Vivo X300 Ultra SuperRAW – How Close Is Smartphone Image Quality to 1&...
p.1 #1Vivo X300 Ultra SuperRAW – How Close Is Smartphone Image Quality to 1" and APS-C?
Hi everyone,
my Samsung smartphone is now almost seven years old, no longer receives updates, and the original battery has become a complete disaster. You can practically watch the percentage drop. So it was slowly time for something new.
Since cameras and photography are very important to me, the camera system was one of the main factors when choosing a new smartphone. Until now, though, I have never been really happy with smartphone photos. Whether Samsung, iPhone, or other current models, on a large monitor they always still look too much like smartphone photos to me.
For memories and documentation that was perfectly fine.
Samsung is not really an option for me anymore, because over the last three generations they have basically kept using the same camera technology. Unfortunately, there seems to be very little progress there now.
Another problem I have with many smartphones is RAW mode. There are often so many limitations. In many cases only the main camera is supported, and even then only half-heartedly. A lot of options get disabled, or the RAW files are so limited in quality that editing them afterwards is hardly worth the effort.
So this time I decided to give a Chinese flagship a chance: the Vivo X300 Ultra, which I am currently testing. I am still deciding whether to keep it or try another camera-focused smartphone instead.
But I have to say, I am quite surprised — not only by the camera, but also by the software. OriginOS is much better than I expected, Android is integrated very cleanly, and even unnecessary pre-installed apps can be completely uninstalled.
What I find especially interesting is the camera system. For a smartphone, the Vivo uses very large sensors: 1/1.12" for the 35mm main camera, 1/1.28" for the ultra-wide, and 1/1.4" for the 85mm telephoto. The ultra-wide and telephoto sensors in particular are unusually large.
RAW and SuperRAW can also be used freely with all three camera lenses.
SuperRAW is especially interesting. Unlike a normal single-frame RAW, multiple exposures are combined. This results in noticeably less noise, more dynamic range, and also more detail. And thanks to these 64-bit SuperRAW files, there is much more room for editing in Lightroom than with a normal JPEG or even a regular RAW file.
Depending on the lighting conditions, the Vivo works with different resolutions and pixel binning, automatically reducing the resolution when needed. In good light, 200 MP are available; in poorer light it drops to 50 MP, and at night it can go down to 25 MP.
Here are a few photos from yesterday at the Hockenheimring.
I only edited the SuperRAWs very lightly in Lightroom — in some cases hardly at all. Most of the time I just cropped them from 4:3 to 16:9.
For the last subject, the Roots-supercharged engine, I also added two 100% crops so you can better judge what the 50 MP file looks like at full magnification.
What surprised me most is how small the gap has become, at least in these shots, compared with a good compact camera using a 1" sensor. At normal viewing size, I would not confidently identify some of these images as smartphone photos without looking at the EXIF data. Depending on the subject and the light, the result sometimes even gets surprisingly close to APS-C for me.
Of course, a trained eye can still see differences. With very fine textures, natural transitions, or the way microcontrast and detail are rendered, you can sometimes still see the computational-photography character. A good interchangeable-lens camera still produces more natural raw data overall and gives you more editing latitude.
But for a smartphone, I think we are already complaining at a very high level.
For me, this is the first smartphone where I feel that if I happen to capture a genuinely strong image, the photo is no longer automatically held back simply because it was “only” taken with a smartphone.
So I am curious to hear your opinions:
How do the photos look to you?
If you had not known beforehand, would you immediately have thought they were taken with a smartphone?
And where would you roughly place the image quality — smartphone, 1" compact camera such as an RX100/RX10, or APS-C?
One thing I also find extremely interesting for the future of interchangeable-lens cameras is this kind of SuperRAW processing, especially as sensors keep getting faster. A Sony A9 III with its global shutter, for example, can shoot at 120 frames per second. If a camera could one day read out and combine a whole stack of RAW frames within milliseconds into a single SuperRAW file, it could potentially improve noise, detail and dynamic range even further.
I already do something similar manually from time to time, combining several individual exposures into one better image. If an interchangeable-lens camera could eventually do this as naturally and automatically as the Vivo does, that would be a huge plus for me. Press the shutter once, and a few seconds later you could have a SuperRAW alongside the normal RAW if you wanted it.
Canon is also working in this direction and has patents relating to combining multiple RAW exposures into a new composite RAW. So I think something like this will sooner or later make its way into interchangeable-lens cameras as well.
So far, the Vivo is the only smartphone I personally know that does it in this way.
All images shown here have been resized to 2,000 pixels on the long edge, except for the 100% crops. Most of these shots were taken with the 14mm ultra-wide camera, simply because ultra-wide lenses are often one of the weaker parts of a smartphone camera system and I wanted to see how well it performs. The 35mm main camera should theoretically deliver even better image quality.
