Vivo V5 Plus review: A phone for capturing awesome selfies anytime and anywhere

Vivo V5 Plus is the ultimate selfie phone that redefines the front camera experience. This phone comes with dual camera setup at front with moonlight selfie flash. So, you can capture selfies anytime anywhere. This phone is not cheap and costs Rs. 27980. I have been using this device for past few weeks and here is my review of Vivo V5 Plus.

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Vivo V5 Plus review

Design

Vivo V5 Plus looks similar to Vivo V5 but with few notable changes. This phone got a simple design but with premium construction. Above the display, the phone has dual camera setup and front flash along with notification LED. Below the display, it has a physical home button equipped with a fingerprint sensor. On either side of this home button, there are two capacitive backlit keys. You can even customize the backlit time for these keys.

The right side of the phone has the volume rocker and power button. The left edge has SIM tray slot. At the base side, it has audio port, micro USB and a speaker unit. The back panel has iPhone 7 Plus like placing of antenna bands and camera module along with Vivo branding at center.

The phone offers decent grip and fairly slim and light design. The weight of the phone is just 158 grams that makes it easy to hold and carry.

Display

Vivo V5 Plus gets a 5.5-inch Full HD display that is bright and smooth. The phone’s display impresses with its sharpness and viewing angles. Not just indoor, the outdoor visibility is good as well. The display generates accurate colors enhancing your viewing experience. To make it further better, there is also an Eye protection mode that will adjust the screen color to relieve the visual fatigue.

Display

The display is also protected with Gorilla Glass 5 to avoid scratches. Not just this, this phone comes with screen guard pre-applied. You also get one more screen guard within the box.

Software Experience

Vivo V5 Plus runs on Funtouch OS based on Android 6.0 Marshmallow. Funtouch brings lots of features and offers smooth performance. Funtouch OS offers iOS-like interface and icons are also inspired from iOS. So, you may feel like using the iPhone. There is no app drawer. Swiping from down to up opens the quick settings menu where you can adjust many things. Swiping from top to bottom opens the notification panel.

This phone also offers themes, wallpapers, lock screens, and fonts. You can also download more from the store. You also get few Vivo Branded apps including I Music, I Themes, iManager and few bloatware including WPS Office, Facebook, UC Browser and Whatsapp.

Funtouch OS offers various gestures, click features, notifications customization, one hand mode and smart split feature.

It also comes with SOS feature. So, pressing the power button three times calls to 112 in the case of any emergency. So, this feature is a good thing for women.

Performance and Storage

Vivo V5 Plus comes with Snapdragon 625 that was also found in Vivo V5. While this chipset is known for offering smooth performance, good multi-tasking and nice gaming experience, getting this on a phone priced more than Rs. 25000 does not seem good. We have phones priced less than Rs. 15000 with the same chipset but Vivo used that to keep low and invest more in camera.

If you ignore the specifications on the paper, you will not be disappointed with its performance. This phone manages to keep itself cool even after long gaming and video recording at 4K.

Not just normal performance, this phone is pretty good for gamers as well. I tested the phone with various games and didn’t found it heating or lagging. So, you won’t be disappointed with its gaming performance. If you look at the benchmark scores, these are not pretty high.

It comes with 64GB of internal storage with no option to expand the storage. But 64GB is more than enough to have in a phone. It also supports OTG that needs to enable before you connect and use any OTG device.

Camera

Vivo V5 Plus Camera

The camera is the main thing company talks about. This phone packs dual camera setup at front. In these two camera sensors, one is 20 megapixels with f/2.0 aperture while the second is an 8-megapixel sensor for capturing depth information. This secondary camera is used for bokeh effect that separates the object from the background. You can also adjust the aperture depending on how shallow you want the depth of field effect. It also has a moonlight selfie flash to give warm light when you need it.

With this good camera setup, Vivo V5 Plus offers best selfie experience. Not just in daylight, low-light selfie experience is awesome. It also offers Auto HDR and FaceBeauty models With Face Beauty, you can customize how beautiful you want to be in the selfie.

The rear camera is of 16 megapixels that capture fairly detailed shots. There were few issues but the camera was doing a good job most of the times. Even the low-light performance as not bad at all. I still see the scope for improvement. While the company’s primary focus was the front camera, the rear camera is also an important thing and after paying this much of price, expectations are always high.

This phone can record up to 4K videos from rear camera and the camera records good quality of videos. Videos are also less shaky. From the front, it can record up to 1080p videos.

Music and multimedia experience

With tagline “Camera and Music“, Vivo claims a lot about music experience on the phone. The phone has single speaker unit that does quite well and produces loud and clear sound. The output through audio jack is also good but I was not impressed with earphones that come with the phone. I tested the phone with some high-quality earphones and got good music experience. So, I recommend you to buy good earphones if you want to enjoy the HiFi music of the phone with maximum pleasure.

With good display and loud music, this phone is a good multimedia device.

Fingerprint and privacy feature

This phone has fingerprint scanner located on the physical home button below the display. It is very sensitive and responsive.

You also have the option to enable the ‘Privacy and app encryption option’. Enable this to password protect important apps that you want to protect from unauthorized access. Getting option natively in UI is a good thing. In this way, you can protect your photos and messages.

Connectivity and Battery

This is a dual SIM phone with support to 4G VoLTE. So, you can enjoy JIO’s voice calls and Internet without any problem. Other connectivity options on the phone are WiFi, Bluetooth, micro USB and GPS connectivity.

This phone is packed with 3100 mAh battery with support to fast charging. I am impressed with its battery performance and with moderate usage, this phone’s battery can give you more than 2 days of usage without any problem. Even with heavy usage, this phone’s battery is capable of giving around 30 hours of battery life. Using it as a secondary device and use it just to capture photos, selfies and check social media accounts with Jio SIM gave me more than 72 hours of usage.

This phone is packed with 3100 mAh battery with support to fast charging. I am impressed with its battery performance and with moderate usage, this phone’s battery can give you more than 2 days of usage without any problem. Even with heavy usage, this phone’s battery is capable of giving around 30 hours of battery life.

You also have multiple options to manage the battery usage on the phone. You can enable the ‘Low power consumption mode’ or ‘Super power-saving’ mode if you are running out of power and you still need few more hours before you get the power supply to charge.

This phone takes around 2 hours in fully charging with the charger provided within the box. It also charges around 41 percent in about 30 minutes. It has Vivo’s ‘Dual-Charging Engine’ technology that features two microchips to handle higher current.

After sales service

This phone takes after sales service seriously and this is the reason it has added the after sales service option within the phone. You can easily search for service centers around you, get address and contact details in case you are facing any problem with your Vivo phone.

Final Words

Before you judge the phone and compare it with other phones, you must take consider the fact that it is available via offline channels with reach to almost all cities and towns. For this kind of offline reach, companies have to put the high price tag. So, comparing it with OnePlus 3T or other online only phones will not be good. This phone is surely tagged with high price while you could get most of these specifications on the lower price. But dual camera setup at the front it still a unique thing this phone has to attract customers.

This phone is beautiful with the awesome display, nice performance, good camera, attractive and smooth UI, best selfie experience and longer battery life. What else do you need in a good phone? But, I also feel that paying extra money just for good selfies will not attract many.

This phone solves the purpose for which it was made. As the company claims, this phone is an ultimate selfie phone and a good phone for daily usage.

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