The world’s first Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 phone is the Vivo X90 Pro Plus

  • It apparently took “Xtreme Imagination” to design the Vivo X90.

  • Vivo is definitely going for point-and-shoot vibes here.

  • The front looks normal.

  • That’s a big camera bump.

  • That big camera bump has big camera sensors, like the 1-inch Sony sensor highlighted here.

  • Don’t mind the ad text (I think it’s describing the display model number?), we’re just interested in looking at the bottom edge.

The world’s first smartphone with the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC is the Vivo X90 Pro Plus. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 will power most of the flagship Android phones coming out in 2023, but BBK’s Vivo is beating everyone to the punch and releasing before the new year. The phone is coming out in China on December 6 for 6,499 CNY (about $910).

For specs, there’s a 6.78-inch, 3200×1440, 120HZ OLED display, 12GB of RAM, 256GB of storage, a 4700 mAh battery with an 80 W fast charger, and a rare signing of Qualcomm’s super-sized 3D Sonic Max in-display fingerprint sensor. The cameras are also really big, with Sony’s 1-inch IMX989 sensor leading the way, along with a 50MP portrait camera, a 48MP ultrawide, and a 64MP 3.5x telephoto.

As for fun new things the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 enables, that storage is UFS 4.0, a new, faster flash storage standard that can hit read speeds of 4,200MBps and write speeds of 2,800MBps (though there’s no benchmark on this phone yet). We were looking forward to Wi-Fi 7 support, but this phone only supports Wi-Fi 6. It’s hard to tell what’s going on with the Chinese-language spec sheet, but it should have AV1 support.

The design is, uh, interesting. Vivo is sort of going for a point-and-shoot look with a big, round camera bump, an elongated, corner-mounted flash design, and a faux leather texture on the back. The circle is off-center, which is a bit strange looking, and a polished metal strip runs across the back with “Xtreme imagination” emblazoned across it. Other than the metal strip, you can see how this BBK phone will be a close cousin to the rumored OnePlus 11. BBK owns Oppo, Vivo, OnePlus, Realme, and iQOO, and they all share a lot of parts.

As for the OnePlus variant, there are rumors that that phone might come out before the end of the year, but like last year, it might be exclusive to China for a few months.

Listing image by Vivo

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1899862