Vivo X Fold6 draws strong interest despite rising price pressure

The poll asked readers how they felt about the vivo X Fold6 at the prices it launched at around Europe. The answer was clear: interest was strong, and the most common response was a wish for a lower price rather than a flat no.

Voters were also split on what kind of foldable they want next. Fans of other book-style foldables, the kind that open like a paperback into a small tablet, were almost tied with people curious about the new wider folding phones arriving this year. In other words, buyers haven’t settled on a favorite design yet, and the X Fold6 will have to fight for attention.

Two other worries came up. Some readers didn’t like the change of processor, and some felt that Android apps still don’t adapt well to the odd screen sizes and shapes of folding phones. Availability was flagged too, but the poll’s authors called it a fairly minor problem. Durability, once the big fear with foldables, now looks mostly solved. Price is the hurdle left standing.

The short answer is that vivo built it to be a no-compromise phone. The company aimed for top performance, long battery life and a strong camera in a slim body, and it priced the phone as a luxury item rather than a value pick.

Memory costs make that worse. Phone makers pay more for the chips that store your apps and photos, and they pass at least some of that on. This hits every foldable, not just vivo’s.

Timing didn’t help either. The X Fold6 went on sale globally too late to join the October Prime Day sales in Europe, so early buyers missed the first chance at a discount. Some deals will come, but don’t expect deep cuts. Vivo’s X300 flagships were tracked for months and never saw big discounts, which suggests the same pattern here.

The X Fold6 swaps chipmakers. Last year’s X Fold5 used Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, while the new model runs MediaTek’s Dimensity 9500 Super Edition, a 3nm processor that vivo and MediaTek tuned together specifically for this phone. A processor is the phone’s main brain, so any change makes some buyers nervous.

Vivo says the custom chip is designed to keep several apps running smoothly at once on the big inner screen. Those are the company’s claims, and the open questions for buyers are how the chip handles heat, battery drain and long gaming sessions, which only time with the phone will answer.

Here’s what else you get. The inner screen measures 8.02 inches and the cover screen is 6.51 inches, and both refresh at up to 120Hz. The main camera is 200 megapixels, backed by a 50-megapixel 3x periscope zoom and a 50-megapixel ultrawide. There’s up to 1TB of storage with 16GB of RAM. The global model has a 6,900mAh battery, slightly smaller than the 7,000mAh pack in the Chinese version, with 80W wired and 40W wireless charging. In testing, it reached 32% in fifteen minutes and 62% in thirty, with a full charge in about an hour.

The black model is 4.4mm thin when open and weighs 228 grams, while the blue one is a little thicker and heavier at 235 grams. Vivo rates it IPX8 and IPX9 against water and IP5X against dust, but it warns that liquid damage isn’t covered by its warranty.

Vivo hasn’t announced a US or Canadian launch. When it took the phone global at the end of September, after a July debut in China, the company said prices and availability would be set separately for each market. So far, sales have started in places like Europe and India.

For the UK, the signs are better. A review unit meant for the UK market came with a UK charger in the box, though the reviewer noted that European boxes probably won’t include one. One US gadget site listed a starting price of $1,299, but vivo itself hasn’t confirmed US pricing, so treat that as a guide at best.

If you’re in the US or Canada and want one, you would likely be importing it. That means checking that it works with your carrier’s 5G bands and accepting that warranty repairs could be harder to arrange.

If you want a foldable right now, reviewers rank the X Fold6 among the most complete book-style options, especially for photos, battery life and multitasking. Its software lets you run up to four apps side by side on the big screen, which is the main reason to own a foldable in the first place.

But if price matters most, waiting looks sensible. Memory costs are pushing the whole category up, the wider foldables are about to give buyers more choice, and modest discounts on the X Fold6 are expected to follow. For US and Canadian buyers, the safer bet is a foldable sold through local carriers, with full warranty support.