24x Optical Zoom on an iPhone, Balanced Like a DSLR. REEFLEX’s 600mm Lens Is Brilliantly Absurd.

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Zoom has won. Of all the specs that used to dominate camera phone conversations, optical reach is the one that stuck because it is the most visible and the most immediately felt. At any major live event, the phones come out and the zoom wars begin. Samsung loyalists will have their periscope lenses trained on the far end of the pitch. iPhone users will be framing tight, stable shots of the stage from the back row. FIFA 2026 is nearly here, and across dozens of stadiums and billions of shared clips, zoom will quietly be the deciding factor in whether those memories look spectacular or just… small.

REEFLEX built the Ultra Telephoto 300-600mm for people who refuse to settle for small. Attaching to the telephoto camera of iPhone 17 Pro, Pro Max, and the Samsung S26 Ultra series, the lens compounds the phone’s native optical strength and extends it into a focal range, up to 600mm and 24x magnification, that genuinely belongs to another category of photography entirely.

Designer: REEFLEX

Click Here to Buy Now: $302 $441 (32% off) Hurry! Only 10 of 180 left. Raised over $640,000

Most clip-on telephoto lenses grow forward in a long tube that looks great in renders but becomes a liability the moment you try to hold your phone steady. The weight pulls forward, the center of gravity shifts away from your grip, and at long focal lengths, that imbalance shows up as jitter in video and smeared detail in stills. REEFLEX went wide instead of long, packing everything into a compact cylinder that keeps the mass directly over your hand. Your wrist stays neutral, your grip stays firm, and the setup feels closer to holding a DSLR than balancing a makeshift telescope. That distinction matters enormously once you’re standing in a stadium trying to track a fast-moving subject.

Machined from aerospace-grade aluminum, the body weighs 308 grams and holds its optical tolerances without adding unnecessary bulk. The glass inside is lanthanum, a material chosen specifically for its high refractive index. In practical terms, that means sharper resolving power, richer contrast, and far less color fringing along edges than standard glass can manage at these focal lengths. The optical formula runs four elements, one doublet and three singlets, tuned to work with the tetraprism telephoto cameras in current flagship phones rather than fighting against their characteristics. The matte black finish, the green accent ring around the barrel, and the large front element all contribute to something that looks and feels like a deliberate optical instrument.

REEFLEX designed this lens specifically for the tetraprism telephoto systems introduced in the iPhone 17 Pro lineup and Samsung’s S26 Ultra series. Those cameras already deliver impressive native zoom performance, and the Ultra Telephoto 300-600mm takes that foundation and multiplies it. On iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max, you get 24x magnification and a 600mm equivalent focal length. On Samsung S26, S25, and S24 Ultra, magnification reaches 30x with an equivalent focal length stretching to 660mm. For context, that is the kind of reach wildlife photographers use to capture birds without disturbing them, the kind of compression architectural photographers rely on to isolate distant details, and the kind of range that makes concerts and sports events feel immersive rather than distant.

The lens mounts via a standard 17mm threaded connection that attaches to REEFLEX’s dedicated phone cases, which feature an integrated camera bumper designed to align perfectly with your phone’s telephoto lens. The threading ensures a secure, wobble-free connection, and the whole assembly stays compact enough to slip into a jacket pocket or small camera bag. REEFLEX also built in compatibility with their ReeMag magnetic accessory system, so you can stack filters, attach lens caps, and expand your creative toolkit without needing adapters or workarounds.

FIFA 2026 will be the first time many people realize just how limiting their phone’s native zoom really is. Sitting in the stands, even a few rows back from the pitch, most phone cameras will reduce the action to distant, flat shapes. The Ultra Telephoto 300-600mm changes that equation completely. You can isolate a player’s expression during a penalty kick, compress the depth of the field into a cinematic frame, and capture moments with the kind of detail that looks deliberately composed rather than accidentally caught. The same logic applies to concerts, where the stage often sits 50 meters or more from general admission, and wildlife, where getting close means ruining the shot.

