No more gatekeeping
Right after announcing its Vivo X300 series of 2026 flagship phones, Vivo has shared another piece of good news. No longer will international Vivo fans have to suffer through its previous Funtouch OS, as Vivo is now rolling out the international version of OriginOS 6.
For non-followers of Vivo, you can see its previous Funtouch OS in action in our many past pieces of Vivo coverage, where we reviewed or experienced the old UI in hands-on experiences (Vivo X Fold 5, Vivo V60, Vivo V50, Vivo 40).
Vivo did share quite a bit about OriginOS 6 during the X300 series keynote, but it was addressing the Mainland Chinese market since its users are much more familiar with the operating system. But, for international users like ourselves, the difference feels much bigger because OriginOS 6 is the better-equipped OS of the two.
Our OriginOS 6 preview is based on a beta version provided to us by Vivo before the official OriginOS 6 announcement. Your user experience may vary from our testing experience.
Are there any differences between this international OriginOS 6 and the old Funtouch OS?
OriginOS 6, left is international version, right is Chinese version.
Photo: HWZ
If you are a stickler for intuitive UI, good design and colours, and sensible menu flows, then Vivo’s global version of OriginOS 6 matters. If you’re familiar with Funtouch OS, you will recall how some of the menus and settings feel a little bare, because it doesn’t offer deeply granular controls like most Android handsets and their respective UIs.
OriginOS 6 has none of those problems: it’s a very mature UI, and you can immediately tell them apart once you comb through its pull-down menu and Settings app.
The biggest visual difference is the mature design language of OriginOS 6, which eschewed the juvenile theme of Funtouch OS.
Why don’t you just use a Chinese OriginOS 6 then?
That’s because the global version of OriginOS 6 has important preloaded and optimised software components that make the phone work better in an international context.
As mentioned, our hands-on experience with the Vivo X300 Pro was on the Mainland Chinese version of OriginOS 6. It is notably not the same global OriginOS 6 preview we were testing on our loaned Vivo X200 FE.
