The TECNO CAMON 18 is meeting us very soon. And today, we have got our hands on some photos of the latest CAMON model from TECNO, likely releasing around early October. We still don’t have a lot of details about the phone, but the render reveals a triple-camera set-up and a classy chrome-inspired color. As you can see in the image below, the key feature of the upcoming phone is going to be its 60x zoom, which will be paired with TECNO’s proprietary AI TAIVOS technology. The new camera setup is said to capture significantly better photos than its predecessor.

TECNO CAMON 18 Leaked Camera Details

CAMON 18’s triple camera setup will have an aperture range between f/1.6 – 3.5, and a lens between 16-135mm. The cameras don’t seem to protrude much, and the overall design looks pretty clean with round corners. We can also see a fingerprint sensor situated conveniently on the side, which is increasingly becoming common among smartphones in the past couple of years.

Well, this was about its design. But we also have details about CAMON 18’s hardware.

We have got information that the TECNO CAMON 18 Premier is going to be the first phone to be released with Mediatek’s latest Helio G96 chip in the African market. And with 60x zoom camera at the back, the CAMON 18 seems to shift its focus towards better photography.

Tecno CAMON 18 Release

As for the release date, the CAMON 18 Premier will make its entry sometime in October. No details have been released yet about the pricing or its availability, so we will have to wait for more details to be released closer to the launch date. The colors that we have above look interesting, but there could be more options at launch.

The post Exclusive: TECNO CAMON 18 will bring powerful 60x Zoom cameras along with the new Helio G96! appeared first on Gizmochina.

Recently, Realme released an important smartphone in the affordable flagship segment – the Realme X3 Superzoom. Probably from its name you’ve already guessed what strength it holds. Yes, the phone is called SuperZoom because it has incredible zooming capability. 

We have seen how Realme has successfully launched special smartphones with incredible pricing. And the X3 Superzoom is no exception. Usually, smartphones equipped with super camera combinations supporting 5x optical zoom are pretty expensive but the new Realme model stands out from its competition.

While it seemed that high resolution zooming cameras would be exclusive to expensive flagships, the Realme X3 SuperZoom tries to change this trend by bringing it to the upper mid-range segment.

We have already posted the Realme X3 SuperZoom hands on a few days back but now let’s take a closer look at the device and its cameras. In this X3 SuperZoom camera review, we try to check whether the powerful cameras do justice to its specs in real-life performance. 

Realme X3 SuperZoom Display

Before talking about its camera, let’s look at its display. We think it’s unfair to the phone if we don’t take about its 120Hz refresh rate, even if it’s not on the first page of Realme official advertisement. But it’s an LCD display which doesn’t allow to have an in-screen fingerprint reader — so you have to use a side-mounted fingerprint-enabled power button. The pixel arrangement is quite similar to what we’ve seen on the other 120Hz LCD display. Compared to most mid-rangers that feature a 60Hz display, the X3 superzoom offers much better fluidity.

Realme X3 SuperZoom Camera Review

As for its camera, the X3 Superzoom features a 64MP main camera with a Samsung GW1 sensor which was announced at the end of last year. Another highlight is the top 8MP telephoto camera. It supports up to 5x Optical zooming and 60x hybrid zooming. To guarantee its stability, the telephoto camera has OIS anti-shake. The other two cameras are an 8MP wide-angle shooter and a 2MP macro camera.

Let’s check out whether this combination works well in real life.

First, let’s see some samples from the primary camera. The original high-resolution sensor shot samples with pretty good detail and clarity. And under good light conditions, the samples had excellent exposure and white balance. An interesting feature for the Realme camera app is its AI color dazzle mode. It’s similar to the vivid color mode on other phones. But at the same time, the Realme model could adjust the colors in a smarter way of AI recognition. The color reproduction is lively with higher saturation than the originals.

realme x3 superzoom normal

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But a problem is that though the photos shot by the main camera had impressive contrast, the dynamic range of the photos didn’t satisfy us as the dark areas lost some detail and had some noise.

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And then we try to see how it performs in night scenes. From the samples, we could see significant brightness improvement and the exposure balance between brightness and shadow. In the aspect of noise reduction, it managed to smoothen the dark scenes in the images at the software level. But if you look closer, we could see some blurring marks left by software tuning.

