit hit-and-miss in my experience so far: Snap the same picture twice and in one photo it lights up the shadows just right, so they’re not too dark, but contrast is retained; snap it again and it “lights them up” too much, creating a very flat image, lacking contrast. I guess it depends on what the AI deems appropriate for that specific moment.

In terms of colour profiles, the standard is way too saturated for my liking (Samsung-style), which I didn’t expect. And the Zeiss natural colour mode…is a bit hit and miss. Sometimes it’s spot-on, other times it’s a bit dull and flat and I find myself wishing for a more balanced middle ground. Although this is very dependent, from what I’m finding, on which lense you use:

Main camera, “Vivo colour”:

Punchy, attractive image if you like this style, with red tones actually very true-to-life but green tones fairly over-saturated for my liking.

Main camera, Zeiss colour:

True-to-life greens, reds are a bit muted (the building to the left is red stone, with a few grey stones here and there, but it appears much less red in this photo than it actually is).

Ultra-wide, Vivo colour:

As before, very punchy and vibrant. Greens are more saturated than in real life, reds are spot-on.

Ultra-wide, Zeiss:

Strange balance here. The green on the trees is more life-like, but the different tones of green (lighter leaves/darker leaves) are lost to this snapshot. The green of the grass is muted, with a more reddish tint; in real life it appears greener. The red building appears less red than in real life, yet it’s given a red tint to the shaded part of the building behind it, which is actually grey.

2X zoom, Vivo:

The colour is actually fairly accurate here: a bit more over-saturated than in real-life, but pleasing to my eyes. Which proves my theory that colours are more muted on the 2X tele.

2X zoom, Zeiss:

Also visually pleasing, IMO, even if the colours, overall, are a bit muted compared to real life, particularly on the grass.

5X zoom, Vivo:

Colours are way off. Greens are very oversaturated, the house’s stone wall has a very unnatural, over-sharpened, too-contrasy look and the roof tiles have an odd orange tone to them (they’re redder in real life).

5X zoom, Zeiss:

Much more natural greens, but muted reds (the wall looks too grey, especially in the shadowy part) and again, a more orange tint to the roof.

But of course, much of this is down to personal preference and I realise I’m nitpicking. I just thought I’d post this for reference. This phone has an impressive camera setup which I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend. For stills, that is.

The video…I’ve found myself fairly disappointed with. The colour profile is WAY TOO saturated for my liking, and there’s no option (that I’ve been able to find) to switch to the Zeiss colour profile. Stabilization is good, except for a little jittering when panning. The gimbal on the 2X zooms works wonders, but I really find myself wishing it were on the main camera or the ultra-wide instead of the tele. I really can’t think of any cases where I’d want a gimbal on a 2X tele for video (a gimbal is meant for video use), and for stills, normal OIS would have been sufficient, and the gimbal could have been used for video on a lense people might use while walking around (which is rarely, to not say never, going to be using a 2X zoom factor).

My main gripe, though, is the inability to switch lenses during video recording. If you start recording with the ultra-wide, you’re stuck with the ultra wide—there’s no option to zoom at all. If you start recording with the main camera, you’re offered the possibility of zooming in up to 5X, but this is digital zoom. Beyond 2X, it starts to get grainy, and beyond 3X the footage is, IMO, unusable. If you start recording at 2X, it’s also the main camera (with 2X digital zoom); it will let you zoom out to 1X, or zoom in all the way to 10X, which is pointless because past 3.5X, the footage looks like something recorded on a digital point-and-shoot from 20 years ago.

The cinematic mode…honestly, is very aesthetically pleasing, but nothing that can’t be done in post, and not nearly as useful as being able to switch lenses during recording—so, IMO, more of a gimmick than a truly useful feature. I didn’t realise how important being able to switch lenses while recording was to me on my P30 Pro (even if the colour profile differed greatly from one lense to another) until I found myself trying to record my dog on the X80 Pro, seeing how much the image quality degrades when zooming in, and missing the possibility of switching to ultra-wide when he sits in front of me to give me the stick I’ve thrown for him. It just makes the camera so much less versatile for video—it’s such a waste to not take advantage of such high-quality hardware.

This missing feature might be enough to sway me towards returning the Vivo altogether. I actually think I’d prefer an S22 Ultra, even if its photos can’t compete with the Vivo’s, for its versatility in this sense—I get a feeling that even if it doesn’t excel at any one thing (except zoom, of course), it’s a more balanced overall package. But after ordering and returning an S20 and an S21+ and being very disappointed by the lackluster Exynos performance (stuttering video, very slow to export video, bad battery life), I’ve sworn I won’t buy another Samsung that packs an Exynos chip in it.

So back to the Vivo…as I write this, I’m realizing this phone might not be for me. I could maybe overlook the missing video features, but the battery life is a bit of a deal-breaker. Even if I could get 6h of screen time…that’s with a brand-new phone. My P30 Pro is 3 years old and outlasts by a mile, still getting more than 7h screen-time. I don’t even want to know how the X80 Pro will perform in a year or two…

What do you guys think?

On the other hand, even if I could overlook that, for 1199€, I’d expect a flagship experience and level of polish which the Vivo certainly does not have. A first update solved the inconsistencies in the dark mode (black text on a black background), but overall, the notifications issue is something that shouldn’t happen on a phone this price. I don’t get notifications from Protonmail or Signal, or the Mercedes Me app, and I’m a power user who’s gone through all the settings (allow background usage, unrestricted power usage, notifications, etc.).

So…after writing this…as much as I like the Vivo for stills, and as much as I’d like to love it,

I think I’m going to return it. And as things are, I don’t think there’s anything on the market that meets what I’m looking for. I think the SD 8 Gen 1 is too power-hungry a chip, and a SD 888 or 8+ Gen 1 would probably be better choices. Maybe I’ll get a previous-gen phone or just wait for new phones packing the 8+ Gen 1, which seems to be more power-efficient (by 30%).

So I think I’ve answered my own question and will stick with the P30 Pro for now—even with the failing microphone and fingerprint reader. It still performs as well as the day I bought it and if I’m going to spend this kind of money on something new, I want it to really meet my needs (battery, camera, UI & polish, reliability—and storage: I think 512 Gb of storage would be the wiser, more future-proof option). And further down the road…we’ll see. I just don’t feel like being the guinea pig for companies that keep pumping out phones like this, using consumers as beta-testers for unpolished products (I’m not refering to any brand in particular; they all do the same…).

Or does anyone who owns it think I'm being too harsh and should give it a second chance? (Another unit). Do you think I can get at least 6h of screen-time on a different (non-faulty) unit? Do you think Vivo might polish the UI and fix the missing notification issue? (I can't say I like the notification style either though).

Anyway, sorry to all for the rant, but I hope that in exchange I provided some information that’s useful for you.