telephoto camera
Spoot: Spotted Early keeps telephoto camera in one place: 2 stories so far. The section currently leads with “Vivo's Pro Max fills the gap but loses the Ultra's best camera tricks” and “Draco the smart telescope wakes itself up to shoot stars while you sleep”. 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. About 4,500 years ago, while the Egyptians were busy stacking pyramids, the North Star was a completely different star called Thuban. Spoot: Spotted Early New things, caught while they're still new and a little weird. Spoot finds fresh gadgets, clever inventions, crowdfunding campaigns,… The list below is every telephoto camera story on Spoot: Spotted Early, newest first.
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.
Draco the smart telescope wakes itself up to shoot stars while you sleep
About 4,500 years ago, while the Egyptians were busy stacking pyramids, the North Star was a completely different star called Thuban. It sat in the same spot in the sky, but the Earth's slow wobble swapped it out. Draco the smart telescope understands that kind of patience. It wakes itself up while you sleep, shoots the night sky automatically, and hands you the results in the morning. A 90mm aperture and a brain that decides when conditions are right. No standing in the cold, no fiddling with focus. This is a telescope that does the stargazing for you. It is deeply nerdy in the best way, a gadget for people who want the photo without the process.