General I have an X90 Pro+ in the UK - AMA

Search This thread

Vinzie

Senior Member
Feb 5, 2007
200
57
Nijmegen
Vivo X80 Pro
Last few updates, came about 3 weeks after previous update:
01-12-22 PD2227C_A_13.0.14.1.W10.V000L1
22-12-22 PD2227C_A_13.0.17.1.W10.V000L1
09-01-23 PD2227C_A_13.0.18.2.W10.V000L1 (This was my first update, I got it 11 january)

And since it is 3 weeks since last update... I was kind of expecting the update to be released today...
1675355304358.png
 

extremecarver

Senior Member
Dec 4, 2009
377
139
Actually I now looked through most of the pictures on a PC. The AGC was great on colours before 20 minutes to sunset - then it went haywire - some reddish, some yellowish, some vivid, some ... Would need lots of time to fix them. 9 out of 10 pictures are essentially rubbish.
Before the AGC was great.

The vivo stock camera fared worse - it looks great on a phone but once on a 4K screen 1/3 is somehow out of focus - e.g. focus on legs instead of upper body for portrait. Notice nearly all pics were in portrait modus on 1x or 2x camera AND against the light. Exposure was really bad for most pictures - and it's clear that the AI just didn't know what to do with them. 5 pics in a row underexposed, then 5 pics heavily overexposed.

Now here is the thing - 1 pic out of 10 put the Iphone 13 Pro pictures in the dust - but 7 out of 10 are too bad to fix them - and it's really not possible to tell on the phone screen.
The iphone 13 Pro pictures look boring - but they nearly never miss exposure, autofocus is spot on and colours are boring but didn't have any of those fallouts like Vivo did. Detail and sharpness are much lower but for Instagram plenty enough. Also all cams work very similar in colour - and if you reframe it will be again same colour and exposure. I am pretty sure Vivo just takes way more pictues and fuses them together - while the Iphone is much more coservative here. I guess the bracketing on the Vivo is much wider - which makes for better results if the AI can stitch them together - but makes stitching them together much harder.
Gcam by default with 15-20 pics in HDR Enhanced of course also fore the AI/Fuse approach - but yeah gcam is tuned for Tensor and their own hardware. Put the same algo on other hardware and it will be much more hit and miss.


AGC had sometimes probelms with focus as well - but overall better. As conditions get difficult overall AGC clearly did better.
Essentially the Vivo can give you great shots in diffictult light - but it's really errratic as the conditions get difficult. You will need many shots - change modes, change camera - zoom somewhere else and back so the AI starts from scratch. If you just keep klicking away it will not restart and you can shoot 10 horrible pics in a row.


And yeah a lot of this is due to the preview having way too little dynamic range. On the iphone you pretty clearly see what you get. On the Vivo you have to watch the picture aftwards and it will be really different when you shoot against the sun/light source.


Gcam clearly had AI problems on colour as it got close to sunset - or better it used way too much color and then got the WB wrong on top. But exposure was fine and not sure if autofocus was better - because it does so much sharpening - but overall in the end you don't end up with the legs sharp and head unsharp already on the 1x lens.


In good light/easy shots don't bother with gcam. The vivo stock cam is good enough and much faster. Though I still have the problem of vivid vs Zeiss and want something in between.


When it hits, it hits, but far too often you end up with rubbish, really rubbish. But yeah the X90 Pro+ can sometimes (!) turn out shots like no other smartphone - but that takes many tries and you will only really be able to assess it later on the PC. On the phone it's hard to assess. At the same time it turns out a lot of junk while other phones will just turn out a lot of average pics.
A lot of this is of course due to sharpness - the sharper a pic the more apparent mistakes/problems get.


A big problem is of course - the best pcitures are taken around sunrise/sunset. If the sun stands high you don't get interesting pictures most of the time. I don't know why the gcam at some point goes horrible on colors on the X90 Pro+ otherwise it woudl be the best solution.


