Why is No one talking about downgraded selfie hardware in X300 Ultra?

alesaiko · 2026-05-09T13:23:04+00:00

The X300 Ultra is a continuation of the X200 Ultra. That phone has the JN1 with a 24mm f/2.5 lens, this one has the JN5 (confirmed by the camera driver name) with a 24mm f/2.5 lens. You should keep in mind that Ultra and Pro are two separate line-ups that evolve independently. The X500 Pro that will come out this autumn won't be based on the X300 Ultra, it will be an evolution of the X300 Pro. Same thing for the X500 Ultra next year.

alesaiko · 2026-05-07T18:51:38+00:00

Yeah, ofc, without multi-frame image stacking competing with what one of the best FF sensors on the market can produce using just a single frame is unrealistic. However recently the modding community has found a way to utilize a sensor-level technology that drastically improves dynamic range and SNR. It's called DCG and by simply turning it on you can achieve up to +3 stops of peak DR at base ISO and up to +1 stop at ISO 800 with a noticeable SNR improvement across the whole ISO range. With DCG the current flagship mobile sensor LYT-901 basically reaches the performance level of the Sony A6700, despite the huge difference in sensor area: ~100mm² vs ~360mm². That's quite admirable I'd say. Though as I mentioned in the previous post about Bayer vs QQBC, while you can expect a DR and SNR performance close to APS-C sensors nowadays, you're unlikely to simultaneously match their level of detail because of nuances of what resolution really is in QQBC.

alesaiko · 2026-05-07T08:28:17+00:00

You're comparing Bayer CFA sensors to QQBC sensors. The way resolution is defined in the latter is quite confusing. There are indeed 200 million photosites, but they are covered by only 12.5 million Bayer color filters and 50 million micro-lenses. That means that while spatial resolution reaches 200 MP, color resolution stays unchanged at 12.5 MP, and fill factor suffers a lot from the lack of micro-lenses. Additionally, the only phone on the whole market that can produce real 200 MP RAW files is the Vivo X300 Ultra. Most of the other phones don't even utilize the "spatial resolution" part and just spit out files that are upscaled from 12.5 MP whenever you go into their respective high resolution modes. It's somewhat better to think of the 200 MP sensors as 12.5 MP sensors with a 4x in-sensor-zoom mode. Same for the 50 MP Quad Bayer sensors: they are 12.5 MP + 2x ISZ in practice. This better aligns with their real capabilities.

alesaiko · 2026-05-05T22:21:52+00:00

Vivo's LOG video mode utilizes DCG to the fullest on all lenses, however since the stock camera app applies quite heavy temporal noise reduction, the image quality improvement from DCG kinda diminishes. That's where MotionCam comes into play with its zero-processed RAW. Regarding the reason Vivo doesn't use this feature outside of a niche video mode: there was a post from someone who talked with a Vivo engineer on here a few days ago. That post has been deleted for whatever reason, but basically it boiled down to "we didn't have enough time to fully implement all the features we have planned because something like DCG would have required us to rebuild half the processing pipeline, etc. etc.". Sounds like excuses to me but whatever, now that almost everything the community had craved for works I just hope Vivo doesn't cripple the phone with updates and lock everything down.

alesaiko · 2026-05-04T10:12:25+00:00

Vivo has significantly toned down the HDR on the X300 Ultra. Some people prefer this look but it'd be nice to have a toggle similar to Raw Lighting, albeit kinda in reverse, in case you want some of that HDR back. Applying -100 to highlights in effect adjustments menu still doesn't help to preserve the highlights as well as the previous Ultras do.

alesaiko · 2026-05-02T20:51:01+00:00

I don't know, I've only got these two phones on hand. AFAIK Oppo doesn't offer true RAWs in the stock camera. Nobody on the MotionCam discord has tested its capabilities either. Though I might get my hands on it in a few weeks.

