vivo V7+ review: viva la vivo

vivo (in our) city

welcome, dear reader, to another hardwarezone review. today, we'll examine the inaugural product of the latest smartphone brand to hit our shores: vivo. by the way, please let us know when you're tired of us typing everything in lowercase - it's just our effort to adapt to the odd lowercase styling that vivo uses.

While new to the local market, vivo is actually a brand under the BBK Electronics group, which is headquartered in the electronics manufacturing hub of Dongguan in China, and cut its teeth making audio-visual equipment.

Being established for two decades and clinching the title of second largest smartphone manufacturer in the world last year are not facts that are likely to ring bells for you, but this one certainly will: Oppo and OnePlus are also members of the BBK clan. In fact, you're likely to find vivo and Oppo stores side-by-side in neighboring countries.

The next and most obvious question would be that of product differentiation. While OnePlus urges us to "Never Settle", and Oppo preaches "The Art of Technology", vivo's slogan is much more specific: "Camera & Music" or "Hi-Fi & Smart", depending on where you look. We'll take "Camera & Music" as the best blend of those two, and as two of the most - if not the most - desired features of today's smartphones. 

(editor - vivo's Singapore HQ actually denies being part of BBK Electronics, claiming instead that vivo is an independent brand with no relation to BBK, despite it being very well-known that vivo is, and always has been, a subsidiary of BBK. Make of that what you will.)

But as you can see, the V7+ is not alone in this field. Given its SRP of S$469, many challengers exist, such as the ASUS Zenfone 4 Max, the Mi A1, and the Redmi Note 4. Is the vivo V7+ still able to live up to such precise ideals? Let's find out.

Design

If you were hoping for a break from an Apple-styled anodised-aluminum monoblock, sorry - the vivo V7+ does not have your panacea. In fact, it follows almost exactly in the footsteps of the other BBK-brand phones - which is to say that its design screams "iPhone 6" to all and sundry, even those not bothered to look more closely.

This writer did not have an Oppo handy... but he possesses a OnePlus 5T. Though both phones are very different in functionality and specs, the family resemblance is unmistakable on the outside:-

Don't get us wrong - we're not panning vivo. They certainly chose a good design to model their phones on, and the V7+ looks pretty classy in black, which is an impression helped along by the "stringed" antenna lines first found on the Oppo R9 series. But it seems clear that vivo, Oppo, and OnePlus share modified forms of their basic designs.

Which doesn't leave us with a lot to say about the V7+, then. The "squircle" fingerprint sensor is well-placed, and easy to reach, as with the other BBK family phones. And as with the iPhone that it takes cues from, the V7+'s smooth lines are broken rudely by a camera "bump" ring of about 1mm thick. There is a single speaker grill at the bottom that puts out distortion-free but somewhat soft audio, that is also irritatingly midtone-heavy.

Okay, everyone: It's 2018. The V7+ hasn't lost its 3.5mm headphone jack (yay!)

Again: It's 2018. The V7+ makes use of a micro-USB port instead of USB-C (uhh...) 

But... all those of you out there still hanging on to stocks of Taobao-bought micro-USB cables, rejoice! you have another phone to choose from!

Speaking of online shopping, do pick up a TPU case if you intend to get this or any other similarly slippery rounded-edged aluminum-unibody phone. You'll thank us later.

Display

On the visual side of things, the vivo V7+ appears to keep up with trends at first glance, its 5.99-inch IPS LCD being of the 18:9 aspect ratio persuasion. But when this writer first powered it on, he had his glasses off, and the pixels, pixels everywhere were very hard to unsee - the display resolution is only 1,440 x 720. 

We've been spoiled by devices thus far - even the cheaper $299-SRP Redmi 5 Plus - which have 2,160 x 1,080-pixel resolutions, so the vivo V7+'s lower resolution is very hard to, um, overlook. And given the price point of the aforementioned rather similar phone, that's not the only thing that will keep whispering in our ears as we go along...

The vivo V7+'s display resolution is not the only thing that reflects (I must stop making these puns) the phone's price point. While luminance and saturation appear impressive under indoor lighting, much of this is traded for a rather dim and reflective viewing experience once you take it out into the sun. Also, the sharp-eyed among you would have noticed, from all the photos thus far, that the display has a rather bluish color cast.

Software

The vivo V7+ runs a skinned build of Android 7.1 Nougat, called Funtouch OS. Place it alongside a current Oppo phone and you'll find it's almost a mirror image of Oppo's ColorOS on the surface - and in essence, both these Android skins draw unashamedly from iOS, as you will have noticed from the Settings icon and the lack of an app drawer. 

