dynamic range

Vivo's Pro Max fills the gap but loses the Ultra's best camera tricks

Vivo's X500 Pro Max is the first flagship to sit between the Pro and Ultra tiers, which sounds like a tidy bit of product segmentation until you notice what fell through the gap. The 35mm main camera and that world-beating ultrawide from the X300 Ultra? Neither made the trip. What you get instead is a genuinely impressive camera system with 17 stops of dynamic range and the same excellent telephoto as the Ultra, plus a 7,800mAh battery and a 1440p, 144Hz display. That is not a consolation prize. But this phone is defined as much by what it leaves out as what it packs in, and if the aperture side of things interests you, Halide's new update gives the iPhone 18 Pro's aperture the fine-tuning it deserved. Different phone, same obsession with the fiddly bits.