The focus range starts at 6.8 meters and extends to infinity, which means you can use this lens for everything from isolating architectural details across a plaza to capturing the moon with surprising clarity. The lanthanum glass keeps distortion minimal and sharpness high even at the edges of the frame, and the compact form factor means you can shoot handheld without needing a tripod or gimbal for stability.

The Standard tier comes with the Ultra Telephoto 300-600mm lens and a phone case for $302, against a retail price of $441. The Ultra Tele + Super Tele Bundle adds the Super Telephoto 240mm and both macro add-ons (200mm and 300mm) alongside a phone case for $568, down from $849. The full Reeflex Ultra Set at $1859 (retail $2883) covers ten lenses spanning fisheye to ultra telephoto, a complete filter collection including fixed NDs from ND8 to ND64, variable NDs, a polarizer, and a black mist filter, plus filter adapters, a waterproof impact-resistant hard case, and a phone case.

Case options vary by device. iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max users choose between Tech-Woven MagSafe or Leather MagSafe. iPhone 16, 15, and 14 Pro and Pro Max receive the Leather MagSafe version. Samsung S26, S25, S24, and S23 Ultra users get a Carbon case. Shipping begins June 2026, completing by early July.

Click Here to Buy Now: $302 $441 (32% off) Hurry! Only 10 of 180 left. Raised over $640,000

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This $89 Retro Radio Made My Smart Speaker Feel Weirdly Useless

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There was a time when the radio on the kitchen shelf meant something. Not just background noise – a presence. Something with weight and warmth, a dial that clicked with intention, a speaker that made the morning feel like it had a score. Then it disappeared. We outsourced listening to our phones, our earbuds, our smart speakers that go silent the moment the Wi-Fi drops or the power cuts. Our devices got smarter, but also more fragile. More connected, but less self-sufficient.

The result is a strange kind of ambient helplessness. Beautiful, optimized, perpetually connected – until nothing works. That’s what makes the RetroWave 7-in-1 Radio so quietly compelling. It doesn’t just revive the visual language of a classic Japanese radio. It restores something modern gadgets gave up without asking: the reassurance of an object that works when conditions aren’t perfect and takes away the decision fatigue of ‘choosing’ every single music you play.

The Radio That Changed How I Think About “Essential”

At first, I thought the RetroWave Radio was mostly a design piece. A handsome retro object with a tactile tuning dial and enough character to earn a shelf. But after a few weeks, I realized it had rearranged things I hadn’t expected.

The Bluetooth stream replaced my phone speaker and sounded better. The FM dial came back into rotation, and tuning a signal by hand felt more deliberate than tapping a playlist. Then the power went out during a weekend storm. The radio kept going. The hand crank charged my phone enough to send a message. The LED flashlight handled the kitchen. The SOS alarm stayed ready in the background, doing nothing, which was exactly what I needed it to do.

It hadn’t added a function to my shelf. It had closed a gap I didn’t know I was living with.

Close-up of a black device with a circular dial labeled 'LIGHTING' and small red/green indicators, beside a beige panel that says 'RELAX'.

Built Beautiful. Built Smart.

  • 7-in-1 functionality: Works as a speaker, MP3 player, radio, flashlight, clock, power bank, and SOS siren in one compact form.
  • Bluetooth + MP3 playback: Stream from your phone or play directly from USB and microSD when you want to go offline.
  • FM/AM/SW radio: Tune into local broadcasts, international news, or analog stations without needing the internet.
  • Emergency-ready power: Recharge by hand-crank or solar panel when outlets are unavailable.
  • Built-in flashlight and SOS alarm: Designed for blackouts, storm prep, roadside stops, and unexpected moments.
  • Phone charging on the go: The 2000mAh battery gives your essentials a boost when you need it most.
  • Compact but capable: Lightweight enough to pack, yet powerful enough for up to 20 hours of radio time or 6 hours of emergency lighting.

This isn’t multi-functionality for the sake of a spec sheet. Each function earns its place.

Close-up of a vintage black radio with a charging cable plugged into a smartphone displaying 14:40 on its screen.

Close-up of a vintage beige control panel with four small knobs and a 'RELAX' label on a glossy black device.

