Vivo has been already focusing on the selfies when it comes to the Indian market. They do launch their flagships in China but they fail to launch them in India. The reason is simple, they can’t price them higher according to the Indian market. But coming to the point, they did launch their Vivo V3, V5, and the V5 Plus earlier. And now it’s time for its successor. The V5s, how is it? Is it any better than its predecessors? Can it survive in this market? Let’s find out that in the full review of the Vivo V5s.
DESIGN
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When it comes to the design, the Vivo V5s actually looks like a duplicate of the iPhone 7. It’s not only my opinion but it actually does. Hide the logo behind and you’ll see a complete iPhone 7. It’s likely getting used to seeing every company is trying to adopt the industrial design language that Apple’s iPhone created. The built quality is pretty good as it is made up of metal and thus feels good in hands and slippery at the same time.
Keep that aside, taking a look at the front we are able to see the fingerprint scanner embedded right into the home button with capacitive navigation keys to the sides. Bring up on the front side, we’re able to find out the front-facing camera, earpiece, proximity sensor, and ambient sensor. Looking down the phone, we’re actually able to see the 3.5mm audio jack, speakers, standard mini USB port, and microphone.
Let’s turn that towards the left and leaving us to the right side, we’re able to see the volume rockers and the power button. On the opposite side, we’re able to get a Sim tray which actually is a hybrid sim slot. At the back, we get our rear facing camera with LED flash and secondary noise-canceling mic besides that. Down to that in the center, we’ve our branding of Vivo itself. In overall, the design okay to be happy with and does the work pretty well apart.
DISPLAY
The display on the Vivo V5s is a 5.5-inches which actually comes with a resolution of 720 x 1280 and a pixel density of 269 ppi. The display is sharp enough to show up the bright saturated colors on the display to pop out of the screen. The display doesn’t even look like a 720p display at all, though. It just perfectly blends in with the 5.5-inches display completely and DPI being too small helps it a lot. There’s nothing to talk about the device much but just think like it’s just the same as the traditional displays out there on other Vivo Smartphones, nothing special going on here. 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.
I’m good with the overall display part on this smartphone. Not very good, not very bad just sitting on the fence right there. But according to me, comparing with other smartphones at the similar price range, it falls over to the bad side moreover.
PERFORMANCE
The Vivo V5s actually comes with a MediaTek MT6750 Octa-core 1.5 GHz Cortex-A53 processor. Up with that, it gets coupled with Mali-T860MP2 GPU and 4 GB of RAM with 64 GB of internal memory. And talking about the performance, Vivo just can’t make it all the time. The little bit different specs in the same body. The performance was really worse than I expected even. I should say that the performance was much better on V3 and V5. 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. We just get around 1.9 GB of RAM from 4 GB, that’s not so great at a price of Rs. 18,990.
Not again Vivo, try to become better, not worse. Overall performance was just average and disappointing. Better try again Vivo.
SOFTWARE
It’s good old Marshmallow running on the Vivo V5s too, 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-Hand 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 point where this phone seems to have some scope. We get a 13 MP rear camera. The camera on the V5s is way much better than that of the V5. But it’s a hit or miss thing every time. Make it with good lighting conditions, it tops up whereas in the low light conditions, you’ll need a support from the dual-tone flash. Here are a few samples right down below the text.
I guess I need to talk about the front-facing camera here as well. It’s a 20 MP camera which can take pretty decent selfies at the point. The images were good and bright even in very dim lighting. And I agree somewhat with how Vivo markets it as the best selfie smartphone. Take a look at the front camera samples here, ver few but just check out:
BATTERY
The battery on the Vivo V5s is the same as the Vivo V5 in terms of backup. It wasn’t that great all but it at least needed a power up at least by the half of the day. So, you might need to charge it twice. That turns around when I’m using all the social media apps constantly and it does try to give up a backup of at least 12 hours at the point. The battery backup is a bit bad for the phone priced at Rs. 18,990 but as well as it’s not completely off the match.
VERDICT
The Vivo V5s is just a younger sibling to the V5 Plus but it needs a bit more polishing. The performance, camera, display, and battery are the pros to this phone whereas the software and design are a drawback here. If you were looking for a selfie-centric phone, you can go with this. But selfie isn’t your priority, go with the Lenovo P2, Lenovo Z2 Plus or you can get even the Moto G5 Plus too much cheaper than this one and much better (not in terms of selfie though).
