Vivo V5 Plus – Review – Dual lens works wonders

Vivo is now back with a new mobile for the Indian market, especially for the selfie lovers. The Vivo V5 was the first step towards making a great selfie mobile with good performance. Now the Vivo V5 Plus takes it even further with a dual front facing camera setup and a promising internals. So lets us review the Vivo V5 Plus in detail.

In the Box

• Vivo V5 Plus
• 2 A Charger and micro USB cable
• Earphones
• Screen guard film
• Soft back case
• SIM Pin tool
• Manuals

Design

The Vivo V5 Plus has a premium look and feel with its metal body. It has finely chamfered edges and the antenna lines runs above the body rather than through the body. The metal has a matte finish and adds to the grip. At the back the 16 MP camera is assisted by a single LED flash. The camera has a mild protrusion. The finger print sensor is on the front.

It is a mechanical and a capacitive button with a nice metal rim around it. The power and volume buttons are on the right while the hybrid dual SIM is on the left. The bottom has the speaker grills, micro USB port and speaker grills. The mobile is very slim and sleek to hold. Vivo has stepped up the design standards with the V5 Plus. It is very ergonomic and comfortable to hold and handle. It also would make a good fashion statement.

Display

The display is a 5.5 inch IPS LCD panel with 2.5 curved Corning Gorilla Glass 5. It is a Full HD display with a PPI of 401. In terms of quality, the display is sharp, bright and colorful. The brightness levels are perfect and the sensor is quick to adjust it based on the ambient light. It has good viewing angles. Black levels are not that great, color reproduction just above average, but the contrast levels is good. Overall the display does the job for you. It does justice to the images clicked from the mobile. You would find it pleasant for media consumption as well as reading.

Hardware and Performance

The mobile has a Snapdragon 625 processor at heart and an adreno 506 for graphics. It has 4 GB of RAM and a whooping 64 GB of internal storage. The 625 is a mid-range processor but the implementation on the V5 Plus makes is a smooth experience. It handles multi-tasking with ease. High end graphics on medium graphics levels are smooth with 30 FPS tops. It does not over heat. After about 30 min of continuous game play, the temperature increased by 4 degree during my test cycles. The UI is smooth and snappy and the hardware has no problem handling it. I find no problem with the hardware and I would say that Vivo has a made a good choice in picking up a perfect hardware specification.

The fingerprint sensor is conveniently placed on the front. It is very fast, amazingly fast. It is accurate and can detect from all angles, even if the fingers are wet or oily. It can wake the mobile from sleep and lock screen.  The fingerprint scanner on V5 plus is impressive.

Camera

Camera is the heart and soul of the Vivo V5 Plus. up. On the front, Vivo has used Sony IMX376 20 MP sensor with f/2.0 aperture and 5 Piece Largan Lens, which will be the primary camera clicking photos. The 8 MP camera also comes with an f/2.0 aperture capturing the depth information. Together the sensors create good selfies, if not magical selfies. The bokeh mode lets you click a selfie and later on adjust the background bokeh. You can also change the subject in focus. It is one of the perfectly implemented bokeh effect on a camera and it is the first to have such a feature on the front camera. Under low light conditions, there is a lot of noise, but you can turn on the moonlight flash to give you a better illumination. Also the selfies from it have good color values. The exposure is a bit on the high side, but it is much better than what we saw on the V5. The details are really good and the output is of superior quality. This one has taken the selfie revolution to the next level.

The primary camera is a 16 MP f/2.0 sensor, along with an LED flash and Phase Detection Auto-focus. It can record up 4k videos, but no optical or electronic image stabilization. The primary camera is no less than the front camera. Infact the details and the color reproduction of this mobile matches the performance of many high-end mobile out there. As much as I loved clicking selfies with it, the front camera also gave me some stunning images. It is also a decent performer under low light.

Vivo did sponsor me for a trip to Jodhpur to try out the camera and other features of the Vivo V5 Plus. I must admit that the mobile is truly a great camera and I am not saying Vivo sponsored a trip. This is my honest and unbiased opinion, keeping up to gadgetdetail standards, as always.

Camera and Video Samples

Software

V5 plus runs on Android 6.0.1 with a proprietary shell Funtouch OS 3.0. I am not impressed about the visual design and text alignment of the Funtouch OS. The user experience and feature bouquet has improved a lot over the years. It has a host of gesture controlled features. It supports one hand operation, dual screen, scrolling screenshot, screen recording and much more special features, that add to the user experience. The UI is also light weight. It demands less resource and it keep the memory free for other app. It is fast and responsive. I can overlook the lack of visual finesse for this reason.

You can check out our detailed articles on Funtouch OS on the V5 and V5 Plus

Battery

It is powered by a 3055 mAh battery and does supports fast charging. It charges from 0 to 100% in about 1:15 hours. The UI does not have option to check battery usage. I ran the PC Mark battery test and the device lasted for 7 hours and 12 min from 90 to 20 %. That is really impressive. On my regular usage, it lasts for more than a day and it has about 40-45% when I hit the bed. That is a major improvement from Vivo V5, which still has a decent battery performance. But the V5 Plus is even better when it comes to battery life.

Verdict

You are paying Rs 27980 for the Vivo V5 and for the price you are getting a mobile with the best selfie camera in the market. It has got sleek looks and a design that will make an impressive fashion statement. A decent display and performance, amazing camera and a solid battery comes with the package. This is truly impressive and I can say, this is a true flagship device from Vivo. It is now a tough competition between the Samsung Galaxy A Series, Oppo F1 series and in the online market it competes with Oneplus 3 on the price segment. Though Oneplus 3T beats it by performance, offline market is not its turf and the king of offline market is Vivo and the Vivo will win not just for being a market leader, but also for bringing out a true flagship device to the mass. Vivo has proved that it can come out with mobiles that are as good as the other flagship devices that are ruling the market today.

Price in India and Availability

It is priced at Rs 27980 and will be available across all offline channels and most online retailers. Preorders from 24th Jan and the first sale begins from 1st Feb 2017