Why Reliability Feels Like a Luxury Now

We tend to assume the future belongs to smarter devices. But smart has started to feel fragile. Speakers that go silent without internet. Phones that drain at the worst moment. Tools that work beautifully right up until they’re actually needed.

The RetroWave Radio offers a different kind of progress. Not rooted in constant connectivity, but in self-sufficiency. It gives you music when you want ambiance, information when you need updates, and power when everything else starts running low. The best emergency tool is the one that’s already out – living on your shelf, earning its place every day, so it’s there without thinking when things get difficult.

Person holds a small black portable device with a side vent and attached nozzle, held in two hands.

Design That Reflects Resilience

This isn’t a radio that begs for attention. The retro Japanese-inspired silhouette is balanced and resolved – compact without feeling cheap, characterful without demanding notice. The tuning dial has genuine tactile feedback, the kind touchscreens never replicate. The proportions feel considered. The soft glow of the interface gives it a quiet presence that works as naturally on a nightstand as it does in an emergency kit. It looks dependable before you even turn it on.

A vintage portable radio sits on a shelf between a black toy car and a square speaker with a white disc on the right of the image.

Who It’s For

  • Design Lovers

A functional object with enough character to live proudly on display.

  • For Users Who Are Always Prepared

A practical companion for blackouts, storms, travel, and emergency kits.

  • Minimalists on the Move

Seven useful functions in one compact device that actually earns the space it takes up.

Close-up of a hand turning the orange dial on a car stereo/dashboard.

The Quiet Power of Owning Fewer Things That Give You Freedom

You don’t realize how many modern tools depend on ideal conditions until the power cuts, the signal drops, or you simply want something that works without asking much in return. That’s what the RetroWave 7-in-1 Radio gets so right. It doesn’t just entertain. It reassures.

And maybe that’s why it feels so current. Not because it looks back, but because it solves for the kind of uncertainty modern gadgets tend to ignore. In a world full of devices that stop being useful the moment things go wrong, this one keeps earning its place. The RetroWave 7-in-1 Radio is available now for $89.

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This Futuristic 3D-Printed Shoe Started as a Clay Sculpture

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Yanko Design’s Design Mindset podcast continues to carve out a thoughtful space for conversations around creativity, innovation, and the ideas shaping the future of design. Now at Episode 22, the weekly podcast is steadily building a strong voice of its own by focusing not just on finished products, but on the processes, philosophies, and experiments behind them. Powered by Zawa, this latest episode turns its attention to a fascinating tension in contemporary design: as AI becomes more embedded in creative workflows, where does human originality begin, and what happens when the most forward-looking idea starts with something as ancient as clay?

That question drives host Radhika Seth’s conversation with Ben Weiss, CEO of Syntilay, a company already known for pushing footwear into unfamiliar territory through AI, 3D printing, and custom-fit production. In this episode, Weiss unpacks the making of the Skin shoe, a project that began with artist Sebastian ErraZuriz sculpting directly around his foot before the form was scanned, translated, and turned into wearable footwear. The result is not just a new shoe, but a new argument for how design can begin, who gets to author it, and why technology may be most powerful when it supports human expression rather than replacing it.

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Starting with Clay Instead of Software

The most striking part of the Skin shoe story is that it did not begin with a digital tool, a design brief, or a manufacturing constraint. It began with clay in the hands of an artist, and for Ben Weiss, that starting point changed everything about the outcome. As he explains, “People kept asking us, why start with clay? Why not just open a design software and begin, you know, kind of like the typical path for making shoes. And the answer is because a computer has an idea and some predetermined steps. But when you start with an art form, it’s entirely original.” That distinction becomes the foundation of the entire episode.

Weiss makes it clear that the goal was not simply to make a shoe in an unusual way. It was to let an artist enter footwear authentically, using his own medium and instincts instead of adapting to the usual industrial process. Sebastian ErraZuriz sculpted around his own foot in a w†ay that was, as Weiss describes it, “very free flowing,” with no predetermined expectations about what a shoe should look like. That is also why the final product feels less like a sneaker and more like something anatomical, intimate, and expressive, a piece of wearable sculpture rather than a conventional consumer product.

