? The phone has definitely taken inspiration from iPhone in design; it has close resemblance to iPhone 7
? The front is a single glass with cuts for earpiece at the top and fingerprint sensor at the bottom. The two cameras and sensors are at the top
? The bezel is narrow with around 74% of body-to-screen ratio which is on par with competition
? The back is clean metal cover with only camera and flash at the back The antennas run along the top and bottom edges
? Micro USB port, speaker and audio jack are at the bottom, dual nano sim card tray is at the left and power & volume buttons at the right
? There are two backlit buttons on either sides of the fingerprint sensor
? The phone is comfortable to hold and has got premium looks overall
? 5.5 inch screen with 1920x1080 pixel resolution
? Marshmallow based OS
? Two nano simcards, both 4G with VoLTE
? Octacore 2.0GHz processor with Snapdragon 625 chipset, Adreno 506 GPU and 4GB RAM
? 64GB internal memory
? 16mpx at the back and 20mpx + 8mpx dual cameras at the front, back supporting 4K video
? Bluetooth v4.10, WiFi a/b/g/n/ac, Hotspot, FM
? GPS, GLONASS and BDS
? Fingerprint sensor, accelerometer, proximity sensor, gyro, compass
? Supports OTG
? Non-removable 3160mAh battery supporting quick charging
? The FunTouch OS 3.0 is based on Marshmallow and UI is very intuitive. It has got high resemblance to iOS in various areas like animation, design, icons, etc. There is no app drawer and apps are arranged in multiple homescreens. However, Vivo has done a nice job in fixing the right things at the right place in UI department
? Apps load pretty fast and the overall performance is very snappy
? Graphic-intensive games like Asphalt take longer time to load, but playing experience is good where no frames were missed and there was no lag
? The phone gets considerably warm on long gaming sessions, but at the same time it cools down quickly
? Call quality was comparable to other phones in the market
? A lot of apps come preloaded, but fortunately most of those can be uninstalled
? The phone features 5.5inch screen with 1920x1080p resolution
? Visibility under sun is fair if brightness is increased eventhough there is fairly good amount of reflection
? The screen has got good colour accuracy, blacks are deep, sharp text and rich colours. This makes it a good experience to watch movies
? Viewing angles are wide and it’s not ever a concern
? The screen takes in fingerprints. The touches are smooth & quick and sensitivity is excellent
? Eventhough the display has Corning Gorilla 4 protection, I suggest to install a good protector since it is cheaper to replace the protector than your phone display incase something goes wrong
? 3.5mm audio jack is at the bottom
? Speaker volume for notifications & alerts are loud. Sound effects for movies is just fine; but excellent with external speakers. There is a HiFi mode that enhances audio quality via headphones or external speakers
? There is only one speaker at the bottom. However apart from the need for loudness, I don’t see any point to have stereo speakers on a phone
? Eventhough the phone may process DTS or Dolby audio, 3.5mm audio jack or Bluetooth can only send out stereo sound which is a limitation of these two technologies. So in any way, the sound that could be output from the phone is either mono or stereo
? There is one 16mpx camera at the back and two cameras at the front- a 20mpx and another 8mpx camera
? The back camera produces good images in daylight. Colour reproduction is realistic. However, images are not much detailed which can be easily figured out if you zoom into the images
? Low light images have got too much of noise and the images lack sharpness
? The front camera shoots better selfies with excellent Bokeh effect where the background around you is blurred
? Eventhough images are well-detailed, colours are more balanced towards the white tone
? For selfies, there is Moonlight Glow flash that provides a more natural light in dark conditions and this works well
? Both cameras focus very fast and images are shot without any noticeable lag
? The back camera can capture 4K videos
? The 3160mAh battery easily powers the phone for a day on regular use. On a very intense test where I watched YouTube and audio streaming to car audio over Bluetooth with Google navigation on. The phone lasted well below 2 hours
? Charging speed is slow on quick-charge standards. The battery took around 40 minutes to charge from 0 to 50% and took nearly 2 hours for full charge
? There are two battery modes- Low Power Mode and Super Saver Mode. Super Saver mode can extend the life to more than 5 to 6 hours with 10% battery remaining
? The screen split feature helps in splitting the screen into two and run different aplllications- eg. Movies and Whatsapp
? The phone supports WiFi ac, which enables this to connect to ultrafast 5GHz WiFi signals. This is most useful if you live in an apartment among many other interfering WiFi signals that may cause poor reception of WiFi by your devices. A 5GHz WiFi signal causes less interference since it has got more channels
? The fingerprint sensor doubles up as home button as well
? There is an Eye Protection Mode where the screen colour and brightness is adjusted to reduce visual fatigue based on ambient conditions
? You can beam phone’s display to TVs and projectors using the WiFi Display feature
? If you enable App Encryption, you can protect your apps from unauthorised access including your photos
? Eventhough both SIMs support 4G, only one SIM can connect to 4G at a time, which can be swapped in settings as and when needed
? The phone supports GPS, Glonass and BeiDou which means your phone has more satellites available to fix your geo-position accurately. Phone need not struggle to find enough satellites evenif you are behind a building or a tree thus spending less battery
? Support to OTG helps to connect pendrives and external hard disks for direct data transfer
? There is support for Voice over LTE that enables making calls over 4G networks. This means you need not spend your voice call minutes for phone calls, instead can use your data
? The phone can memorise up to five fingerprints. You can also perform functions like take photo, attend a call, stop alarm, etc. using fingerprint gestures
? The fingerprint sensor is waterproof; so need not worry about wet hands
- After sales service & Warranty
? After sales service always invite trouble from Chinese manufacturers since their Service Centers always have a monopoly mindset. Since they know you can’t go anywhere else, customer-friendliness is quite unimportant for them
? As I learned drom their website, Haryana has the highest ’service center density’ and there are a few states like Goa where there is one or two centers only
? If within warranty, they will repair it free of cost. However if any part needs replacement ( for eg. display) , its sure to take around a month since the part has to come from China
? To avail warranty, you need to submit the invoice from Amazon which was sent to you along with the phone or this is available for download at Your Orders
? I am not a big fan of dual cameras at the front and lower spec camera at the back. In my way of usage, I use back camera frequently than selfie camera and would like a powerful back camera
? I prefer fingerprint sensor to be placed at the back since it is easier to use your index finger than thumb with reduced instances of reading error
? The built-in storage is 64GB which is more than enough with majority of users. But in case you are a movie buff and stores a lot of movies, expandible memory is the way around, which is lacking in V5 Plus
? The earphones that came with the phone did not impress me well when compared with other earphones I tried
? I would have been delighted if the phone had NFC. Usage of cashless money is going to be very popular and NFC devices may find its place in many establishments very soon
? The phone did not come with a USB Type-C port. Apart from the faster data transfer and ease of use of the pin, Type C supports extremely quick battery charging
? IR Blaster would have been a nice feature that would help to operate household devices with remote control
? Overall the OS and UI experience is smooth and breezy
? Eventhough the phone has got good camera, other specs are lower in comparison with similar phones. However, it’s specs does not make it a poor performing phone either for regular users
? This is a good multimedia device with the good display and earphones connected
? Eventhough it lacks features like NFC, IR and USB Type C, I don’t see these as deal breakers since these functions may not find extensive use
? Comparing the spec with similar phones, it is clear that Vivo has spent more money on the camera than other hardware
? Considering the price tag and comparing with similar phones, I rate THREE stars. I would not spend this much money just for a stunning front camera. I would have rated more stars if such a dual camera was at the back