And yeah - I don't think this will be fixed anytime soon. This likely will take years - years of training the AI by vivo taking lot's of pictures and assessing them to get it right. It has the hardware to work great, it has a chipset fast enough to really get it done - but it clearly misses thousands of hours of optimization. Like google toook millions of pictures ot get skin tones right - it will take millions of pictures in difficult situations to ge the AI right on Vivo. And yeah this is mainly about portraits - not face portraits but full body (which is much harder). I think far too often it simply doesn't identify the face - and that's why the HDR clearly fails. If you take typical upper body portrait also in difficult light you have like a 1/2 chance. But if you take a picture with the body being 1/3 of the height of the picture - then very rarely the AI gets it right.
On Iphone the AI definitely gets the body - it just lacks the hardware to churn out a great shot and it goes conservative while the Vivo AI goes for the best shot but messes up ever so often, messes up badly. If Vivo would go more conservative I am sure it could get a better rate. AGC is much slower and takes much more pictures. I think Vivo on Auto takes very differing wide bracket, maybe too little pictures.


Note I took pics in Vivid - because in lower light Zeiss is too boring I find. That may have excarbated the problems. On Zeiss the approach is more conservative but for my taste Zeiss does not work well at all with shots where the body is 1/3 to 2/3 size in the picture. The gcam shows that the AI is much better for full body portrais with scenery - but it just shows it isn't made for the Vivo hardware. Because colors are the strong point of Pixel 7 bare none.


The vivo feels like a supertalent - but raw diaomd that just started training. In good light the differences are pretty small. in difficult light they are enourmous. BTW - my P30 Pro would not do well at all in those conditions - because it has very poor dynamic range and HDR. Those against the sun or similar shots simply would not be possible 3-4 years ago. Smartphones now just do way more AI and fusing pics together. That's why Huawei/Apple/Google win on dxomark - they just put in way more work than the others the last years into getting reliable shots. Vivo I feel wants to overtrump them but just misses years of training data. There's a reason that BBK uses the IMX766 on so many phones - they had time to finetune it. The sensors on the X90 Pro+ are all new to BBK - and that is apparent. For easy situations it's good enough, in difficult it just goes havoc and sometimes hits by chance (yeah because it's clear that very few shots work while most don't).


A lot of this surely can be overcome if you use the camera every day and remember when and where it worked - so the photographer is way more important here as long as results are so erratic. And sharpness, texture, details aren't everything - those the Vivo always gets right if the autofocus doesn't miss. However as I feel every update/upgrade changes quite a lot on the camera front - maybe after some weeks you will just not take those high risk, high reward shots anymore. Shots that you could take with a DSLR of 5-10 years ago - whith a simple conservate HDR and not what is happening right now - you can all take with the X90 Pro+ too and they will work. It's those shots that a good photographer would never have taken because they just would not work without crazy HDR - but that smartphones now make it possible to take.
e.g. face in the shadow, just take the picture and hope for the AI to fix it. Just click and let the AI figure a way to make a traditionally impoosible situation nice. That's where Apple, Iphone, Google (yeah especially google) found ways to still turn out great shots. No light on the face - no worry the AI just calculates it and the HDR puts in the contrast.
 
  • Like
Reactions: mohammed510

extremecarver

Senior Member
Dec 4, 2009
377
139
The thing with the AI on the stock camera is - I found quite a lot of examples where it put perfect skin color on my legs (wearing shorts) clearly doing the right HDR on them - but then missed my face. It's just those strange situations which ruin a picture. Other cams go way softer on the HDR - so even if they would miss the head too - it would be much less apparent and not be a big problem. However if the camera goes for crazy HDR approach - then it needs to be perfect and not miss some place (and yeah maybe my face isn't suited for the AI. My girlfriend wore long pants and there this problem didn't appear).

Gcam is slow - but has no problem with motion nevertheless - doesn't use nearly as strong HDR and overall just took way better pics on that sunset for me. There were 2 sets the gcam absolutely blew - but besides them the reults were just way more consistent. If the light is too low - forget the gcam because colours will be all over the hill - if it's daytime it's okay and more realistic.
 