Turning Sculpture into a Wearable, Custom Fit Shoe

Once the clay sculpture was complete, Syntilay had to solve the difficult problem of turning a tactile, hand-made object into something that could actually be worn. Weiss acknowledges that some detail is always at risk in the translation from physical object to digital file, but preserving the original character of the sculpture was a key priority throughout. “Cause you lose some detailing, but you know you try to capture it as best as you can,” he says, before noting that the final printed shoe still retains much of the fine surface texture and hand-made quality of the original piece.

What makes the process especially interesting is that the artistic form is largely preserved on the outside, while most of the personalization happens on the inside. Using more than 5,000 data points captured from a phone scan or in-person fitting, Syntilay adjusts the internal geometry of the shoe to fit each customer’s foot without distorting the sculpture itself. Weiss explains, “The key is is not changing the outside structure that much so it distorts what the shoe looks like. In this case, what this piece of art looks like on your feet, um, and while also providing a good fit experience. So most of the changes are happening on the inside.” That balance between fidelity and function is what allows the shoe to remain art-led while still being wearable.

Ben Weiss on AI, Human Craft, and What Innovation Actually Means

Although the episode title sets up a contrast between clay and AI, Weiss is not arguing against technology. His view is more layered, and more useful, because he sees AI as a tool that can support creativity without becoming the sole source of it. “AI is going to be a great augmenter, um, maybe that’s not the best word, but a great kind of helper for humans,” he says. He goes on to describe a future in which designers sometimes use tools, sometimes choose not to, and build workflows based on what makes the most sense for the idea rather than on ideology alone.

That mindset also shapes how Syntilay positions itself as a brand. Weiss points out that the company has already explored highly automated footwear, but the Skin shoe takes the opposite route by placing the human hand at the very beginning of the process. For him, the bigger point is experimentation. Footwear, he argues, has become too comfortable with minor updates, surface-level collaborations, and familiar formulas. His response is blunt and memorable: “A lot of collaborations today are new embroidery on the shoe, different colors. It’s nice, But like when you can take an actual clay sculpture that somebody made around their foot and make it something you can wear. I mean that’s next level.” Innovation, in this framing, is not about choosing between AI and craft, but about creating conditions for truly new ideas to emerge.

Storytelling, Authorship, and Why the Human Element Still Matters

One of the strongest ideas in the conversation is that the Skin shoe is not just a design object, but a story that could only exist because of its human origin. Weiss sees that as increasingly important in a design landscape crowded with AI-generated outputs and endless visual sameness. “The story of the skin shoe is is a great story,” he says, pointing to the way Syntilay documents the journey from clay sculpture to 3D file to finished shoe. For him, storytelling is not decoration added after the fact, but a core part of how a product communicates meaning and builds resonance with people.

That same human-first logic also shapes how Weiss thinks about authorship. When asked who designed the shoe, he resists reducing it to one name, instead crediting both Sebastian, who created the sculpture, and Pablo, who translated the scan into a printable product. “So I would say it’s designed by two people,” he says, acknowledging that the future of artist-led footwear may depend on this kind of collaboration between conceptual creator and technical designer. He also notes that stories like these matter because they cannot simply be fabricated by a machine, adding that “storytelling is is a really significant moat because there are some stories that AI can just doesn’t have.” In other words, the human element is not just visible in the object, but embedded in the narrative around it.

Joe Foster’s Influence and Ben Weiss’s Bigger Design Philosophy

Another compelling layer in the episode is Weiss’s reflection on working with Joe Foster, Reebok’s cofounder, whose decades of experience have shaped the way Syntilay thinks about product. Weiss describes Foster as someone who still approaches design with energy, curiosity, and a strong belief that the work should remain enjoyable. But the deeper lesson comes from Foster’s idea of “vis tech,” or visible technology, the principle that innovation should not be hidden beneath the surface. Customers should be able to look at a product and immediately understand that it is doing something different. That philosophy clearly runs through Syntilay’s work, from the pod-based structure of other models to the unmistakably sculptural silhouette of Skin.

