Vivo puts a camera gimbal inside its new X50 Pro flagship phone

It recently dawned on me that the smartphone gimbal is the new selfie stick. The revelation came when multiple Instagram husbands (and dads) expressed astonishment that I don’t own a DJI Osmo 3 -- or any similar stabilizing tool that allows regular people like you and me to take mobile videos that look like they’re shot with the help of a professional Steadicam. So it doesn’t entirely surprise me that a new smartphone unveiled today comes equipped with a built-in camera gimbal. 

The flagship handset, one of three from the new X50 series, brings yet another experimental idea from Vivo’s concept device into a consumer product. First introduced with the concept Apex 2020 phone, the gimbal-in-a-phone is said to be modeled after a full size professional gimbal. It’s designed to help users take sharp and smooth photos and videos with the main camera while moving -- like if you’re riding a speedboat or trying to capture a video of your running toddler. 

Another star camera feature? The periscope lens. Vivo says the X50 Pro and X50 Pro+ can achieve a digital zoom of up to 60x, though we’ll have to wait to get our hands on the phone to see how much detail is retained in images zoomed in that closely. The lens has an optical zoom of 5x -- on par with the periscope lens first championed by Huawei last year.