  • Like
Reactions: mohammed510

Thanos88

Senior Member
The thing with the AI on the stock camera is - I found quite a lot of examples where it put perfect skin color on my legs (wearing shorts) clearly doing the right HDR on them - but then missed my face. It's just those strange situations which ruin a picture. Other cams go way softer on the HDR - so even if they would miss the head too - it would be much less apparent and not be a big problem. However if the camera goes for crazy HDR approach - then it needs to be perfect and not miss some place (and yeah maybe my face isn't suited for the AI. My girlfriend wore long pants and there this problem didn't appear).

Gcam is slow - but has no problem with motion nevertheless - doesn't use nearly as strong HDR and overall just took way better pics on that sunset for me. There were 2 sets the gcam absolutely blew - but besides them the reults were just way more consistent. If the light is too low - forget the gcam because colours will be all over the hill - if it's daytime it's okay and more realistic.
Any idea how to get rid of the flares when taking a photo? Super annoying and ruin the photos, mainly happen at night time
 

vendetta17

Senior Member
Sep 27, 2016
192
81
The last 2 weeks was Chinese new year so no updates to be expected, since this week everyone is back to work again (last week many were still off).

The trial upgrade has a bug in the camera, sometimes when you get close to the sun it will overexpose so much that your screen turns white. Solve it by leaving the camera and going back in. Happened to me 3 times today around 90-60minutes before sunset trying to shoot portrait partly against the sun.

In general exposure was really a gamble. 1/3 of all shots (maybe 150) were really badly exposed. Colors have to check on PC. On Smartphone display they looked fine. But in general (same as in dxomark review), faces are underexposed when Shooting against the sunset. Vivo's HDR should be able to do it but couldn't. After some time I gave up on the camera and went gcam only, problem with gcam is that we have no proper colour profile and colours are a bit all over the table, but exposure is spot on, HDR enhanced works perfectly, and sharpness is anyhow unrivalled.
So yeah great shots today, but all of them will need editing because out of the box they are lacking. As you simply cannot fix exposure well in the post, I switched to gcam.

If vivo can fix the HDR problems in Shooting against light sources on faces, and fix exposure in general against light sources and fix colours at night - it only needs to get scene detection AI and slight improvements to auto mode. Without that the shortcomings in auto are just big.


Gcam works perfectly for pictures, but I doubt colours will ever work well...if any gcam can add automatic white balance adjustment against shooting a white paper, that would be good enough (and could be used to build up a white balance Profile if it saves it and puts some AI behind).

And yeah the problem with exposure on the stock cam is that the preview is too bad. You cannot see those problems on preview because the dynamic range is too little on preview vs actual picture.
Yes the pictures that work well are much better than iphone 13 pro , but the iphone nailed 90% of our photo session today, while the vivo failed 50%.

Up to 2 hours before sunset it was fine. The closer to sunset the messier it got.


And well I managed to drain the battery today with 3:20 hours screen on time to shutdown.

Forgot to turn of google photos sync and my battery dropped like no tomorrow.. yeah surely the next 4G tower was 15km away. 800mhz. But I could literally watch the percentage dropping.
It's 4G/5G data that drains this battery like crazy. On wifi all is fine. As soon as you have average to below average reception the battery drain is crazy like I've never seen on another phone before. And surely it's not only me.

I tested against iphone 13 pro and screen off 4G data on same network at the same time with pretty identical speeds was 1% vs 5% for again a 20 minutes test. So fix that and battery life will be outstanding (yes on wifi it's better than iphone!). If that cannot be fixed this phone will be doomed for outdoor use if you need some GB per day... I'll put some screenshots in the battery drain topic.
Again , we dont care . Thanks !
 

P6P

Senior Member
Oct 29, 2021
407
266
Nothing Phone 1
Google Pixel 6a
Any idea how to get rid of the flares when taking a photo? Super annoying and ruin the photos, mainly happen at night time
Be happy the vivo handles it very good. You haven't used the pixel 7 Pro for example.😅

Im very happy with the stock camera but still playing with gcam. Check my screenshot below. I think with a great config the vivo will be grandiose.
 

Attachments

  • Screenshot_20230202_205103.jpg
    Screenshot_20230202_205103.jpg
    1 MB · Views: 47
  • Like
Reactions: Thanos88

mbfamily

Senior Member
Dec 30, 2022
61
29
What's the draw backs of the gcam? Would you have it as the primary camera over the stock camera?
GCam produces much more detail, you can even activate 2x upscaling in GCam and the pictures will be more detailed than the "high resolution" images from the stock camera.