Weiss also shares a broader set of lessons that go beyond this one project. He admits that early on, he had not fully figured out how to optimize footwear for printing cost while balancing comfort, and that learning came through iteration rather than certainty. He is equally clear about what AI companies often get wrong when entering established creative fields, saying the most common mistake is “losing the authenticity and respecting the people that come before you.” Still, his most revealing line comes near the end of the episode, when he is asked to define the future of design. His answer is simple and sharp: “It’s about giving people more opportunities to design.” That may be the clearest summary of both the Skin shoe and Syntilay’s larger ambition, opening the category to artists, creators, and new forms of authorship that conventional design systems have historically left out.

Design Mindset drops every week on Yanko Design. Catch Episode 22 in full wherever you listen to podcasts.

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Lofree Just Made the Most Eye-Candy Mechanical Keyboard of 2026 and It’s Inspired by Lipstick

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Your desk says something about you before you ever open your mouth. The monitor, the mug, the little objects arranged around your keyboard, they all add up to a portrait. And the keyboard sits dead center in that portrait, the most touched, most visible, most personal object in the whole setup. So why do most of them look like they were designed by someone who has never once cared about how a workspace feels?

Lofree has been answering that question for years, building a catalog around the idea that a keyboard can carry genuine personality. The Lipstick is where that philosophy gets its boldest, most unapologetic expression yet. Five lipstick shades flowing across the keycaps in a deliberate ombre gradient, a sculptural lipstick-bullet ESC key rising from its cradle, and a gorgeous frosted transparent shell that puts the whole color story on display like jewelry in a glass case. It retails for $199 and is available now in Silver and Black directly from Lofree.

Designer: Lofree

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Never did I think the overlap between beauty and keyboards would exist so seamlessly. Lofree used dual-tone PBT keycaps to create that mystique that is each and every key, with a frosted outer shell revealing the hint of a hue underneath. Lofree didn’t scatter five themed shades arbitrarily across 84 keys. They sequenced them, running deep burgundy and wine tones from the left and right of the board through warm coral and brick red across the QWERTY row, then lightening into blush pink and dusty mauve as you move into the function row. The result reads like a makeup palette laid flat across your desk, a color story with a beginning, a middle, and an end. The keys on the extreme left and right (Tab, Caps Lock, Shift, Enter) are single-tone, giving you a direct look at the color while the rest of the row looks like actual samples of lipstick or nail paint that you’d feel like popping out to test. Pair this with the nail-job on your actual hands and you’ve got absolute art at work.

Lofree’s rounded, typewriter-inspired keycap profile has been a house signature since the original Block, and the Lipstick leans into it fully. That retro shape is clever because it mimics the cylindrical form of a lipstick tube at a miniature scale, which means the thematic reference lands in three dimensions rather than just through color. The ESC key pushes that logic to its natural conclusion, a fully sculpted lipstick bullet in matte red, sitting upright in a black cradle in the top left corner of the board. It physically protrudes above the surrounding keys, and when you see it in person, it has the quality of a very good joke told with a completely straight face. Clever without being loud about it.

Under all of that, Lofree built a proper enthusiast keyboard. The Lipstick runs Lofree x Gateron linear switches with a 40g actuation force, hot-swappable and compatible with both 3-pin and 5-pin configurations, so you can retune the typing feel whenever you want without touching a soldering iron. A gasket mount structure absorbs the hard edges out of each keystroke, softening the acoustics and adding a slight cushioned rebound that makes extended typing sessions noticeably more comfortable than a standard tray mount board. The 1000Hz polling rate over both 2.4GHz wireless and USB-C wired connections keeps response times sharp, and a 4000mAh battery delivers up to 14 days of use with the backlight off, or 30 hours with all seven lighting effects running. The keys aren’t individually backlit, which is what you’d expect with dual-tone PBT caps, but rather the space between the keys lights up, giving you a look at the keyboard’s outline. Bluetooth 5.3 handles up to three paired devices simultaneously, with seamless switching across macOS, Windows, iOS, and Android.

