Vivo’s X Fold 6 accidentally feels like a throwback

Dominic Preston is a news editor with over a decade’s experience in journalism. He previously worked at Android Police and Tech Advisor.It’s a quirk of the release calendar that when Vivo’s X Fold 6 launched in China this June, it was just another foldable. Now that it’s ready for its global release, the size and aspect ratio feel oddly old-fashioned.The X Fold 6 is much the same size as Vivo’s previous foldables, and most other foldables that launched before both Apple and Samsung pivoted to a shorter, wider form factor with the Z Fold 8 and iPhone Duo. The 6.51-inch cover display is in the standard smartphone 20:9 aspect ratio, opening to an almost square 8.02-inch panel. The crease is a little behind rivals, since it’s quite visible, and the IP59 rating is good but not great.Where the X Fold 6 stands out is its cameras. The 1/1.4-inch-type, 200-megapixel main camera sensor is one of the biggest on any foldable phone (only Huawei uses bigger), and it’s paired with 50-megapixel telephoto and ultrawide cameras that also look decent. The 6,900mAh battery isn’t bad either, with a custom “Super Edition” of the MediaTek Dimensity 9500 running the show.The phone is launching now outside China, though Vivo didn’t tell me the price or specific markets ahead of time; I’ll update this article once I have them. I’ve got a few phones on my desk right now (literally — it’s a mess) but I’m hoping to give this camera a proper test when I can, since it should be better than almost any other foldable’s.Photography by Dominic Preston / The Verge.Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.Dominic Preston