Unfortunately the colors are off with GCam (orange is rendered pink etc.), which makes it unusable for most situations for now. At least with BigKaka GCam.

Bildschirmfoto 2023-01-05 um 01.33.09.jpg


Bildschirmfoto 2023-01-05 um 01.13.57.jpg
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Thanos88

P6P

Senior Member
Oct 29, 2021
407
266
Nothing Phone 1
Google Pixel 6a
GCam produces much more detail, you can even activate 2x upscaling in GCam and the pictures will be more detailed than the "high resolution" images from the stock camera.

Unfortunately the colors are off with GCam (orange is rendered pink etc.), which makes it unusable for most situations for now. At least with BigKaka GCam.

View attachment 5826679

View attachment 5826681
Colors are fine. You'll need to play with color transformation.
Upscaling isnt correct i guess your focus on stock was bad.

I'm using Shamim latest 8.4.
 

mbfamily

Senior Member
Dec 30, 2022
61
29
Colors are fine. You'll need to play with color transformation.
Upscaling isnt correct i guess your focus on stock was bad.

I'm using Shamim latest 8.4.
Nope, I tried it many many times. No focus issue, GCam upscaling definitely produces better details than stock high resolution. The upscaling method is based on a Google Research paper (https://arxiv.org/pdf/1905.03277.pdf) and apparently it's superior to the debayering algorithm applied to the the quad-bayer sensors by the stock camera. It doesn't work with moving subjects however.

Did you adjust the color transformation? Can you share the settings?
 

P6P

Senior Member
Oct 29, 2021
407
266
Nothing Phone 1
Google Pixel 6a
Nope, I tried it many many times. No focus issue, GCam upscaling definitely produces better details than stock high resolution. The upscaling method is based on a Google Research paper (https://arxiv.org/pdf/1905.03277.pdf) and apparently it's superior to the debayering algorithm applied to the the quad-bayer sensors by the stock camera. It doesn't work with moving subjects however.

Did you adjust the color transformation? Can you share the settings?
No! Super res isn't fake upscaling what Gcam mods do. That's a completely different thing. If you don't believe me feel free to contact any Gcam mod dev you want. You'll always need some hacks and mods for full res. We have experienced that a lot with the mi 11 Ultra when we donated a device to arnova. Upscaling in Gcam is total bullsh!t. Look at my attached screenshots. They're both taken with same configs and mods but one is upscaled and the other isn't. They're completely identical in quality or details. The difference is the filesize and the mega pixels, that's all.
 

Attachments

  • Screenshot_20230203_142300.jpg
    Screenshot_20230203_142300.jpg
    1.2 MB · Views: 12
  • Screenshot_20230203_142436.jpg
    Screenshot_20230203_142436.jpg
    1.3 MB · Views: 12

Haskren

Senior Member
May 13, 2016
181
56
Actually I now looked through most of the pictures on a PC. The AGC was great on colours before 20 minutes to sunset - then it went haywire - some reddish, some yellowish, some vivid, some ... Would need lots of time to fix them. 9 out of 10 pictures are essentially rubbish.
Before the AGC was great.

The vivo stock camera fared worse - it looks great on a phone but once on a 4K screen 1/3 is somehow out of focus - e.g. focus on legs instead of upper body for portrait. Notice nearly all pics were in portrait modus on 1x or 2x camera AND against the light. Exposure was really bad for most pictures - and it's clear that the AI just didn't know what to do with them. 5 pics in a row underexposed, then 5 pics heavily overexposed.

Now here is the thing - 1 pic out of 10 put the Iphone 13 Pro pictures in the dust - but 7 out of 10 are too bad to fix them - and it's really not possible to tell on the phone screen.
The iphone 13 Pro pictures look boring - but they nearly never miss exposure, autofocus is spot on and colours are boring but didn't have any of those fallouts like Vivo did. Detail and sharpness are much lower but for Instagram plenty enough. Also all cams work very similar in colour - and if you reframe it will be again same colour and exposure. I am pretty sure Vivo just takes way more pictues and fuses them together - while the Iphone is much more coservative here. I guess the bracketing on the Vivo is much wider - which makes for better results if the AI can stitch them together - but makes stitching them together much harder.
Gcam by default with 15-20 pics in HDR Enhanced of course also fore the AI/Fuse approach - but yeah gcam is tuned for Tensor and their own hardware. Put the same algo on other hardware and it will be much more hit and miss.