Here are 100% crops from the 50-megapixel SuperRAW
my Samsung smartphone is now almost seven years old, no longer receives updates, and the original battery has become a complete disaster. You can practically watch the percentage drop. So it was slowly time for something new.
Since cameras and photography are very important to me, the camera system was one of the main factors when choosing a new smartphone. Until now, though, I have never been really happy with smartphone photos. Whether Samsung, iPhone, or other current models, on a large monitor they always still look too much like smartphone photos to me.
For memories and documentation that was perfectly fine.
Samsung is not really an option for me anymore, because over the last three generations they have basically kept using the same camera technology. Unfortunately, there seems to be very little progress there now.
Another problem I have with many smartphones is RAW mode. There are often so many limitations. In many cases only the main camera is supported, and even then only half-heartedly. A lot of options get disabled, or the RAW files are so limited in quality that editing them afterwards is hardly worth the effort.
So this time I decided to give a Chinese flagship a chance: the Vivo X300 Ultra, which I am currently testing. I am still deciding whether to keep it or try another camera-focused smartphone instead.
But I have to say, I am quite surprised — not only by the camera, but also by the software. OriginOS is much better than I expected, Android is integrated very cleanly, and even unnecessary pre-installed apps can be completely uninstalled.
What I find especially interesting is the camera system. For a smartphone, the Vivo uses very large sensors: 1/1.12" for the 35mm main camera, 1/1.28" for the ultra-wide, and 1/1.4" for the 85mm telephoto. The ultra-wide and telephoto sensors in particular are unusually large.
RAW and SuperRAW can also be used freely with all three camera lenses.
SuperRAW is especially interesting. Unlike a normal single-frame RAW, multiple exposures are combined. This results in noticeably less noise, more dynamic range, and also more detail. And thanks to these 64-bit SuperRAW files, there is much more room for editing in Lightroom than with a normal JPEG or even a regular RAW file.
Depending on the lighting conditions, the Vivo works with different resolutions and pixel binning, automatically reducing the resolution when needed. In good light, 200 MP are available; in poorer light it drops to 50 MP, and at night it can go down to 25 MP.
Here are a few photos from yesterday at the Hockenheimring.
I only edited the SuperRAWs very lightly in Lightroom — in some cases hardly at all. Most of the time I just cropped them from 4:3 to 16:9.
For the last subject, the Roots-supercharged engine, I also added two 100% crops so you can better judge what the 50 MP file looks like at full magnification.
What surprised me most is how small the gap has become, at least in these shots, compared with a good compact camera using a 1" sensor. At normal viewing size, I would not confidently identify some of these images as smartphone photos without looking at the EXIF data. Depending on the subject and the light, the result sometimes even gets surprisingly close to APS-C for me.
Of course, a trained eye can still see differences. With very fine textures, natural transitions, or the way microcontrast and detail are rendered, you can sometimes still see the computational-photography character. A good interchangeable-lens camera still produces more natural raw data overall and gives you more editing latitude.
But for a smartphone, I think we are already complaining at a very high level.
For me, this is the first smartphone where I feel that if I happen to capture a genuinely strong image, the photo is no longer automatically held back simply because it was “only” taken with a smartphone.
So I am curious to hear your opinions:
How do the photos look to you?
If you had not known beforehand, would you immediately have thought they were taken with a smartphone?
And where would you roughly place the image quality — smartphone, 1" compact camera such as an RX100/RX10, or APS-C?
One thing I also find extremely interesting for the future of interchangeable-lens cameras is this kind of SuperRAW processing, especially as sensors keep getting faster. A Sony A9 III with its global shutter, for example, can shoot at 120 frames per second. If a camera could one day read out and combine a whole stack of RAW frames within milliseconds into a single SuperRAW file, it could potentially improve noise, detail and dynamic range even further.
I already do something similar manually from time to time, combining several individual exposures into one better image. If an interchangeable-lens camera could eventually do this as naturally and automatically as the Vivo does, that would be a huge plus for me. Press the shutter once, and a few seconds later you could have a SuperRAW alongside the normal RAW if you wanted it.
Canon is also working in this direction and has patents relating to combining multiple RAW exposures into a new composite RAW. So I think something like this will sooner or later make its way into interchangeable-lens cameras as well.
So far, the Vivo is the only smartphone I personally know that does it in this way.
All images shown here have been resized to 2,000 pixels on the long edge, except for the 100% crops. Most of these shots were taken with the 14mm ultra-wide camera, simply because ultra-wide lenses are often one of the weaker parts of a smartphone camera system and I wanted to see how well it performs. The 35mm main camera should theoretically deliver even better image quality.
Here are 100% crops from the 50-megapixel SuperRAW
Aug 23, 2026 at 06:24 AM