With the amount of interest in Chinese smartphones these days, many are wondering if there are more of the likes of
Xiaomi,
Oppo,
and others like them hidden within the Great Wall. The good news is…of
course. Huawei and Lenovo have taken great strides in improving their
smartphone lineup, while
OnePlus has what it calls the “2014 flagship killer”.
There’s another name you should take notice, as they have already set up base in Malaysia: Vivo.
Vivo is a brand that many may not have heard of, or
may be vaguely familiar to those familiar with the smartphone industry.
To those who follow the Chinese smartphone scene, Vivo once held the
crown as the makers of the thinnest smartphone in the world (the
Vivo X3) and also developed the world’s first smartphone with a 2K resolution display (the
Vivo Xplay 3S). It has also built a reputation for including some of the best audio chips into its devices.
The Vivo Xshot
Its 2014 flagship, the
Xshot was just announced last
month. Like Oppo’s Find 7 and 7a flagship, there are two variants of
the Xshot: the high-end “flagship” variant and a slightly lower-specced
Elite. The Xshot is an Android smartphone with a 5.2-inch Full HD
IPS display, 2600mAh battery and of course, LTE connectivity. The
flagship variant packs in a Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 2.5GHz quad-core
chipset with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage, while the Elite variant
sports a lower-end Snapdragon 800 2.3GHz processor with 2GB of RAM and
16GB of storage. Both variants will also feature a microSD card slot
that supports up to 128GB cards.
The differentiating feature of the Xshot smartphones is in its camera.
Both the Xshot flagship and Elite variants sport Sony’s latest
second-generation stacked CMOS 13MP sensor, paired with a bright f/1.8
6p lens. In addition to a dual-tone LED flash module, the rear camera
sensor also sports optical image stabilisation (OIS). In front, there’s a
massive 8MP f/2.4 sensor with wide-angle lens…complete with an LED
flash.
The Vivo Xplay 3S
Perhaps the best part of this all is the fact that we may not have to
wait long until we see it for ourselves. As we mentioned, Vivo has
already set up base (quietly) in Malaysia, and has recently opened an
official thread in our forums, showing off the Xplay 3S smartphone.
Later, it was also announced that the flagship Xshot models will be
coming to Malaysia next month –
July 20, to be exact – for a retail price of
RM1799 for the flagship model and
RM1599 for the Elite variant.
Besides the Xshot, the other Vivo smartphones making their way to the country are the Vivo X3S (which has been
spotted in the country since last month), Xplay 3S, and the lower-end Y22, Y15 and Y11 models. Alongside the
forum thread, Vivo Malaysia also has an
official Facebook page – though it doesn’t seem to be updated as often as the forum thread.
