Vivo X Fold 3 Pro review: do not underestimate the challenger

Samsung's foldables are not the only kids on the block — they haven't been for a while. Yes, we know of the Google Pixel Fold and OnePlus Open, but more obscure manufacturers from the east, like Vivo, Xiaomi, and Honor are also making some very impressive folding phones.

And here, we have the Vivo X Fold 3 Pro — as the name suggests, 3rd generation down the line, and specced out as a flagship. It's big but thin, it's light but makes no compromise in camera, it holds no punches and has the hardware to back it up.

It's not officially sold in the States, though — while there is a global version of the Vivo X Fold 3 Pro, you'd be wise to check with carrier band compatibility before you press the "Buy now" button on a web shop. It can cost you as low as $1,500 — and that's not really low, is it now?

Here at PhoneArena, we take the smartphone through multiple hard-set tests and measure their performance, from computational power to camera output. The points above also show average score from other devices in the Vivo X Fold 3 Pro's price class, so you can get a better understanding of where it stands among its peers. 

Here's a quick overview of what the Vivo X Fold 3 Pro has on offer:

The Vivo X Fold 3 Pro attempts to be as useful as possible, whether its folded or opened. The external screen is quite spacious, and you can comfortably use it as a regular smartphone if you so desire. It's kind of on the thick side compared to a candybar phone, but for a foldable — it's still pretty thin. The build is metal and glass, with the back panel being a pleasant matte — it's a fine grain, so it feels soft rather than sandy. Bad news — it does collect quite a lot of finger grease, at least the black unit we have here.

The cover screen is quite large, with its 6.5-inch diagonal and almost feels like a "regular phone screen" with a 21:9 aspect ratio. It has thin-ish bezels and the glass even curves out at the side edges. The camera module on the back is quite a beast and does get in the way when handling the phone or when trying to just set it flat on a table.

One unique feature you will notice — the Vivo X Fold 3 has a mute slider. That's very rare to see — as far as we know, OnePlus is the only Android phone maker to employ this. The Vivo implementation here is simple and effective — there are two steps. Muted phone with vibration or sound on — pretty self-explanatory, extremely convenient.

When opened up, the Vivo X Fold 3 becomes a thin, 5.2 mm slab with an almost square aspect ratio. The 6-inch internal screen is quite enough for multiple apps to float about, and the software helps you multitask with various slide-in options. The motion of the hinge is very smooth, stable, and pleasing. And yes, there is a crease across the middle of the screen — very shallow and pretty unnoticeable when using the phone.

The unboxing experience is quite generous — you get a 120 W charging brick to supply the power for the X Fold 3 Pro's fast charging speeds, a cable, and a shell case. Need to note — it's only a back shell, nothing for the front of the phone, like other foldables out there have. But we imagine it'd be quite hard to attach a front shell on this phone, with its thin bezel and curved glass.

OLED screens are bright and punchy — no exception here, with both the external and main displays of the Vivo X Fold 3. The good news is you have a couple of color profiles to pick from, to adjust saturation and white balance. They are also very sharp, with the cover screen having 457 pixels per inch, and the main display — 412 PPI.

Display Measurements:

Impressively, the Vivo X Fold 3 Pro comes with two fingerprint scanners — each tucked away under both the cover screen and the main screen. You don't need to register your fingers with both — you can use whichever one you like, and the other one will "recognize" your prints just the same. And they are ultrasonic scanners, too — the expensive stuff. We found that the external scanner is very snappy, accurate, and responsive. The one under the main display is a bit of a slowpoke — probably because it's harder to get a good read with that flexible screen getting bent under our fingers.

The above is reaffirmed by the benchmark scores — the Vivo X Fold 3 Pro scores 6,600 Geekbench Multi-Core score, which is slightly shy of the Galaxy Z Fold 6's achievement because the latter has the slightly overclocked Snapdragon. Same goes for Single-Core. And, looking at the 3DMark scores, again, the Vivo hits 4,550 best score, which is about 200 less than the Samsung.

To put it in simple terms — this is close to the best performance you can get out of an Android smartphone right now. Of course, we ran some demanding games — namely, Breakout Arena, which is the current hot extraction shooter on mobile — and it ran perfectly fine with max settings.

Vivo's software is called "Funtouch OS", currently running on top of Android 14. The build for the X Fold 3 Pro sports all sorts of tricks to help you with multitasking. The sidebar drawer with apps, for example — whenever you tap on an app icon there, it automatically opens in a floating window, as the phone assumes you are multitasing. If you quickly flutter the flaps of the X Fold 3, in a close-open motion, it will automatically activate split-screen. And the app dock on the bottom has a "recent apps" section on the right — much like on Samsung's Fold phones.

In general, it's an amalgamation of ideas we've seen before. Funtouch looks like a marriage of iOS and One UI — any feature you've liked from other top phones will likely be here. Minus the cool AI image manipulation — for example, tapping and holding on a subject in a photo to instantly crop it out doesn't happen here. Which was a bit of a disappointment, we love doing that on iPhones and Galaxies.

As for software updates — Vivo hasn't made any promises, so let's just assume 2 years of updates, possibly 3 years of security patches.

With dual batteries inside, the Vivo X Fold 3 Pro achieves a total of 5,700 mAh battery capacity — that's a lot, even by "normal phone" standards, and definitely much more than most foldables out there.

As a result, we get a lot of juice out of a single charge on the Vivo X Fold 3 Pro:

Almost 14 hours of browsing, 10 hours of video streaming – those are some numbers, indeed. The Vivo X Fold 3 Pro will comfortably last you a day, maybe two if you are more of a casual user (do casual users buy super-thin, super powerful foldable phones?).

And even if you get yourself in a pickle, the dual cell design allows for super-fast charging — with Vivo's tech, you can charge the X Fold 3 Pro with a 100 W power brick, which will get you 50% in just 15 minutes.

The official Vivo wireless charger can also get you 50 W of wireless power — that's a bit overkill, but it's there for fast top ups whenever you set it down.

Not everything is sunshine and roses — the Vivo X Fold 3 Pro's stereo speakers are a bit of a letdown. They have a bit of bass, but sound tinny and fatiguing in the high mids, and they lack a nice airy presence. The candybar Galaxy S24 Ultra, for example, sounds much better, and the Z Fold 6 is definitely ahead.

For haptics — the Vivo X Fold 3 Pro feels nice. It's a nice, subtle click, that comes on time and feels right enough to give you feedback when you click across the interface.

That's a tough question – depending on which market you are in, it can be quite hard to get your hands on a Vivo X Fold 3 Pro. We'd say it's not worth jumping through multiple hoops and risking carrier incopatibilities — not because the Vivo X Fold 3 Pro is bad, but because there are options out there that work just fine and perform quite well themselves.

That said, we are quite impressed with the Vivo X Fold 3 Pro — quality screens, quality build, dual ultrasonic fingerprint scanners, excellent performance and battery life. All that for quite the competitive price — considering that Samsung upped the price tag of the Z Fold by $100 this year, we'd say the Vivo X Fold 3 Pro is quite well positioned. Again... pretty hard to find it at a reputable retailer, though.