Five Years In, Vivo and ZEISS Navigate the Fine Line Between Photography and Art

Vivo's partnership with legendary camera maker ZEISS has now reached five years, and there is no better time to understand the anatomy of this long-term collaboration. At the sidelines of Vivo's next camera flagship smartphones - X300 and X300 Pro India launch, Gadgets 360 met Oliver Schindelbeck, Senior Smartphone Technology Manager at ZEISS Consumer Products to understand the deep, five-year joint development between the two companies that has moved beyond a simple licencing deal to explore the challenges, learning curves and eventual synchronicity achieved by two companies with different cultures and paces.

Five Years to "One Team"

Starting with the obvious question on how the partnership has evolved, Oliver explains, "So after five years, I'm really happy that my counterpart at vivo is still the same, like from day one, and we already have a personal relationship. We do not need to discuss about basic things. We can really go into the media space. We can talk about the actual challenges we are facing. We can openly discuss what is doable, what is not doable, and what we can do. And that makes the collaboration much, much more efficient than in the beginning."

On working on the next set of products in the upcoming years, Oliver said, "I'm really looking forward to the upcoming years, having now a real team, one team. It's not two teams, it's one team, and working on the new products."

He added, "I love having Vivo as a partner, because we can learn a lot about speed. So we are very much focused on perfection. The speed of Vivo helps us a lot to focus on the major things, saying, 'Okay, you will never be perfect. Make the best of what you can do within the given time frame.'"

On AI and Computational Photography

With AI now part of almost all mid-range and premium smartphones, handset makers are focusing on gallery-based AI enhancements that make pictures superior for everyday social posting and other use cases. But, as someone who has seen the evolution of traditional cameras, what has been the biggest change for cameras on the phone? Oliver smiles and responds, "I would say the biggest change is now on the algorithmic side, on the AI side, computational photography is opening completely new spaces in imaging that were not possible five years ago, and that is a dramatic change."

He added, "I really love the potential of the AI that is opening all these ways of creativity to the user. It's no longer traditional photography. You can do things with a smartphone. You cannot do with any traditional camera."

On being asked the classic question: 'Is this still a photo, or is this art, or is it something else?' He said, "The good thing is, we are opening both spaces with the phone. So, for those who want to express their creativity easily. AI helps in all aspects here. And if you say, No, I don't want this, you can go, for example, in the professional mode and set your own settings, from exposure to everything, and create your own image and not just save it as a JPEG, also as a raw image."

"If I had a wish for future generations of devices, it would be some kind of invisible marking in the images that gives you an indication of how strong AI was kicking in and improving the image so that you can decide on your own," he further added.

R&D and Matching Up to Vivo's Annual Update Cycle

Moving on to the R&D side of things, we wanted to understand how ZEISS match up to Vivo's speed of launching phones with camera upgrades every year.

Oliver talked about short-cycle improvements focused on refining details such as coatings, mechanics, and minor design tweaks for the current 12-month product. For example, the X300's blue glass element is an example of an integrated, non-visible improvement.

"In parallel, there are many activities that are not for the current generation of the phone, maybe for the next generation, or some generation after the next generation. So, longer running development projects they can take and not may they take more than 12 months," he explained.

Talking about R&D, Oliver said, "For several years, we have been observing that the camera technology is quite material, so we are now in a way of hard work, improving the details, improving optics, design, mechanics, coatings, everything to make every generation better.

"In the early days of smartphones, the image quality, the overall image quality, was quite poor. So bringing a new technology in that phase was pretty easy because the bar wasn't very high, and now the bar is so high. And if you have a new technology, this new technology must meet this high bar, right from the start, and that is extremely hard," he added.

Adding a bit of nostalgia, Oliver said the longest development time he experienced at ZEISS was 10 years for a single lens.

On the Definition of "Pro"

We are about to enter 2026, and the definition of Pro has changed lately, with handset makers using this moniker more often than ever. On being asked whether it is just a marketing gimmick, Oliver explains, "Pro is not a long list of features. So in pro it stands for professional. And what is a professional? Looking for a professional who wants a reliable tool. It must be reliable."

He continues, "It must work in a very stable way, in a reliable way, colour rendition, all these things, and also we were talking earlier about professional modes, giving you giving you the control of the device, that these are the things that make a tool for me, a professional, too."

Oliver further stressed that companies like ZEISS and Vivo prioritise reliability, as it trumps features in flagship optics.

Both the Vivo X300 and X300 Pro went on sale in India last week. We have already reviewed both, and the X300 is a pocket camera champ, while the X300 Pro is for pro users who do not want to compromise on the camera.