Vivo x300 ultra crushes samsung’s zoom with just three lenses
Vivo just fired a 200-megapixel sniper shot straight at Samsung’s Galaxy S26 Ultra, and it only needed three lenses to do it. The freshly-unveiled X300 Ultra swaps the industry’s quad-camera arms race for a single, monster 85 mm telephoto that promises to out-reach and out-resolve anything on the shelf in 2026—maybe even 2027.
Why three lenses can beat four
Physics, not marketing, wins here. The telephoto module uses a 1/1.4-inch Samsung HP0 sensor behind an f/2.7 Zeiss lens, a combination that swallows almost twice the light of Samsung’s 10 MP periscope. Add CIPA 7.0 stabilisation—good for seven stops of shake correction—and the hardware already sounds like overkill. Vivo layers on 60 autofocus updates per second and a new “Zeiss Master Lenses Collection” colour pipeline that hijacks 12 spectral channels to fake what our retinas expect. The result: a 17.4× optical reach that still holds 200 MP instead of the usual pixel-binned mush.
The other two cameras refuse to play benchwarmers. A 35 mm main shooter—yes, 35 mm, not the tired 24 mm—uses Sony’s unreleased LYT-901, a 1/1.12-inch slab that should make night street photography addictive. The ultra-wide inherits the same 50 MP LYT-818 found on Vivo’s drones, giving 14 mm a clarity that ultra-wides normally surrender after sunset.
Clip-on cannons for the obsessed
Vivo sells two screw-on tubes for anyone who thinks 85 mm is quaint. The “Cannon 400” turns the phone into a 400 mm feline spyglass; the “Lipstick 200” keeps things pocketable at 200 mm. Both lenses mount via a metal case that feels more like a RED accessory than a phone bumper. Early math suggests Vivo is applying magnification factors relative to a 23 mm baseline, so real focal lengths land closer to 300 mm and 600 mm—numbers that would make Micro-Four-Thirds owners blush.
Video crews get 4K 120 fps 10-bit Log, ACES workflows, and quad-mic spatial audio. Translation: the X300 Ultra can crash a Netflix set without apology.
Flagship everything else
Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, 6.82-inch 2K LTPO panel at 144 Hz, 6 600 mAh silicon-carbon cell with 100 W wired top-up, five years of Android updates. Vivo even throttles PWM flicker to 2 160 Hz so your retina sleeps better. The only thing missing is global distribution—expect imports to carry a premium until Vivo decides the world beyond China deserves the best camera phone it has ever built.
Samsung now has nine months to answer a simple question: can four mediocre lenses outrun one great one? Tick tock.