Vivo V5 Plus
Solid selfie smartphone, but a little bit pricey
IT’S SAFE to say that 2016 was the year of selfie phones — with Chinese smartphone maker, OPPO, taking the lead with its F1 series — but it seems that the allure of selfie phones hasn’t waned and another Chinese smartphone maker, Vivo, is making a case for itself with the Vivo V5 Plus.
Late 2016 saw Vivo (sister company of OPPO as they are both under the BKK Electronics umbrella) has entered the selfie phone category of the market with the V5, sporting a 20-megapixel front-facing camera, a few months after — in January — the same company came out with a more premium version, this time with the front-facer coming in with a 20 MP (co-engineered with Sony) plus an 8-MP lens — basically a dual-cam selfie camera.
Oh, and the camera also has a “bokeh” feature. “Bokeh” is rendering certain areas of a photograph out-of-focus so the in-focus areas of the shot (in this case, your face) would standout. All these for the price of P19,990, higher than the V5 which BusinessWorld previously reviewed, which retails for P12,990. So for around P6,000 more, you get a mid-ranged high-specs selfie phone, which isn’t really that bad of a deal if one is deeply passionate in taking a gorgeous profile shot.
The V5 Plus also comes in with a pretty solid specs sheet (for a midrange phone): 5.5-inch display with full HD resolution (a definite jump from the V5) with 2.5D Corning Gorilla Glass 5, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 625, Octa-core 2.5 GHz Cortex-A53 CPU and Adreno 506 GPU. Internal memory is at 64 GB with 4 GB of RAM.
Looking at Vivo’s user interface (UI) patterned after Android Marshmallow out-of-box, it doesn’t have much bloatware for which one should be grateful as it doesn’t gobble up much of the 64-GB ROM. It’s especially important since the phone doesn’t have a memory card slot, which is a bummer.
Also, the less important rear camera is at 16 GB, because, well, this is a selfie phone so the secondary camera is technically promoted to primary. AND the rear cam isn’t dual cam.
Design-wise, the V5 Plus is virtually similar to the V5 which, in turn took design cues from the arbiter of smartphone design — the iPhone. It has a white face with a matte back, which looks very premium though the chamfered edges felt uncomfortable though the grip still remains solid.
Even the UI got inspiration from the iPhone as the Vivo sports a pull-up shortcuts window and a drop-down notifications window. It’s also without an app drawer.
The non-removable battery is at 3,160 mAh, marginally better than the V5 at 3,000 mAh. The difference isn’t felt much though as going by this writer’s records: a one-and-a-half hour YouTube video at 1080p, full brightness and on high volume will deplete the battery from 100% to 86% in the case of the V5, while the V5 Plus doesn’t fare much better as the same video got the battery to around 88% from full charge.
Multi-tasking using the phone is a breeze too, owing to the 4-GB RAM against the 3-GB RAM the V5 had. There were no lags, no stutters, no nothing, just a reliable smooth performance.
At length, this phone would have been a complete winner if not for the price tag — if it were priced a tad bit lower, like around P16,000 to P18,000, it would have been such a steal but it seems that having dual front-facing cameras are a pricey proposition for the company.
But pricing aside, this is a very solid mid-ranged phone and perfect for those who would like a better-than-usual (but not perfect) phone, with a beautiful selfie camera at an almost reasonable price tag.