Vivo V5 Review – For Selfie Lovers

In the war between smartphone companies, they look at the consumers in a different aspect to woo them. You can ask how? if you notice it carefully you can find it. While the smartphone manufacturers like LeEco and Lenovo are focusing on the hardware and specification; Companies like Oppo, Gionee and now Vivo mobiles are targeting the “selfie” lovers.

Look and Feel

This device follows the same footsteps as almost every phone in the market, with the curved edges. Shiny lines running along the edges and in the back as well. The back panel is made of thick plastic and metallic finish. The Vivo V5 does look good in the hand, but it lacks premium look and feel.

On top, the device houses 20-megapixel front shooter along with the LED flash and earpiece placed above the display. At the bottom, the fingerprint sensor integrated and capacitive buttons menu flanked with the fingerprint sensor.

You have the hybrid-SIM card tray, whereas the right edge has the volume rocker and power/sleep buttons at the left edge. On the bottom, the device houses a 3.5mm audio jack, micro-USB port and the speaker grille is placed.

It’s really disappointing to see Vivo using the plastic body for a 17K price range device. Even though it supposed to look like a metal it lacks the premium feels.

Display

The Vivo V5 is coming with a bigger screen size comparing to its predecessor Vivo V3. Now, this is a standard size for budget, mid-range and flagship devices. The device comes with 5.5-inch display with HD IPS LCD. It features a pixel density of 267ppi which is a bit too low for a display of this size. One would normally expect Full HD display on board at this price. What makes as to surprise is at this price range the devices offers an HD display only.

The display looks good in indoors and much more colorful comparing to the other selfie phones. But it is not the best you get in this price range as well. Vivo V5 has a good display, but it lacks ample brightness that can cause problems when you are using the phone outdoors under the Sunlight.

Performance

The device is very much comfortable with multitasking. Every day’s normal activities will be a lag free affair. There are no issues with normal games, but this device is unable to handle high-end graphics games like Asphalt 8. It is advisable to keep the graphics settings to low.

Moving on to audio, the call quality was loud and clear on both ends. Audio quality through the speaker was very loud.

Camera

The main highlight of the device is its selfie camera. The company offers 20-megapixel Sony IMX376 sensor with an aperture of f/2.0. The 20MP shooter captures a lot of details such as texture and contrast, which is very rare in this price range.

The outdoor selfies clicked in sunlight are detailed and looks accurate as well. The photos clicked in low light with the LED light also look decent.

The rear camera is able to capture some good images in daylight. The image showcases accurate color reproduction. The HDR mode can only able to provide photos with good details whereas the normal mode looks a little dull.

When it comes to low-light the things are not good, noise creeps in the low-lighting condition. Overall the rear camera is average and the front camera is surely one of best selfies at this price range.

User Interface (UI)

The Vivo V5 comes out of the box with Android 6.0 Marshmallow with Funtouch OS 2.6 running on top. It is not a new thing for the company to use features of iOS on its FunTouch skin made over the Android operating system.

I didn’t experience any lag while using it and it was smooth while switching between apps, games and doing multi-tasking.

Battery

Battery life of Vivo V5 is decent. The 3000 mAh battery can last for a day with 4G data on with little gaming, social networking and internet surfing.

Activating the power saver modes will add a couple of hours of battery life.

Conclusion

The Vivo V5 does as how the company advertises “Perfect Selfie”. If you’re a selfie lover who loves to click more selfies, just hear songs and watch YouTube videos then this is for you. But if you expect more means then this not your cup of tea.
There are more powerful devices out there with better performance, rear camera and battery life like the Lenovo Z2 Plus, Samsung Galaxy On8, and LeEco Le Max2.