vivo X Fold5 review – Actually innovative software!
For the first time, vivo also brought over their vivo X Fold5 to other regions of the world – and we have been using it for about two weeks at this point. There are a lot of things to talk about – so let’s get into it.
Design
So, let’s start with the design. It’s a book-style foldable phone with a rather big size, and also rather thin too. It’s also rounded around the edges, which is something worth highlighting but we’ll get into it later.
It is available in a few different colors, and we have it in white color. Looks really sleek, though I’m not a fan of this circular camera bump design.
Cover display
Now, let’s talk about the cover display. It’s using a 6.53-inch AMOLED screen with a resolution of 2748×1172 pixels – weird number yes, but it’s actually a 21:9 aspect ratio, and goes up to 120Hz refresh rate.
As what we’ve said, having a 21:9 aspect ratio means watching movies using the cover display is great as most movies are made for this cinematic aspect ratio.
Through our colorimeter, we found out that the cover display can go up to around 1250 nits max auto brightness, and the color accuracy with its default settings is quite okay. The DCI-P3 color gamut coverage is rather low, which means the colors are quite desaturated. We can turn it on in the settings menu.
Overall, quite a good display.
Unfolded display
When unfolded, we’re presented with a huge 8-inch screen with a resolution of 2480×2200 pixels, goes up to 120Hz as well, and this display is vastly different compared to the cover display.
We did two different sets of tests – one for the left half and another for the right half, just like what we did for other foldable phones. Surprisingly, the max auto brightness can reach around 1880 nits. That’s 50% brighter than the cover display and that means if I’m using the phone outdoors, it’s best to be the unfolded display. But that will also mean increased glare and also the crease will be much more visible.
Anyway, the color accuracy of the unfolded display is about the same with the cover display, so nothing out of the ordinary here. Again, it has a low DCI-P3 color gamut coverage and we can turn it up in the settings menu by selecting the “bright” color profile.
Is it difficult to unfold?
Let’s now circle back to the roundness of the vivo X Fold5 – particularly the frame. Since this phone’s frame is also rounded, unfolding the phone is rather difficult. Seriously, it’s difficult to get any leverage to actually unfold the device. Sure, I can drive my fingernail in between, but look at my freshly cut nails – how am I going to do it? I could use the buttons as some form of leverage, and I hope they don’t break.
It might seem like I’m unfolding without a hitch here, that’s because I got used to foldable devices over the years.
Crease
Let’s also talk about the crease. Every foldable phone will have a crease, the question is wheether or not it’s visible. For the vivo X Fold5 in particular, the crease is a bit deep and we can definitely see it curve inward. It’s quite obvious.
I honestly think it’s not an issue unless there’s a bright light behind you that causes reflections. If there is reflection, then the crease will be waaaaaaay more obvious.
Still, the phone is very new so we can’t tell you what’s the long-term effects of the crease. Maybe it’ll get deeper over time, maybe it won’t.
Performance
What I don’t understand is vivo’s decision to use the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 in the X Fold5 instead of the 8 Elite. It just made no sense. Could the power consumption and efficiency issues of the 8 Elite be the reason why vivo chose the 8 Gen 3 instead? For more context, we have a video here.
When we did our gaming test, the vivo X Fold5 can actually hold up quite well. The chip isn’t tuned that well as it reaches its thermal limit real fast. It also has two thermal limits that staggered the performance at two different temperatures. Honestly, it doesn’t actually matter since it will reach the second thermal limit of around 39°C in like 5 minutes.
Genshin Impact was around 40fps at first, but within like 5 minutes, it dropped to about 30fps and maintained that frame rate throughout the half hour of gameplay.
Zenless Zone Zero fluctuated a lot and was below 30fps most of the time, and Wuthering Waves – which plays alright, was also below 30fps most of the time.
I mean, it’s better than the 7-core version of the Snapdragon 8 Elite in the OPPO Find N5, but also worse than the Galaxy Z Fold7. That Z Fold7 has the best tuning for that 8 Elite.
Software
Let’s now talk about the software. The vivo X Fold5 is running on Android 15 with Funtouch OS 15 on top – that’s because this is the global version of the X Fold5. I thought, okay, the amount of ads would be the same as all the over vivo phones that we reviewed previously, right?
