Vivo X50 Pro is gaining a huge buzz for introducing new camera technology that we haven’t seen before. They are quoting it as ‘The Gimbal Camera’. If we recollect the past, Vivo has become a hub for many innovative products on a mobile platform. They are the first one to introduce the In-display fingerprint reader, Pop-up selfie camera concept. Moreover, they are the ones who fulfilled the dream of seeing an edge-to-edge display while everybody including Apple banging their heads to take down the ugly notch. Now they are reinventing the camera and taking it to the next level.
Before going into that, we should know more about the cameras. The camera that we are using now has an exquisite feature called ‘Image Stabilization’. Everybody knows what it is and you don’t have to be a rocket scientist in order to get it. The name itself says it all, it stabilizes the image while taking out the pictures. Nowadays, every mobile manufacturer is incorporating this feature as an add-on to their cameras. But, the only difference is the way they are stabilizing it. There are two different ways to do this.
Electronic & Optical Image Stabilization (EIS & OIS)
If you are looking out for a phone that has better camera features, chances are there that you might come across these terms in the specifications section. They both belong to a different branch of the same tree. These two image stabilization techniques were integrated into almost every mid-range and high-end flagships.
Optical Image Stabilization: It deals with stabilizing the camera lens according to the moving target. OIS works by controlling the path of the image through the camera lens and then passing it onto the image sensor. This is done by understanding the camera’s movement using the in-built sensors in your phones such as gyroscopes, and calculating how the lens needs to move to counterbalance this.
The lens module is then generally moved sideways or down and up. They can do those by using electromagnetic motors. It reduces the amount of blur while taking the picture. This whole setup costs more as it requires dedicated hardware to do it.
Electronic Image Stabilization: On the other hand, EIS does not require dedicated hardware. It just requires software that is able to handle it smoothly. Electronic image stabilization is done by the phone’s software by shifting the electronic image from frame to frame of video, enough to counteract the motion. It is able to do it by cropping the image and working along its borders in order to stabilize it. Although it is unable to pull it off perfectly like OIS, it is quite good enough to handle those jitters while taking out a picture.
The Gimbal Camera
Moving on to the Vivo X50 Pro Gimbal Camera, it is equipped with a new kind of optical image stabilization technology that can emulate the working aspects of an average gimbal. Gimbal works by dictating the movement of the object, not the one who is carrying it. It stabilizes the tilt, pan, and roll of a camera. Therefore, if you move up and down, side to side, back and forth, it stabilizes the video even if the person who is holding appears shaky.
According to Vivo, it is able to do the same thing that a traditional gimbal is doing but in a miniature way. It exceeds the limits of the existing optical image stabilization (OIS). OIS works by capturing the image using only 4-axis shifting. On the other hand, the gimbal stabilization rotates and adapt according to the target which makes it immune against the jitters. According to this source, Vivo is able to manage this through a custom made IMX598 sensor that can support its gimbal technology. They are even using some intelligent continuous AF tracking algorithms to make this whole setup to track a moving object without actually moving your phone. While it sounds as good as a sci-fi movie, they are claiming it to be a next-gen camera improvement.
Contesting Against The Flagships:
Many YouTube Channels already started comparing it with flagship devices which are specialized in cameras such as Samsung S20 Ultra, Huawei P40 & iPhone 11 Max. These phones have best in class camera setup. These are the things that I found so far that makes X50 Pro a worthy rival against those flagship products.
Promising Factors:
- Exceptional low-light imaging: We all know the night mode in our camera requires our hand to be in a fixed position in order to make the camera shutter able to capture the image. With Vivo X50 Pro gimbal camera, this problem is solved. The gimbal setup helps you to take pictures at a low light even with your hands get a little shaky.
- Continuous AF Tracking: This is one of the cool features of Vivo X50 Pro. By using this, you can capture the image of a moving object without actually moving your phone. Once you show your camera to detect an object. The sensor automatically tracks down its movement and adapt the lens according to it.
- Price: Unlike other flagships that we discussed before, Vivo placed this phone at a reasonable price tag- 600USD.
- Super Smooth Video with Advanced OIS: The gimbal camera feature is an add-on to conventional OIS. It really helps in taking a better picture.
It is certainly a breakthrough for the mobile phone’s camera. Until now, Manufacturers only considered pulling the highest megapixel out of a camera lens. Vivo X50 Pro gimbal feature is totally rewriting it. We might see some big improvements in the camera ad-dons in par with the Megapixels as well.