Vivo is an underrated camera champ in the industry, which doesn’t usually get the recognition it deserves. Yet it always surprises us on DxOMark’s camera rankings. Well, the company’s new Vivo X300 Pro has proven its mettle once again, as the leaker IceUniverse put this phone to the test against the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra.
The leaker specifically got into the Zoom photography aspect. Both phones are great at it, with the best available hardware out there, but the Vivo X300 Pro has a major advantage here. It uses a Samsung-made 200MP ISOCELL HPB (HP10) sensor under a periscope lens array optimized by ZEISS.
Galaxy S25 Ultra has a rather simple setup. We have one 50MP lens on it for a 5X periscope telephoto zoom and a second 10MP 3X optical zoom camera. As you read through this article, we have provided a series of camera samples from both phones that should drive our point home.
Samsung’s S25 Ultra is taking quite a beating from the Vivo X300 Pro in these camera shots. This is a low-light scenario, so it’s really challenging for both phones to handle. The shots of this bird were taken at 10x and 35x zoom from both their periscope cameras.
The color saturation feels similar on both sides. But the Vivo's flagship new model is way better at preserving textures and subject sharpness. There’s also less noise in X300 Pro’s sample images at 10x and 35x zoom. They have the new 200MP ISOCELL HPB sensor to thank for that.
Samsung infamously relies on software tricks to get better zoom images, but there’s only so much the image intelligence algorithms can do. We are seeing its limits here. The S25 Ultra falters in noise reduction and texture preservation. Its 35x image sample against the Vivo X300 Pro showed a day-and-night difference between the two phones.
These images bring into question the value Galaxy S25 Ultra provides. This is roughly a $1200 phone, and its Zoom camera bites the dust against a $750 (Chinese) Vivo X300 Pro. Perhaps Galaxy S26 Ultra will level the playing field with this device in the future. We are slowly gathering more intel on this device. Keep watching the news for updates.