AGC had sometimes probelms with focus as well - but overall better. As conditions get difficult overall AGC clearly did better.
Essentially the Vivo can give you great shots in diffictult light - but it's really errratic as the conditions get difficult. You will need many shots - change modes, change camera - zoom somewhere else and back so the AI starts from scratch. If you just keep klicking away it will not restart and you can shoot 10 horrible pics in a row.


And yeah a lot of this is due to the preview having way too little dynamic range. On the iphone you pretty clearly see what you get. On the Vivo you have to watch the picture aftwards and it will be really different when you shoot against the sun/light source.


Gcam clearly had AI problems on colour as it got close to sunset - or better it used way too much color and then got the WB wrong on top. But exposure was fine and not sure if autofocus was better - because it does so much sharpening - but overall in the end you don't end up with the legs sharp and head unsharp already on the 1x lens.


In good light/easy shots don't bother with gcam. The vivo stock cam is good enough and much faster. Though I still have the problem of vivid vs Zeiss and want something in between.


When it hits, it hits, but far too often you end up with rubbish, really rubbish. But yeah the X90 Pro+ can sometimes (!) turn out shots like no other smartphone - but that takes many tries and you will only really be able to assess it later on the PC. On the phone it's hard to assess. At the same time it turns out a lot of junk while other phones will just turn out a lot of average pics.
A lot of this is of course due to sharpness - the sharper a pic the more apparent mistakes/problems get.


A big problem is of course - the best pcitures are taken around sunrise/sunset. If the sun stands high you don't get interesting pictures most of the time. I don't know why the gcam at some point goes horrible on colors on the X90 Pro+ otherwise it woudl be the best solution.


And yeah - I don't think this will be fixed anytime soon. This likely will take years - years of training the AI by vivo taking lot's of pictures and assessing them to get it right. It has the hardware to work great, it has a chipset fast enough to really get it done - but it clearly misses thousands of hours of optimization. Like google toook millions of pictures ot get skin tones right - it will take millions of pictures in difficult situations to ge the AI right on Vivo. And yeah this is mainly about portraits - not face portraits but full body (which is much harder). I think far too often it simply doesn't identify the face - and that's why the HDR clearly fails. If you take typical upper body portrait also in difficult light you have like a 1/2 chance. But if you take a picture with the body being 1/3 of the height of the picture - then very rarely the AI gets it right.
On Iphone the AI definitely gets the body - it just lacks the hardware to churn out a great shot and it goes conservative while the Vivo AI goes for the best shot but messes up ever so often, messes up badly. If Vivo would go more conservative I am sure it could get a better rate. AGC is much slower and takes much more pictures. I think Vivo on Auto takes very differing wide bracket, maybe too little pictures.


Note I took pics in Vivid - because in lower light Zeiss is too boring I find. That may have excarbated the problems. On Zeiss the approach is more conservative but for my taste Zeiss does not work well at all with shots where the body is 1/3 to 2/3 size in the picture. The gcam shows that the AI is much better for full body portrais with scenery - but it just shows it isn't made for the Vivo hardware. Because colors are the strong point of Pixel 7 bare none.


The vivo feels like a supertalent - but raw diaomd that just started training. In good light the differences are pretty small. in difficult light they are enourmous. BTW - my P30 Pro would not do well at all in those conditions - because it has very poor dynamic range and HDR. Those against the sun or similar shots simply would not be possible 3-4 years ago. Smartphones now just do way more AI and fusing pics together. That's why Huawei/Apple/Google win on dxomark - they just put in way more work than the others the last years into getting reliable shots. Vivo I feel wants to overtrump them but just misses years of training data. There's a reason that BBK uses the IMX766 on so many phones - they had time to finetune it. The sensors on the X90 Pro+ are all new to BBK - and that is apparent. For easy situations it's good enough, in difficult it just goes havoc and sometimes hits by chance (yeah because it's clear that very few shots work while most don't).