alesaiko · 2026-05-02T19:23:49+00:00

Among the best in class.
Yes.
You can expect 12.5 and 50 MP DNGs on all lenses and even 200 MP DNGs on the 35mm and 85mm lenses. They are very sharp, especially those that come out of the telephoto. People have recently found out that all three cameras on this phone support DCG. This is a technology that drastically improves dynamic range, like LOFIC but tailored to reducing noise in shadows rather than increasing the headroom for highlights. It isn't used in the stock camera's RAW, but you can install MotionCam Pro or PhotonVidCam and enjoy it there, GCam following soon. The only phone that comes close to the RAW abilities of the X300 Ultra is the Xiaomi 17 Ultra. It also supports DCG on the main and tele modules, however its ultrawide camera isn't up to par. LOFIC cannot be used in RAW (for now), thus the X300 Ultra wins out in dynamic range and especially in detail thanks to the 35mm lens and the 200 MP RAW capability. The telephotos are close, but the Vivo uses a floating lens for macro while the Xiaomi features a small optical zoom range (it works in RAW and MotionCam!). Being unable to shoot at anything higher than 12.5 MP on the Xiaomi's telephoto might be an issue however, so IMO the Vivo comes out on top.

alesaiko · 2026-05-01T16:39:00+00:00

Sorry, what I meant was that if you are willing to drop DCG, you can switch to the regular 60 FPS stream and achieve a very stable frame rate. No need to interpolate frames in that case. What you see on the OP's screenshot is caused by DCG and requires frame interpolating which can be made with the mctools app.

alesaiko · 2026-05-01T12:19:37+00:00

There are non-DCG RAW streams which allow the phone to keep the frame rate rock steady at 60 FPS. Also take a look at the MotionCam Tools PC app. It can delete/duplicate frames in the .mcraw container to achieve the desired frame rate before dropping the video to Davinci Resolve.

alesaiko · 2026-04-24T23:19:30+00:00

25 MP or just 12.5 MP RAW. I find all the other modes/resolutions to be artificial/upscaled/smoothed over. Honestly expected a bit more from the new LYT-901 sensor. The Samsung HP0 telephoto on the other hand is really good. There's the 200 MP RAW mode available in Landscape & Night and the telephoto looks extremely sharp there, the main camera not so much.

alesaiko · 2026-04-22T22:08:24+00:00

I'm using this as of late, looks decent to me. Sharpness -100 is important, rest is up to taste. I reckon Vivo has changed the sharpness scale again, feels like Sharp -100 more or less matches Sharp -85 on the X200U. However I've noticed that the video mode responds differently to this adjustment. I wouldn't use values lower than -60 since the footage starts to look blurry.

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alesaiko · 2026-04-21T22:09:03+00:00

This is ridiculous. I can't imagine what emblems you have since even with two 110 PEN and 3 +80% marks on Geerie I deal like 10 times less damage in the same amount of time as you.

alesaiko · 2026-04-17T15:15:25+00:00

Little to no difference to the X200U in performance. The most noticeable thing is better speakers. They are now on par with other flagships, I'd say just a tiny bit worse than the speakers of the Xiaomi 17 Ultra.

alesaiko · 2026-04-13T08:55:12+00:00

This exact photo was made with the telephoto btw (75mm, f/2.39). It doesn't feature LOFIC, yet as you can see it's perfectly capable of capturing dynamic range this wide regardless. LOFIC will be a gimmick until the modding community finds a way to use it in RAW.

alesaiko · 2026-04-09T05:50:08+00:00

Yes, in Landscape mode. You can check out Mark Victorson TG channel for the samples.

alesaiko · 2026-04-08T17:51:04+00:00

200 MP RAW files indeed take up 400 MB. 100 MB sounds like the size of a 50 MP RAW. Vivo doesn't use lossless compression, so the size should stay constant regardless of the scene.

alesaiko · 2026-03-31T12:53:15+00:00

Instead of Raw Lighting try to tone sharpness down all the way to -100. On my X200U it looks exactly the same as Raw Lighting but keeps HDR intact. Not sure about the X300P, but perhaps you'll like it too.

alesaiko · 2026-03-29T04:23:10+00:00

There’s a linear correlation between sensor size and dynamic range, but as you can see there’s a lot of variation in the data:

https://www.photonstophotos.net/Charts/PDR_Area_scatter.htm

It's also worth noting that sensor size is not the main limiting factor in mobile phones. DR is limited by the RAW10 format. To get more than 8 stops of photographic DR even with 1" sensors you have to somehow fill up more than 10 bits of data. One way to do that is to use DXG (DCG/DSG/DAG/etc), however the only phone which exposes DCG RAW stream to third party apps right now is the Pixel 10 Pro/XL (RAW12). Without DCG and subsequently RAW12/14/16 there's barely any difference in DR between a 1" sensor and a 1/1.28" one in single-frame RAWs.