Lofree also makes a matching Lipstick Wireless Numpad that carries the same gradient keycaps and frosted shell, available separately for anyone who wants the full spread across their desk. It connects via the same tri-mode system, so the two sit together without any friction. At $199 for the keyboard, the Lipstick sits at a price point where the spec sheet fully justifies the ask, and the design justifies everything else.

Click Here to Buy Now

The post Lofree Just Made the Most Eye-Candy Mechanical Keyboard of 2026 and It’s Inspired by Lipstick first appeared on Yanko Design.

BYD’s Boxy Off-Road Brand Just Built an ‘Anti-Minimalist’ 1,000-HP Supercar

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Rest in peace, minimalism. You were hated with a vengeance by every car owner forced to jab at a touchscreen just to change the AC. After years of dashboards flattening into glossy digital panes, Fang Cheng Bao’s Formula X swings the pendulum back with a cockpit full of physical mechanical buttons, a retractable steering wheel, integrated sport seats, and four-point harnesses that make driving feel tactile again. The formula is not complicated. Give the driver something real to touch.

Fang Cheng Bao, a BYD marque introduced in 2023 with rugged body-on-frame SUVs like the Bao 5, unveiled the Formula X at the 2026 Beijing Auto Show as the centerpiece of a new Formula sub-range that also includes the brand’s first-ever sedans. The supercar’s wraparound “battle cockpit” suggests a fresh design appetite for interfaces with texture, theater, and presence. General Manager Xiong Tianbo described the interior direction as “an all-new sporty intelligent cabin,” which undersells it considerably. The Formula X positions itself as the halo above a family of Formula S sedans Fang Cheng Bao also revealed in Beijing. Where the Bao series asked what an off-road SUV could be, the Formula X asks what an EV cockpit should feel like, and it answers with buttons.

Designer: Fang Cheng Bao

“Fangchengbao” translates directly to “formula leopard,” a name loaded with speed and precision that spent its first three years attached to body-on-frame off-road SUVs built on a proprietary platform called the DMO, or Dual Mode Off-road. The Bao 5 launched in late 2023 as a premium PHEV SUV roughly the size of a Land Rover Defender, followed by the larger Bao 8. Both vehicles were credible, capable, and about as far from supercar territory as a product can get. Fang Cheng Bao’s monthly sales were already growing over 200% year-on-year in early 2026, which means the brand pivoted from momentum, not desperation. The Formula X is Fang Cheng Bao finally catching up to its own name.

Sitting ankle-low to the ground, the Formula X presents a roofless carbon-fiber body that looks like someone stretched a predator’s silhouette over a racing tub. Six airflow channels and 19 vent openings distribute active aerodynamics across the exterior, giving the bodywork a technical density that reads as sculpture before it reads as engineering. The “Fengbao Eye” headlights up front and the Infinity Ring taillights at the rear establish a lighting signature Fang Cheng Bao is clearly positioning as the visual cornerstone of its new Formula design language. Doors open in a gull-wing and scissor configuration, the kind of theatrical entry ritual that turns a parking lot into a performance. A tri-motor setup delivers a combined 1,000 hp and 1,000 Nm of torque, numbers that once defined hypercar territory and now apparently define a production-intent show car from Shenzhen.

The wraparound “battle cockpit” ditches the screen-centric serenity of most EV flagships in favor of physical mechanical buttons, a retractable steering wheel, integrated sports seats with four-point racing harnesses, and a grey and green color scheme that feels like someone took a Le Mans prototype and gave it a luxury fit-out. The retractable steering wheel transforms a static interior element into a kinetic ritual, revealing itself on demand and making the act of sitting down feel ceremonial. Physical controls here signal that the driver’s hands, not a menu tree buried behind glass, are the primary interface. The four-point harnesses make the cabin feel shaped around a body in motion rather than around a pair of eyes pointed at a screen. This is a cockpit that demands physical participation, and that distinction carries real weight in 2026.

