Are foldable phones the new BlackBerrys? We tested using the Vivo X Fold 5 | Technology News

I have been fortunate enough to witness the journey of foldables from the beginning, that too from close quarters. A few years down the line, I am now impressed by how well this form factor has evolved to become more practical, with no learning involved, and plugging gaps that the regular smartphone can’t. The vivo X Fold 5, which I believe will be the first of many foldables to make a mark by being as thin as regular smartphones, is a good example of this evolution.

The vivo X Fold 5 is the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset. (Image Credit: Nandagopal Rajan/Indian Express)

The vivo X Fold 5 is a phone that will surprise you from the moment you take it out of the box. There are multiple reasons for this.

1. It is a very thin phone in its folded avatar. In fact, as thin as the iPhone 16 Pro Max when you ignore the camera bump.
2. This slim build is despite a large 6000 mAh battery inside
3. The camera is at par with other vivo flagships, offering 100x digital zoom and Zeiss optics
4. The crease in the middle is now even more subdued and almost invisible in most cases.

I would, however, call these all part of a natural evolution, and am certain companies like vivo, OnePlus, and Samsung would have moved the needle even more on these fronts by this time next year.

The 6.5-inch cover screen isn’t as narrow as it used to be and makes you feel like you are using a normal smartphone. (Image Credit: Nandagopal Rajan/Indian Express)

So what really matters is how usable the foldable phone is now. And this is where the thin build makes a huge difference. I have noticed that a lot of people who use a foldable phone prefer to carry a regular smartphone along, maybe because of the better camera or battery life. Now, the X Fold 5 changes this dynamic in two ways.

1. You don’t need that second phone because both the battery life and the camera quality on the Vivo X Fold 5 are flagship quality.
2. If you want that second phone, it becomes much easier to manage it when the fold is this thin.

With the Vivo X Fold 5, I also realised something interesting: for most of the time, I was using it like a regular phone. And this is because the 6.5-inch cover screen was as good as any smartphone I have reviewed this year. Yes, it is still a bit narrow compared to a regular phone, but it is no longer the squeezed display we encountered in the first few generations of folds. In the 10-odd days I have been using this device, I never once felt this was a different form factor while using the phone folded.

Vivo has optimised the X Fold 5 for multitasking. (Image Credit: Nandagopal Rajan/Indian Express)

The business phone hypothesis

To test my hypothesis, I set up the Vivo X Fold 5 with only my office mail ID, which is on Google Workspace. The idea was that I would not entertain any distractions on this phone. So instead of Instagram, Facebook, and Candy Crush, I loaded the phone with ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Manus, all of which have become important apps for my work profile. And this was a good decision, as every reel that is shared with me by my wife takes me into at least a 30-minute rabbit hole of doom scrolling.

It is a great idea to use a focus phone for work, and not just a focus mode on the phone. And this is when I started realising that I was able to handle a lot of work just on the phone, like checking spreadsheets, tagging new comments on the,m and even replying to older comments. With a squarish form factor of the open Vivo X Fold 5, you get space for Google Sheets, as well as real estate below for a lot of the work.

Also, vivo has gone on to optimise the interface for a large screen with multi-tasking that is accessible in many ways. For instance, you can tap the dock at the bottom and open apps that are running in the background and get a split view. Or there is the side-loading dock from where apps open as an inset video over the app you already have open. Plus, there is the option to open the app menu directly from the screen to cycle between apps.

All this makes working on multiple apps convenient and natural. I was working with up to three screens live at times, though that kind of multitasking usually does not yield positive results.

Also, this form factor gives you a lot of business opportunities, so to speak. For instance, while on a Zoom call, you can have a window open for your points or for an app like Granola to take notes for you. Plus, while consuming content on YouTube or a podcast, you can have an AI tool in a small window transcribing and summarising for you.

Unlike most foldables, the camera on the X Fold 5 is on par with other Vivo flagship devices. (Image Credit: Nandagopal Rajan/Indian Express)

The other aspect is, of course, the camera, which we had not been expecting to be all that great in foldable phones, given their form factor challenges. I found the camera on the X Fold 5 almost as good as the X200, which I think is the best Android camera of the past few months. I could zoom up to 100x, though with some distortion and noise, at which point the AI kicked in to give a decent image. This camera comes with Zeiss settings that really up your photography, especially when it comes to landscapes and street photography. But the more important point here is that you will not need to carry a secondary phone just because it has a better camera.

Camera Sample 1. (Image Credit: Nandagopal Rajan/Indian Express)
Camera Sample 2. (Image Credit: Nandagopal Rajan/Indian Express)
Camera Sample 3. (Image Credit: Nandagopal Rajan/Indian Express)
Camera Sample 4. (Image Credit: Nandagopal Rajan/Indian Express)

 

Camera Sample 5. (Image Credit: Nandagopal Rajan/Indian Express)
Camera Sample 6. (Image Credit: Nandagopal Rajan/Indian Express)

One of my biggest worries in life is that my phone will run out of battery, especially when I am travelling. With the Vivo X Fold 5, you can rest assured that the battery will hold up until the end of the day in all cases. And this is a big hurdle that vivo has crossed when it comes to the adoption of foldables. Plus, the phones charge back to half in less than 30 minutes with the 80W Dual-Cell FlashCharge. And wireless charging, that’s too fast at 40W, is always a convenience.

The 6,000mAh battery is the largest ever on a foldable device. (Image Credit: Nandagopal Rajan/Indian Express)

Verdict

At Rs 1,49,999, the vivo X Fold 5 — the phone has a single Titanium Gray variant in India with 16GB RAM + 512GB storage — is one of the best foldable options available at the moment. The foldables are maturing as a segment, and the X Fold 5 shows that now it can be trusted as a business phone that is not cutting any corners to make the form factor viable. For work, this form factor is emerging as the new BlackBerry.