Vivo, Sony and Ray-Ban
Instruction Set, 2026/4/6
Welcome back to Multicore. After a week out, this is Instruction Set for the week of Monday April 6th. Here are three tech hardware stories that caught my eye last week.
Vivo X300 Ultra announced
Vivo has announced the X300 Ultra, the latest in its series of high-end flagship camera phones. This is looking like one of the most capable options that’ll see release in 2026.
The X300 Ultra’s main camera uses a 200-megapixel 1/1.12” sensor, which is a little bigger than last year’s but not quite up there with the X100 Ultra’s 1” chip from a couple of years ago. Still, Vivo continues to stand out by pairing the sensor with a 35mm-equivalent f/1.85 lens. I’ve written before about how the ever-widening focal lengths on phone cameras might not be a good thing, and Vivo continues to release the highest-end phones to lean into that concept.
What if you want to go wider? Well, what if the ultrawide camera was actually good? The 14mm-equivalent f/2 lens has a 50-megapixel 1/1.28” sensor, the same size as the main camera from last year and the largest ultrawide sensor on any phone I’m aware of. There’ll certainly be a tradeoff compared to the main camera, but you should still be able to get decent 28mm results simply by using a 2x crop.
As for the zoom story, Vivo is using a 200-megapixel 1/1.4” sensor with a 85mm-equivalent 3x lens, which is a similar setup to the excellent 100mm telephoto on the Xiaomi 15 Ultra. Vivo is also offering Zeiss-branded 200mm- and 400mm-equivalent teleconverters that attach onto the 3x sensor, along with a heavy-duty grip accessory with extra buttons and a dial.
This is Vivo’s first high-end phone in a while to see release outside of China, although precise details on the launch (or pricing) haven’t yet been announced; preorders are set to start on April 16. I’ll definitely try to check it out, because it looks like a very strong competitor.
