We’ve seen many smartphones having the Dual Cameras on the back. But here Vivo tried to do something different with their Vivo V5 Plus by having Dual Cameras on the front. It’s the successor to the earlier launched Vivo V5. But is it any better than the Vivo V5 at a whopping price of Rs 28,980? Let’s find out in the full review.
DESIGN
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Taking out of the box, the Vivo V5 will look like an iPhone 7. To be honest, yes it is but what makes it different from others is that this designs adds up a premium feel to the device. The antenna lines along the edges look slick, and the 7.26mm profile and the narrow bezels make it a very slim and ergonomic smartphone. At less than 160 grams, it is quite light and feels great in the hand.
If we take a look at the right side of the device, you’ll find the same volume rockers and the power button whereas to the left we have our Sim tray slot which also doubles up for microSD as well. Taking a look at the bottom we have the speaker grills, standard USB port, and a 3.5mm audio jack. Having a look at the front, we get the home button which doubles up as a fingerprint sensor as well. On the front top, we get the Dual-Lens cameras along with the speaker grill and Proximity & Ambient sensors. Turning the phone around, we get the iPhone 7 look as usual and then the rear camera with the flash beside and the Vivo branding below that.
This design is actually much better than the one on V5, but not better than the V3 or the V3 Max. But yeah, the V5 Plus is actually not that much durable like V3 as well. Scratches and dents are expected very easily on this one. So the overall design isn’t the best but yeah at the same time it isn’t bad at all.
DISPLAY
The Vivo V5 Plus sports a 5.5-inches Full HD (1080p) IPS LCD display with a pixel density of 401ppi. The screen is protected with a Corning Gorilla Glass 5 protection which was completely unexpected anyways.
The display is quite bright under the sun as well and you may have to make a little bit strain on your eyes. It is quite vivid and beautiful indoors. The colors are rich, blacks are good. So, I’ve not much there to complain or like about the display except the 2.5D curved glass. Yeah, I love that glass, 3D glass moreover.
At overall, the display is quite good. Just like other devices that we find in the market at that price point.
PERFORMANCE
Here comes the worst part about this phone. The phone runs on the Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 625 chipset which is available on the devices below Rs. 10,000. If we keep that apart the phone boasts a 4 GB of RAM out of which you’ll be able to use only around 2 GB. The phone comes with a 64 GB of internal memory which is good.
The problem arises with the Snapdragon 625 processor with Adreno 506 GPU and the 4 GB of RAM. They’ve optimized the performance a lot by just doing a small trick here with the OS. Once you start using the apps, the apps keep running in the background and fill up the 2 GB of RAM easily and thus the device starts hiccups or might restart completely. You need to either close the apps in the multi-tasking window or wait for the device to restart. In case if you close the apps in the background, you won’t receive any push notifications at all except the ones that come pre-installed on the device itself. There were network issues as well with every new update. It even scored 62,450 on Antutu Benchmark
The performance was really bad than I expected even like it wasn’t able to handle a small casual game which was handled by V3 and V5 easily. I don’t what to say about that but I guess Vivo tried to make a leap back from its own predecessors only. I was really disappointed with the performance here.
SOFTWARE
It’s good ol’ Marshmallow running on the Vivo V5 Plus, but you won’t be able to tell, really. The interface is so iOS-like, you’ll need a double-take to make sure you’re not actually holding an iPhone. That includes icon designs, too – Vivo’s been going down the path of emulating Apple’s mobile OS, but it’s now gotten to a point where it’s more of a full-on copy and paste affair. I don’t know what is Vivo trying to achieve by coming up with a design and OS being copied from Apple.
Apart from that, the Funtouch OS is a bit confusing in the beginning for a new user but once getting used to it, it’s like a child’s play. The Funtouch OS include some extra features like Eye Protection, Smart Motion, Smart Split, One-Handed mode, Smart Click and much more.
Apart from those things, I still like the Funtouch OS, it’s better than the Color OS on Oppo or the Vibe UI on Lenovo. In overall, I do like the software but it’s not the best although, I prefer MIUI moreover than this and as always stock Android is my personal preference and then the place goes for TouchWiz UI (not the old one but the one on Galaxy S and the Note series).
CAMERA
The camera is the only segment where the phone stands out. The 16 MP camera is just outstanding. I love the rear camera on this phone. The colors are a little bit saturated and look great. They autofocus is not bad as well. It doesn’t work every time. But when it works, it takes some awesome shots just like a DSLR.
Wait! I guess I’m missing something. Yeah! the 20 MP Dual-Front Cameras. That’s the thing that Vivo is trying to market more than anything. To be honest, I don’t think there’s a use of the second camera. Vivo calls that it’s used to make a bokeh effect over the background to make your subject stand out. And in my testing, I didn’t found that the selfies do come out to be good. But, the bokeh effect was done by the software, not the camera. And that makes me say that there’s a fake bokeh effect. Other than that, I do like the selfies that came out with the 20 MP dual front cameras. The images were good and bright even in very dim lighting. And I agree with how Vivo markets it as the best selfie smartphone.
To get a better on how the images look, take a look at the images down below:
Rear Camera
Front Camera
BATTERY
Apart from the camera, the battery is the place where the Vivo V5 Plus does a better job. The V5 Plus comes with a Non-removable Li-Ion 3,160 mAh battery. According to me, the battery backup is really average. It gives me around 12 to 18 hours of usage time. And the only thing that impressed me with the battery was the “Dual-Engine Quick Charge” which is pretty much close to Dash Charge. It took nearly an hour to charge up the phone from 0% to 100%.
VERDICT
If you consider the price and specifications, I would suggest going with the OnePlus 3 or the OnePlus 3T. I would recommend this to only those persons who are fond of taking a lot of selfies or taking a lot of pictures with the rear camera and doesn’t think about performance. But still, I would think several times before getting this device and instead, I’ll go for OnePlus 3 or 3T for sure.
The Vivo V5 Plus is priced at around Rs. 27,980 on Flipkart and comes in two colors – Grey and Gold. It is also available in the offline market as well since you know, Vivo’s branding is everywhere.
Thanks for the review!!