Chinese smartphone company Vivo unveiled its upgraded, self-designed V3 imaging chip as part of its broader push to hone technological prowess and stand out amid intensified competition.

The V3 chip, which adopts a 6 nanometer process, came after Vivo secured the top position in the Chinese smartphone market in the second quarter of this year, despite overall market decline.

Yu Meng, vice-president of imaging at Vivo, said: "At Vivo, we are committed to advancing 'human-centric professional imaging'. To this end, we have continuously enhanced our expertise across optics, computing and algorithm foundations to build imaging capabilities comparable to professional photography equipment."

According to him, the company aims to deliver the user experience of recreating what the human eye can see and make professional-grade imaging capabilities more accessible for everyone.

The latest V3 chip features a newly designed multi-concurrent AI-ISP architecture and second-generation Frame Info Tunneling (FIT) technology, which Vivo said delivers a better user experience by enabling 4K cinema-like bokeh, the aesthetic quality of the blur produced in the out-of-focus parts of an image produced by a lens.

Meanwhile, V3 also helps deliver automatic subject focus detection and switching, cinema-like skin optimization, and cinematic color processing. This makes Vivo the first Android phone maker to enable 4K cinema-quality portrait video with post-processing functions.

The company also launched the Vivo Origin Imaging Engine (VOIE), which enhances image quality, color, tone and computing functionality.

Collaborating with Zeiss, a German optics company, Vivo announced a periscope lens design with the new "Vario-Apo-Sonnar" standards, providing high-performance zoom quality and macro shooting capabilities.

The latest data from market research company Canalys showed that Vivo was the top smartphone vendor in China in terms of shipments in the second quarter of this year with a market share of 18 percent.

In that time frame, the overall shipment volume of China's smartphone market was approximately 64.3 million units, with a 5 percent year-on-year decline.