Turns out – no. There are literally zero ads here. Zilch. There is no ads in the global search, the browser didn’t send me any ads via the notification, and there is no ads or bloatware from the V-Appstore too. Yeah, there are some pre-installed apps but it’s minimal and we can easily uninstall them.
All in all, Funtouch OS works the same as other vivo phones. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 is still very powerful in today’s world of smartphones, and it’s just super smooth to use and do whatever I want – except for gaming, of course.
Features
And there are some special features built into the vivo X Fold5 too. Within the settings menu, there’s one entry called “foldable devices” and all the features are housed in there.
So firstly, Flex Mode. For all the apps that supports this mode, we can fold the phone in half and the app will split in half and give us a touchpad with some other controls at the bottom. Pretty useful for some apps like YouTube, but questionable for other apps.
The smart screen shift is another feature that I can see myself using for YouTube only because of the cover display’s 21:9 aspect ratio. It just shifts the app to the cover screen when the phone is in tent mode. However, if we use it in this mode then the camera bump will make the screen extremely tilted.
The taskbar is quite similar to what we’ve seen on Samsung’s foldables but the customization is quite limited in comparison.
Now I’ll skip forward to the “fold the screen” feature. Basically when we fold the device, do we want the app to go to the cover display or immediately lock the phone? This option lets us choose that.
And finally, the “Origin workbench”. It’s vivo’s new take on multitasking on a foldable device. Honestly, it’s a copy of the iPad’s Stage Manager. If we enter the Origin Workbench mode, then we can open more apps and it’ll operate just like how the iPad Stage Manager works.
But, what if we open a game? This is where things get interesting. Yes, we can actually play a game in this mode and the game will also scale accordingly. If we just open Chrome for example, then the Origin Workbench will reposition itself and the game will scale down even smaller, and we can just use Chrome. Most importantly, the game is still running simultaneously.
This new feature is amazing and vivo did a great job here.
Oh, there is also another extra button at the top corner here. We can actually reprogram the buttons to do a few things in the settings menu which is actually useful, but the placement of the button is actually quite inconvenient, actually.
Battery life
With all these great features, how’s the battery life? The vivo X Fold5 comes packed with a 6,000mAh battery. Yes, big number – but how does it do in the standardized battery life test? Very good, actually.
We did two tests – one unfolded, which lasts for nearly 16 hours, and another test while folded that lasts 20 hours. These are actually good numbers, though we’ll definitely still have to charge once every day.
Charging speed
The charging speed is actually great though. We do have an 80W charger in the box and with its default settings, we can charge from 15% to completion in around 42 minutes. Quite fast.
Then, we went to the settings menu and enabled this option so we can charge the phone with the highest speed possible, and it takes around 35 minutes. Not that much faster, but still a bit faster indeed. Just that the temperature is way too high as it maintains around 42.5°C for some time.
When we used a USB-PD PPS charger though, the vivo X Fold5 can still charge from 15% to completion in around 42 minutes. From the data we gathered, the phone takes around 40W at first, then maintains 33W for a long time before slowing down and complete the charging cycle. And this is good because we don’t have to use vivo’s proprietary charger to charge the phone quickly. That’s great.
Camera
And now, the cameras. The vivo X Fold5 comes with triple 50MP cameras and all of them have autofocusing lenses too. But, are the cameras good?
To have a look at the pictures and videos taken with the vivo X Fold5, watch our video at the top of this review.
A few more things to mention
And a few more things to mention here, the vivo X Fold5 comes with a USB 3.0 port at the bottom – and it also has display mirroring via that USB-C port. The screen mirroring here is quite fancy as the mirrored display will change instantly when the device is folded or unfolded.
It also has a dual SIM card slot and the design is a bit unusual.
Should you buy the vivo X Fold5?
So, should you buy this foldable phone? The vivo X Fold5 is a… weird phone. While I do believe vivo has some unique features with the software, they didn’t actually do enough. It’s still pretty barebones for a foldable device.
The hardware is alright, but I’m still unsure why vivo chose the 8 Gen 3 instead of the 8 Elite or even the Dimensity 9400. Either of those chipsets would’ve been better than the 8 Gen 3.
But what I’m concerned about is the price. At RM6,999 it’s a big yikes of a price. Yes, the vivo X Fold5 comes with 512GB storage at that price, but the storage is the least of my concern in this case.
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