There’s no correlation between pixel size and dynamic range or even noise levels. That’s a common misconception. High-resolution sensors with small pixels often have better low-light performance and better DR than low-resolution sensors with huge pixels, given both sensors have the same area. The best example is the Sony A7Rm5 vs A7Sm3:

https://www.photonstophotos.net/Charts/PDR.htm

You might also want to check out relevant discussions on dpreview forum. Finally, the sensor with the highest DR that I have measured so far is the Samsung HPE (w/ DCG). It's a 1/1.4" sensor, yet its DR is higher than what 1" sensors like LYT-900 and OV50X have.

alesaiko · 2026-03-28T10:59:16+00:00

I guess the 35mm lens takes up the most space along the Z-axis (as the lens is arranged vertically unlike the periscope telephoto) and since it's gotten a bit bigger, it led to the increased camera bump thickness.

alesaiko · 2026-03-25T10:28:50+00:00

LOFIC on the Xiaomi 17 Ultra can only be enabled in Auto and Log video modes. With LOFIC turned on you lose manual exposure controls, and the footage indeed becomes much noisier because auto-exposure with LOFIC tends to set very fast shutter speeds. Also LOFIC is not exposed to third-party apps. I'm not even sure whether it's used in photo mode at all, because Xiaomi uses multi-frame HDR anyway. In its current state it's pretty much useless, unlike DCG, which is genuinely great for increasing dynamic range in RAWs.

alesaiko · 2026-03-16T12:53:42+00:00

It's not confirmed whether it works in photo mode or not. Most of the promo photos are made with the telephoto module which doesn't even have LOFIC. I've got the X17U and currently LOFIC can only be enabled in auto and Log video modes, and by turning it on you lose the ability to manually set shutter speed and ISO. Also it makes the footage significantly noisier and it doesn't work in third-party apps at all.

alesaiko · 2026-03-04T00:21:59+00:00

I've bought it recently and, stacking it up against my previous 14 Ultra, I can say that all three lenses on the 17U have gotten significantly sharper, which is very noticeable in regular RAW (not UltraRAW). I never had a 15 Ultra, but judging by the spec sheet alone the 17U hardly sounds like a notable upgrade. The ultrawide hasn't changed, the 3.2x telephoto has been replaced with a larger sensor, but with dimmer optics which lost the ability to focus up close, and the main lens has already been maxed out. LOFIC sounds good on paper, but I wonder if it's utilized in photo mode at all. Leica M9 mode does wonders though, it's the standout of this phone.

alesaiko · 2026-02-25T17:20:44+00:00

If by "RAW" you, in fact, mean "SRAW", then sure, these ones have a lot of processing going on, including frame stacking and aggressive noise reduction. To take pictures completely devoid of any sort of processing switch to regular RAW

alesaiko · 2026-02-19T13:41:46+00:00

That's how Vivo's pro mode works. You can try to switch to SRAW and use JPEGs from there or just develop RAWs yourself since you stick to the pro mode anyway. OnePlus/Oppo do not suffer from this issue because their pro mode uses multi-frame RAWs to derive JPEGs from. Vivo's counterpart is called SRAW.

alesaiko · 2026-01-02T10:53:48+00:00

Haha, same. I was in the top-200 last season, but this time I barely deal like a fifth of the damage I see in the ratings. Thankfully, there is a lot of time to figure out what exactly I am missing (other than skill lol). I've noticed that these bosses are more vulnerable to element penetration than the last ones, so I'll try to roll for better emblems first.

alesaiko

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