vivo X100 Ultra review

Design, build quality, handling

The vivo X100 Ultra shares the broad strokes of its design language with the X100 Pro, though realistically all the major cameraphone players tend to look alike these days. Still, the vivos do have a personality of their own, thanks to subtle details here or there.

The camera bump has gotten a little taller still, likely to accommodate the new telephoto module, but vivo has done well with the stepped design to make it look and feel reasonable. There's also an allusion to watchmaking with the texture of the camera ring.

Our review unit features the Titanium colorway, but it's just a colorway - the frame is still aluminum even if colored and finished to look like the other thing. The shaping of the corners, the flat sides, the concave bottom - all of these work together to create the impression of extra attention to detail. We're just not entirely sure about the plastic insert at the top and the 'professional photography' text, but that's been a staple of recent vivo designs, so we might as well just accept it.

Shapely corner • Polished frame • Concave bottom • 'Professional photography'

The SIM tray on the bottom has a blue gasket to ensure no dust and water will get in. It looks no different from any other SIM tray, but the X100 Ultra's specs do list a higher level of protection against the elements. Other than the IP68 rating (up to 30mins under 1.5m of water), it's also been tested to comply with the requirements for IP69 which means it should be able to survive powerful high-temperature water jets - steam cleaning, essentially. We'd refrain from testing their claims, of course, even if we had a steam cleaner handy.

Circling back to the topic of color options, in addition to our Titanium version, the X100 Ultra also comes in Space Gray and White Moonlight. None of the color options are particularly flashy, instead carrying an aura of understated elegance.

The glass back panel has a satin finish and it's not particularly prone to picking up fingerprints. It's on the slippery side, though, as most such implementations. That said, the phone isn't too cumbersome to handle and the 230-ish grams of heft are well-balanced.

The X100 Ultra features an underdisplay fingerprint sensor. Unlike most manufacturers that aren't Samsung, vivo occasionally dabbles into ultrasonic tech, and the Ultra comes with one of those readers that don't shine in your face to scan (dramatic overreaction). Indeed, the vivo unlocked without incident and was pleasantly fast.