Ever since I got my first smartphone and eventually found my way into tech journalism, I’ve had a soft spot for palm-friendly devices. But finding something that was practically worth it was quite a challenge due to technical limitations or just poor decisions.
The OnePlus 13s came pretty close, but the lack of an ultrawide sensor and poor thermals proved to be a major problem. The Samsung Galaxy S25 was a fairly versatile option, but struggled with poor battery life, poorer thermals, and unsatisfactory camera performance for the price. That’s why I’ve always returned to the standard iPhone or its Pro sibling as my daily driver.
The balance between pocketability, battery life, camera performance and performance is almost perfect, if proverbial Apple tax is steep. In the final hours of 2025, the Vivo
The small can be powerful
The Vivo X300 does a lot of things right. I’ll start with the setup. It has a beautiful glass and metal sandwich look with slim bezels on the front and a nice matte finish on the back. In terms of length and width, it is almost exactly the same as the iPhone 17 Pro, but is slimmer and lighter.
What can be seen in the hand feeling is clearly visible. However, what really sets this phone apart is its liquid ingress protection, which is a step ahead of Apple’s competitors and achieves an IP69 rating, the best the industry has to offer at the moment. Additionally, it brings a vapor chamber cooling system into the mix.
What surprised me most about the phone is the battery life. The compact body fits a 6,040 mAh battery, while the much larger Galaxy S25 Ultra has a 5,000 mAh device. In addition, it leaves its competitors from Apple and Samsung far behind with its charging credits.
In my daily use, it performed almost as well as the OnePlus 15 and easily lasted a full day. My average screen time was almost seven and a half hours, which is pretty solid. In everyday use, it performed better than the Google Pixel 10 Pro and the iPhone 17 Pro.
Another big surprise is the charging comfort. You get support for 90W wired charging and 40W wireless charging here, and that’s a huge quality of life benefit. It takes about half an hour for the phone to charge from empty to 66% and reaches 100% in exactly 49 minutes. These numbers are better than any other mainstream flagship you can get in the US.
Now let’s switch to the display. It’s smaller than the-new-iPhone-normal (from 6.3 inches) to 6.1 inches, but it’s a high-quality panel with a peak brightness that eclipses Apple’s best of 4,500 nits. You also get support for a 120Hz refresh rate and 2160Hz PWM dimming. In simpler terms, the panel is extremely sharp, vibrant and easy on the eyes thanks to the flicker-free technology.
The camera performance shines
In 2025, Apple finally fully embraced the all-big-camera approach, following in the footsteps of Google and the others. When it comes to the main, ultra-wide and zoom cameras, you get either a 48-megapixel or a 50-megapixel sensor.
On the Vivo the camera performance is pretty solid.
In general, it captures sharp snapshots with plenty of saturation and good dynamic range. However, what impressed me most is that the images have a lot of character, especially those taken with the main and telephoto lenses. It tends to aim for higher ISO output, but color reproduction is outstanding.
Another strong area is bokeh performance. It succeeds well in separating the subject and achieving a natural depth effect. Portraits were created under the sun that even captured the occasional strand of hair without any noticeable blur. It performs particularly well against human subjects and even in the enlarged format they surprise with lots of surface details.
Vivo has traditionally focused heavily on the image quality of its phones, and the X300 reflects that pretty well. The Camera app is the most comprehensive experience I’ve seen on a phone in recent memory, with lots of really nice filters, portrait lighting presets, and granular controls.
For anyone who likes the artistic side of mobile photography, the Vivo X300 offers plenty of scope. The ultra-wide and telephoto cameras don’t disappoint, but I wish they would tone down the algorithmic process a bit, especially for objects in the periphery. In case you’re wondering, it’s definitely on par with the OnePlus 15, iPhone 17 or Galaxy S25.
A surprisingly well-rounded package
The Vivo X300 can also surprise in a few other areas. It features MediaTek’s Dimensity 9500 silicon. This isn’t something you’ll find on a mainstream phone sold in the US, but the performance is extremely solid. On Geekbench, it ranks just behind Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 5-based phones.
In 3DMark, it is well ahead of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite processor, which powers devices like the Galaxy S25, in stress tests and synthetic ray tracing workflows. Stability under stress was also around 62%, which is normal for a flagship phone.
In simpler terms, this phone can easily push even the most demanding games. But the real surprise was the software. For years, Vivo has faced criticism of its software experience due to its sheer bloat. The situation has eased somewhat, but is now dramatically overshadowed by the software advantages.
The Android 16-based OriginOS 6 offers many outstanding features and is in many ways quite similar to the OxygenOS 16 on the OnePlus 15. Yes, there’s plenty of iOS inspiration too, from lock screen customization to the Dynamic Island experience, which Vivo calls Origin Island.
The overall experience is pretty slick, though. The interactions are quick, the animations are fluid and there are hardly any delays. It supports task handoff, enables screen mirroring on PC, and seamless file sharing with Windows 11 and Mac computers.
And just like the OnePlus 15, it lets you share files with an iPhone by bumping the two devices together, similar to the NameDrop feature you get natively on iPhones. There’s universal, AI-powered, system-wide search, tagging, automatic transcription and translation, and note-taking tools.
The phone also receives five operating system updates and security updates for the next seven years. It’s not the best out there, but it’s not terrible either. Overall, the Vivo x300 is one of the most pleasant compact phones on the market and in some ways ahead of the competition. If you live in the US I can’t recommend it due to obvious import and transportation issues, but for the rest of the world including Europe it is kosher.
But what really stands out here is the technical message. The Vivo X300 proves that small phones can be great without sacrificing much. You can get the most out of the display, battery, camera and silicon technology without any limitations. It’s a new beginning for the concept of palm-friendly phones and I really hope the industry takes note.