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Now let’s talk about the samples shot by the wide-angle camera. Although the 8MP resolution now is not the best option for a smartphone’s wide-angle camera, the wide-angle samples of the Realme X3 Superzoom still have decent colors and good anti-distortion. And the X3 also had the same problem on the wide-angle camera as most phones — it didn’t do well on removing color fringing in the image.

wide angle

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And let’s move to another camera, the macro camera. Well, it’s almost one of the standard setups for Realme’s models. And as usual, the Realme Macro samples maintained a pretty good production in really close shooting distance.

There are a few smartphones that have 5x optical zoom but this model is the first mid-ranger that actually features 60x digital zoom capability. The Realme X3 SuperZoom covered almost the same shooting range as the Huawei’s latest P40 Pro flagship – from 0.6x  to 5x optical zoom, and even longer digital zoom as well.

We also compared it with the P40 Pro’s zooming samples. For the 5x zoom option, although the X3 Superzoom samples have lower resolution than Huawei’s samples, Realme’s zooming samples have pretty good color representation and better color contrast. When we zoom up to 10x, the resolution strength of the Huawei’s model is more significant. But here we have to praise the Realme X3 Superzoom for the OIS anti-shaking, which allowed us to shoot the clear zoomed-in photos with my hand.

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You can get the original camera samples from this drive link.

It’s clear that Realme X3 Superzoom’s biggest strength is its telephoto camera with 5x optical zoom – unseen on smartphones in its price range. So we had to check how good the Realme X3 Superzoom camera was, especially when compared to the best in the market – the Huawei P40 Pro.

The samples showed us that the Realme model did not fall very behind in quality. The cameras are not a gimmick and perform really well for a device in its price range. 

So if you want an affordable smartphone with powerful zooming capability, the Realme X3 SuperZoom won’t disappoint you!

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The post Realme X3 SuperZoom Camera Review: Can It Match the Huawei P40 Pro in Zooming? appeared first on Gizmochina.

Realme announced its camera-centric upper mid-range smartphone, the Realme X3 SuperZoom this week in Europe. The phone’s biggest highlight is its 60x zoom camera, rivaling the likes of Huawei in terms of its maximum zooming capability. While the focus is on its camera department, the Realme X3 SuperZoom is also a pretty good smartphone in terms of other hardware. It comes with a year-old Snapdragon 855+ processor, which by the way, is still quite powerful for a 2020 smartphone and up to 12GB RAM and 256GB of UFS 3.0 storage. In case you are wondering, given the older chipset, the Realme X3 SuperZoom DOES NOT support 5G. So the company has made it clear that this phone is for people looking for high value for money, instead of the latest technology.

In terms of design, the Realme X3 SuperZoom is very similar to the Realme X50 Pro 5G that was announced a few months back in China. This includes a matte finish back and a vertically arranged rear camera setup. Upfront, you also get a dual-camera selfie setup, similar to the X50 Pro 5G.

The Realme X3 SuperZoom comes with a dense plastic frame with a glass back. We’ve got the Arctic White with us today and the silverish-color gives the phone a very elegant look. The matte-like finish also ensures that the back is not a fingerprint magnet.

It is also worth adding that the phone has a 120Hz IPS LCD display and NOT AMOLED. So there’s no in-screen fingerprint sensor. However, you get a super-fast fingerprint sensor on the right side – which also doubles as the power button. Coming to the bottom of the phone, you have a Type-C port at the center, a single speaker on one side, and a dual nano-SIM slot on the other.

The rear camera, which protrudes a bit from the body, consists of four cameras – in line with other Realme higher-end devices. But what makes the Realme X3 SuperZoom special is its 8MP f/3.4 telephoto camera with OIS that supports 5x optical zoom and up to 60x digital zoom. There’s a 64MP high-resolution primary camera in this setup along with another 8MP ultra-wide-angle shooter and a 2MP macro camera. As for the front camera, you get a large 32MP primary shooter paired with an 8MP wide-angle shooter for selfies.

The Realme X3 SuperZoom comes with the same 4200mAh battery size as the X50 Pro 5G, however, it only supports 30W fast charging.