Funtouch OS is colorful and cheery, but it seems like a design that would have been in vogue several years ago. For starters, it is riddled with design inconsistencies (the most obvious being the extremely detailed Settings icon versus the flat "iMusic", messaging, dialer, and browser icons), and the English language seems to have been lost in translation in parts:

The lock screen also displays an alternating and incongruous mix of extremely vibrant and detailed landscape, floral/food, and car wallpapers, which seem brash and loud against the gentle bokeh-style gradients and "earth shots" you'll find on the latest Android Oreo phones. Not to our taste, but then again, no deal-breaker either.

What is irritating is that Funtouch OS strangely and inexplicably lacks some features which are not only found in stock Android, but are now staples on many Android skins in general. For example, there are no settings when you slide down the notification shade. Nope. Nada. Nyet:-

And when you go into the Battery setting option, there's no way to view the estimated battery life remaining - just a "Rank" option for individual apps:-

That said, some of the add-ons that vivo conceived for Funtouch OS, at least on the V7+, mirror what you can find on, say, an equivalent Samsung smartphone. There are various "Smart motion" gestures to turn on and off the screen, launch apps, and what have you. One-handed operation is also possible with a gesture-controlled keyboard resize and "mini screen" mode. You can "clone apps" - start two instances of the same app, which some will find useful for privacy reasons. There's even split-screen support, albeit for a limited selection of apps (Chrome, Gmail, Calculator, YouTube, VLC, and the stock messaging app and video player being examples.)

Also, on the plus side, we're happy to report that the only third-party apps we found when we powered up for the first time were Lazada and UC Browser. But this bloat hygiene is countered by a number of vivo's own apps: a system manager, a weather app, a cloud storage app, a sharing app, a shortcut to vivo.com (why?), a screen lock shortcut (double why?), a compass, and even an alternative app store called V-Appstore.

Perhaps Funtouch OS is aimed at seniors, who might be new to a smartphone and would certainly appreciate starting off with a large number of apps and a cheery interface. But the UI inconsistencies and dated design certainly need fixing. Again: it's 2018.

Benchmark Performance

The vivo V7+ is moved along by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 450 allied to 4GB of RAM. Before you say "ugh, a 4-series Snapdragon", don't worry! It's 2018, and this means the 450 is an octa-core 1.8GHz Cortex-A53 part, and better yet, a 14nm one, too - which should, in theory, mean low power consumption. Will we see low benchmark scores, as well?

SunSpider JavaScript

SunSpider JavaScript measures the web browsing performance of a device through a JavaScript processing test. It not only takes into consideration the underlying hardware performance, but also assesses how optimized a particular platform is in delivering a high-speed web browsing experience.

This is where things start to come undone for the V7+. Earlier, we mentioned that there is competition aplenty. What has not yet been said is that most of them employ the faster Snapdragon 6-series processors. Accordingly, the ASUS ZenFone 4 Max (which has a 4-series Snapdragon yet costs over $200 less) accompanies the V7+ at the bottom of the SunSpider tables:

Basemark OS II

Basemark OS II is an all-in-one benchmarking tool that measures overall performance through a comprehensive suite of tests including system, internal and external memory, graphics, web browsing, and CPU consumption.

Exactly as expected, the slower 4-series processor placed closer to the ZenFone than the two 6-series phones.

3DMark Sling Shot

We use this advanced 3D graphics benchmark to test the full range of OpenGL ES 3.1 and ES 3.0 API features including multiple render targets, instanced rendering, uniform buffers and transform feedback. The test also includes impressive volumetric lighting and post-processing effects. We're running this benchmark in Unlimited mode, which ignores screen resolutions.

A surprise is sprung! The Snapdragon 450 almost keeps pace with the Mi A1 and the Redmi Note 4 in this test, thanks to Qualcomm having plumbed in the Adreno 506 GPU found in the 6-series units.

But in real-world usage, the vivo V7+ still made us think "series-4" rather than "series-6" Snapdragon. Apps took a bit longer to open than we would like, and scrolling in web pages was frequently interrupted by jitter. Thank goodness for the HD-resolution display, which surely goes some way to keeping the overall performance of this device within acceptable margins...

Imaging

Recall, again, that tagline of vivo's: "Camera + Music." The V7+ certainly brings some good guns to the table, with a 16-megapixel shooter on the rear, and (gasp) a 24-megapixel one on the front, which is trumpeted on the box.