Spotify’s 20th anniversary rebrand traded flat iconography for a more dimensional, texturally rich visual identity, and it landed as a cultural signal because it captured something design had been quietly renegotiating for years. Minimalism, in its strictest form, conflated sophistication with invisibility, training users to expect interfaces that disappear rather than engage. On the automotive side, Jony Ive’s work with Ferrari on its interior direction has pointed the same way, moving back toward tactile driver-focused experiences and away from touchscreen dominance. What these moves share is a rediscovery of depth, texture, and physical legibility as luxury signals rather than signs of technological regression. The Formula X’s cockpit belongs squarely in that conversation, and the fact that it arrives from a brand that was selling off-road SUVs three years ago makes it a sharper cultural data point.

BYD confirmed the Formula X carries approximately 80% of the show car’s design into production, with a market launch targeted for 2027. I’m inclined to believe the cockpit philosophy survives even if some of the carbon theater gets value-engineered on the way to the factory floor. Read the Formula X alongside the Formula S sedans Fang Cheng Bao also unveiled in Beijing, and a consistent brand identity emerges: tactile, expressive, and built on the premise that premium design should communicate through form rather than through its own disappearance. The brand spent three years perfecting the capable, rugged SUV, then used a single auto show to rewrite what “formula leopard” was always supposed to mean. Shenzhen now has a supercar, and it came loaded with buttons.

The post BYD’s Boxy Off-Road Brand Just Built an ‘Anti-Minimalist’ 1,000-HP Supercar first appeared on Yanko Design.

Oppo and Vivo Are Both Building Gimbal Cameras To Take On DJI’s Osmo Pocket Series

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Somewhere inside BBK Electronics, two product teams are independently building the same camera. Oppo has a pocket gimbal codenamed “Fuyao” in development. Vivo has the “Vivo Pocket,” reportedly fitted with a 200MP Sony sensor, headed for a late 2026 launch. Whether BBK’s leadership views this as healthy internal competition or an organizational blind spot depends entirely on your read of how the conglomerate actually operates. What’s undeniable is that both devices are aimed squarely at the same target: DJI’s Osmo Pocket series, the device that has owned the pocket gimbal category for years.

The timing, whether coordinated or coincidental, lands at a genuinely vulnerable moment for DJI. Regulatory pressure in the US has made retailers and creators skittish about long-term investment in the DJI ecosystem, and Insta360, the most credible challenger until now, is going aggressively upmarket with its Leica-partnered Luna Ultra. That leaves a real gap in the premium-but-accessible bracket, and BBK, intentionally or otherwise, has two horses racing toward exactly that gap simultaneously.

Designers: Oppo & Vivo

AI Representational Concept

Oppo’s Fuyao centers on a 3-axis stabilized gimbal in a compact form factor, with the brand leaning heavily on its AI-driven video computational technology to bridge the gap between high-end smartphone imaging and dedicated vlogging hardware. That’s a credible pitch. Oppo’s Find X9 Ultra stuffed two 200MP cameras and a sophisticated computational pipeline into a phone chassis, so the engineering muscle is demonstrably there. The question is whether that expertise translates cleanly when the form factor constraints change and the buyer’s expectations are shaped by years of DJI’s famously polished shooting experience.

Vivo is taking a more overtly spec-aggressive approach, with its prototype packing a 1/1.1-inch Sony LYT-901 sensor capable of 200MP stills, a significant departure from the current gimbal camera standard of 1-inch sensors with lower megapixel counts. That sensor is the same one powering Vivo’s current flagship phones, which means the lossless zoom headroom and low-light performance should be genuinely competitive. Vivo is targeting DJI-level hardware quality, suggesting a premium build rather than a budget-friendly entry point, and content creators are reportedly already getting early units for testing.

The deeper strategic story here is what BBK is actually betting on. DJI’s regulatory headaches in the US aren’t going away quietly, and Insta360’s Luna Ultra, co-developed with Leica and priced accordingly, is drifting toward a buyer profile that everyday creators can’t comfortably afford. That middle ground, premium imaging credentials at a price that doesn’t require a business justification, is exactly where Oppo and Vivo are parking. Whether BBK planned this pincer movement or stumbled into it, the instinct is sound. The execution is all that’s left to prove.

The post Oppo and Vivo Are Both Building Gimbal Cameras To Take On DJI’s Osmo Pocket Series first appeared on Yanko Design.