Realme X3 Superzoom hands on

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The 6.6-inch 120Hz IPS LCD looked pretty bright and responsive in our first impressions. The UI and animations were superfluid, thanks to the high refresh rate, and overall, the phone was as quick as any other smartphone launched this year. The 9mm body and 200+ gram weight did make it a bit bulky to use. But the size is very similar to most top-end flagships available in 2020.

Overall, the Realme X3 SuperZoom feels like a strong option in its €499 price segment. We’ll be checking out the X3 SuperZoom’s camera in detail in our upcoming article. So stay tuned for that.

The post Realme X3 SuperZoom Hands On & First Impressions: Affordable Periscope Zoom Camera! appeared first on Gizmochina.

Vivo has announced two new phones for its X-series line of smartphones. The Vivo X30 and Vivo X30 Pro are both 5G phones and they are the first smartphones to be powered by the Exynos 980 processor.

Design

The Vivo X30 and Vivo X30 Pro largely share a similar design. Both have a punch-hole display with the hole, which measures 2.98mm in diameter, at the top right corner. The phones are covered in glass on both sides and come in the same color variants.

Specifications

The Vivo X30 and Vivo X30 Pro both have a 6.44-inch Super AMOLED display with a 2400 x 1080 resolution. Under the screen is a fingerprint scanner and there is also support for face unlock.

The two phones are the first to be powered by the Exynos 980, Samsung’s first processor with an integrated 5G modem and which was co-developed with Vivo. The octa-core processor which features Cortex-A77 cores is paired with 8GB of RAM on both phones with the option of 128GB or 256GB of storage.

The Exynos 980 modem brings support for SA and NSA networks (n41 and n78 bands) and boasts up to 2.55Gbps in download speeds. There is 2.4GHz, 5GHz, and 5.8GHz WiFi; Bluetooth 5.0, NFC, and an audio jack.

Vivo ships both phones with a 4350mAh battery with support for 33W Flash Charge via USB Type-C. Both phones have liquid-cooling to keep the device’s temperature low when performing CPU-intensive tasks. They also run the new FunTouchOS 10 which is disappointingly based on Android 9 Pie and not Android 10. It brings Multi-Turbo 2.5, a revamped UI, dynamic wallpapers, and software optimizations.

EDITOR’S PICK: Vivo U20 8 GB RAM edition debuts for Rs. 17,990 (~$253) in India

The camera specs are what differentiates the Vivo X30 from the Vivo X30 Pro.

Vivo X30 Cameras

The standard version has triple rear cameras – a 64MP f/1.8 camera with a 26.4mm focal length; an 8MP ultrawide angle camera with an f/2.2 aperture, 16mm focal length and a 112° field of view; and a whopping 32MP f/2.0 professional portrait camera with a 50mm focal length.

The phone has Super Night Scene Mode 2.0 which brings multi-frame noise reduction and allows for brighter and more detailed night shots. There is also Backlight-HDR which helps you take better photos irrespective of where the source of light is from.

The X30 has up to 20x zoom and is able to achieve this with the help of an algorithm. Vivo says you can combine the main camera and portrait camera to shoot photos of the moon with rich details. Vivo advises owners to use a combination of the full-moon mode and night mode to achieve this.

Vivo X30 Pro Cameras

The X30 Pro also has a 64MP primary rear camera with the same f/1.8 aperture and 26.4mm focal length. It pairs it with an 8MP f/2.2 ultrawide angle camera with a 122° FOV, and also has a 32MP professional f/2.0 portrait camera with a 50mm focal length. Vivo then rounds it off with a 13MP periscope lens with a 5x optical zoom.

The periscope lens allows the Vivo X30 to offer up to 60x zoom, thrice that of the standard variant. It also has all the other features of the standard variant mentioned above.

Both the Vivo X30 and X30 Pro have a 32MP selfie camera with an f/2.45 aperture.

Price and Availability

The Vivo X30 is priced at ¥3298 (~$472) for the 128GB version and ¥3598 (~$515) for the 256GB version. However, only the 128GB version is available for pre-order on the Vivo online shop. The first sale is scheduled for December 28 at 10 AM and pre-orders will ship with a free pair of W7 Bluetooth headphones.

The Vivo X30 Pro starts at ¥3998 (~$573) for the 128GB version and goes up to ¥4298 (~$616) for the 256GB version. The X30 Pro goes on sale a few days earlier than the standard version on December 24 at 10 AM and will include the W7 headphones with pre-orders.

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