But when we see numbers like these, we immediately look for gotchas. Here they are: the main shooter has a ho-hum f/2.0 aperture, no optical image stabilization, and minuscule 1.0-μm pixels, while the selfie camera is f/2.0 as well (we dare not imagine the pixel size). And such a seemingly powerful me-cam could have done with a front-facing flash, as may be found on some competitors' products.

Beginning with the main camera: well, it certainly produces images that are in keeping with this type of specification. A recurring problem with high megapixel count cameras on lower-end phones is that on top of having small and noisy sensors to begin with, they also possess smaller lens apertures, which reduces the light they take in, forcing the camera to resort to higher ISO values - which in turn leads to even more noise. The net result is that images taken in the best light are fine and dandy, but when you bring phones like these indoors, the noise quickly ramps up and starts playing havoc with detail and color accuracy, as you can see in the indoor shots of fruit and vegetables below:

By the same token, handheld night shots are predictably underexposed, which is necessary to keep the noise-fest (and movement blur) within acceptable limits:

Hey, at least the lens is pretty sharp into the corners, and vivo does attempt to save the day with a manual mode that packs adjustable shutter speed and ISO. These manual adjustments allow you to create some decent long-exposure night landscapes that will impress your date - if your date night involves the likes of Dawson or Duxton:-

And what of that vaunted selfie cam? First, prepare yourself for this reviewer's less-than-Johnny Depp mug:

Those extra pixels do make a difference - but not a lot, given that we've seen great results from mug-shooters with far fewer pixels. The usual complement of beauty modes and tweaks applies as well:

The camera interface is yet another area where Funtouch OS's inconsistent workings rear their ugly head. For example, while the manual mode came in handy for long exposures, the self-timer can't be used in that mode, so you'll need to barely touch the (on-screen) shutter button, or you'll shake the phone and blur the image. There was also an Ultra HD mode, which we assumed takes photos of extremely high resolution, as on its Oppo cousins. Alas, it couldn't be made to work properly and crashed the camera every time we attempted to use it. 

Again, we can't help but think of competitors at this price point. The Redmi 5 Plus wisely keeps its rear pixel count to 12 megapixels, and packs much larger 1.25-μm pixels into the bargain. We think vivo might have gained far more from swapping the front and rear cams, since a 24-megapixel main cam is harder to come by these days, and some nifty multi-frame noise reduction techniques could have been applied to make its output more usable in low light.

Video recording on the V7+ is pretty much the same affair. That Snapdragon 450 processor won't do 4K, and so you're limited to 1080p at 30fps, with video quality that is serviceable, and nothing more.

Battery

Here's the drill: our standard battery test for mobile phones has the following parameters:

• Looping a 720p video with screen brightness and volume at 100%
• Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity turned on
• Constant data streaming through email and Twitter

While the result of 530 minutes is not impressive against the similarly-priced competition, it must be remembered that the ZenFone and Redmi Note 4 have larger 4,000mAh batteries, versus the substantially smaller 3,225mAh juice pack in the vivo V7+, while the Mi A1's battery is even smaller at 3,080mAh. In day-to-day use, though, we managed to get through a full workday without any issues. Behold (at last) the triumph of the Snapdragon 450!

Conclusion

With an SRP of S$469, the vivo V7+ has to acquit itself against a competition that packs similar features, yet is priced in the S$300 region. But there are some notable points that have been brought up against it.

On the first count, Funtouch OS simply doesn't work as well as the Android skins offered by some competitors. It doesn't have MIUI's polish as seen on the Redmi 5 Plus, and it doesn't offer the functionality of, say, Emotion UI on the Huawei Nova phones. On the second: quite a few of the devices in this class boast better overall system performance. And on the third, while the vivo has an awesome total megapixel figure for both cameras, the dual-cam setups on the ZenFone 4 Max and Mi A1 can do bokeh shots.

In mitigation, the second and third issues are debatable. But if the first were solved by taking Funtouch OS out of the equation, this could have been a unique selling point for the V7+. An Android One device with an 18:9 display and a 24-megapixel selfie cam would certainly have swayed a few buyers from the Mi A1.

Thus we find a few things to like about the vivo V7+, but nothing compelling. The only thing worth taking out your wallet for is... 24-megapixel selfies. The final question, then: does the narcissist in you need such resolving power?

Our articles may contain affiliate links. If you buy through these links, we may earn a small commission.