A lot of this surely can be overcome if you use the camera every day and remember when and where it worked - so the photographer is way more important here as long as results are so erratic. And sharpness, texture, details aren't everything - those the Vivo always gets right if the autofocus doesn't miss. However as I feel every update/upgrade changes quite a lot on the camera front - maybe after some weeks you will just not take those high risk, high reward shots anymore. Shots that you could take with a DSLR of 5-10 years ago - whith a simple conservate HDR and not what is happening right now - you can all take with the X90 Pro+ too and they will work. It's those shots that a good photographer would never have taken because they just would not work without crazy HDR - but that smartphones now make it possible to take.
e.g. face in the shadow, just take the picture and hope for the AI to fix it. Just click and let the AI figure a way to make a traditionally impoosible situation nice. That's where Apple, Iphone, Google (yeah especially google) found ways to still turn out great shots. No light on the face - no worry the AI just calculates it and the HDR puts in the contrast.
What you are describing is a camera phone that is totally broken and should never have been released. We might as well close down the x90 pro+ forum, because why even bother considering a phone that is so utterly useless.
A phone that exposed skin tones correctly on the legs but not on the face? Never heard of that. Do you have examples to share?
 

vendetta17

Senior Member
Sep 27, 2016
192
81
Can please , please , please , someone ban extremecarver from this forum ? At least mute him for about 2 decades . This guy its the most annoying being on earth . He is only talking nonsense and false stuff. Somebody ban him , please !
The amount of false claims its outrageous !
 
  • Like
Reactions: Stan Drago

P6P

Senior Member
Oct 29, 2021
407
266
Nothing Phone 1
Google Pixel 6a
What you are describing is a camera phone that is totally broken and should never have been released. We might as well close down the x90 pro+ forum, because why even bother considering a phone that is so utterly useless.
A phone that exposed skin tones correctly on the legs but not on the face? Never heard of that. Do you have examples to share?
Oh no i don't want to see some shaved legs🤣
 

Top Liked Posts

  • There are no posts matching your filters.
  • 6
    Another email from Vivo, the notification fix update is incoming. I mentioned the battery life just for the sake of it & they said they'll forward that to the correct team . Battery life is of course good but I'm sure we can all agree it has potential for further improvement, considering the phone has the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2.
    6
    Can they be solved by using a custom (not default) dark mode?
    There is no prohoem wirh notifications when you are following my guide a few coents above. I grt ebery notifications I want even when in battery saver mode.

    Well Im using my x90pro plus since Friday and the battery is brilliant. 2 days now and im left with 13% right now. Bluetooth on, huawei watch connected, Bluetooth headset connected for 8hrs a day, gps on, nfc on. All this while heavy usage making photos and so on. im blown away by this performance never had such a good battery life.
    4
    Hey, could someone owning x90PP provide me few video footage in 4k30fps in original quality? Also, if there's a some voice enhancer feature. Can you make me one video with voice enhancer on and off? Thank you so much!
    I filmed singing my daughter and a friend, at 4K 60fps, low light. There is no voice enhancer feature (or I have not found it), Youtube is still procesing 4K video for now:

    3
    Google wallet now fully working on the latest update.

    Screenshot_20221218_140102.jpg
    3
    Has anyone actually tested if it supports wifi -6e?

    I guess vivo saved money and didn't use fast connect 7800 modem. Or actually it pretty surely doesn't because we miss ANT+ (or has someone access to the service menu meaning managed to install vivo service 1.5 first) and that's part of 7800.

    However if we have the cheaper 6900 we still should have wi-fi 6e, but it's not mentioned anywhere so maybe the poor 4G/5G battery life is due to Vivo using some cheap Chinese modem instead?

    So far only Xiaomi 13 pro and galaxy s23U are confirmed to having fastfonnect 7800 (and WiFi 7 support).
    Are you interested in selling the phone ? I will pay 100$ more than what you paid. Just to never see you again on this forum .
    This is a serious question . I will buy it if you want to sell it . Waiting for your answer .