Forget Samsung and Google - I wish Vivo sold its Android phones in the UK

It's true that we are spoiled for choice here in the UK when it comes to Android smartphones, with scores of handsets for sale from Samsung, Google, OnePlus, Xiaomi, Oppo and Motorola, to name the most prominent brands. But there is one manufacturer that doesn’t sell its phones on these shores, and I’m here to tell you it means you are sorely missing out on some of the best smartphone cameras in the world.

Vivo, a Chinese phone maker, has not officially sold its flagship smartphones in the UK since 2022’s Vivo X80 Pro, a phone I said had the best cameras of any phone released that year.

With the succeeding X90, X100 and X200 series of phones, Vivo has been heralded by tech media as quietly producing smartphones with mind-bogglingly good cameras. Vivo is a bestseller in its home country.

Now, the brand has announced the Vivo X300 series, with the jewel in the crown being the X300 Pro, a device that ups the optics stakes to another level. It has a 50MP main sensor, 50MP ultra-wide and 200MP periscope telephoto zoom lens that promise crystal clear, stylised and well-rendered shots across many different focal lengths. There's even an optional photography kit with attachable telephoto extender.

I have been lucky enough to have been using 2024’s Vivo X200 Pro for the best part of a year, and alongside the Xiaomi 15 Ultra, it has the best smartphone cameras I have ever used. The X200 has the same basic camera specs I just mentioned as the X300 Pro, albeit with an older main and telephoto sensor compared to the newer phone.

I’ve taken some of the best photos of my life with the Vivo X200 Pro. It’s not quite a point-and-shoot experience though - I’ve needed to get to grips with some of the settings and wrestle with Vivo’s various zoom and filter settings to get the best out of it. Vivo’s vintage filter in the portrait mode, helped by the firm’s Zeiss collaboration gives a great grainy, film-like feel.

But the learning curve is not very steep, and I’ve been rewarded with a phone I can comfortably say, a year from its release, has better cameras than any phone I’ve reviewed from Apple, Samsung or Google, including the latest Google Pixel 10 Pro XL.

Here’s a gallery of some of my favourite shots I've taken on the Vivo X200 Pro (noting that they are slightly downscaled for upload here):

The prowess of the X200 Pro’s main sensor is its larger than average size. It’s not quite as large as the Xiaomi 15 Ultra’s 1-inch sensor, but comes close at 1/1.28-inch. By letting in more light it can process more detail to produce incredibly sharp images that have less noise than shots from the main cameras in the Pixel, Samsung Galaxy S25 or iPhone 16.

Coupled with the periscope zoom lens that has an 85mm equivalent range, it has a level of versatility I’ve yet to find on many other phones. Part of the appeal is the natural bokeh picked up by these lenses, where you get background blur behind a subject that is not artificially created, as phones with smaller sensors need to do with their ‘portrait’ modes. The X200 Pro has a portrait mode, but you don’t need to use it.

The large main sensor also means superb low light photography. In what you might consider a drawback but I see as an acceptable compromise for great lenses, the camera bump on the phone is absolutely enormous.

Selfie fans should also be aware that the 32MP shooter is a let down, with washed out results.

The phone itself is a big, slippery black monolith with a curved edge 6.78-inch OLED screen. It’s pleasingly thin though, and there’s a fast charger and plastic case included in the box. Battery life is also excellent, lasting well into a second day of use.

The just-announced X300 Pro, which is available to order in China already, has a much more iPhone-inspired design, with flat edges, a totally flat screen and Vivo’s Origin OS 6 software that mimics Apple features such as the Dynamic Island cut out.

It still retains that Vivo trademark circular camera bump, though, with a new 200MP sensor that Vivo built in collaboration with Samsung used for the telephoto lens. It’s a step up from the X200 Pro, which is already capable of stunning results. The main sensor is also an upgrade, with the Sony LYT-838.

Vivo will launch the X300 Pro in some European countries such as Spain, but the UK looks set to miss out. Although Britain has an excellent range of Android phones - much better than the US - I still think it’s a crying shame that you can’t easily get hold of Vivo’s flagship smartphones over here, as their cameras are a tier above what’s on offer from Apple, Samsung and Google.

A year after its launch, the Vivo X200 Pro still has one of the best smartphone camera systems in the world, but the price is high. In Spain, it costs €1.299, about the same as the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra. I think it’s worth it if you want the very best in phone photography.

I’m excited to see what the X300 Pro can achieve. Whether you or I can get my hands on it is a different matter.