Vivo V7 Plus – Review

Vivo is back with another flagship mobile for this year. The Vivo V7 Plus is the next mobile that is painting the town blue. This mobile comes with thin bezels around the display and a promising selfie camera. It is priced at Rs 22000. Let us review the Vivo V7 plus and check if it is worth the price tag.

In the Box

• Vivo V7 Plus
• 2A Charger
• Micro USB Cable
• Screen protector film (pre-applied)
• Soft silicon back case
• SIM ejector pin
• Manuals and Warranty information

Design

Vivo has gone in for a fresh new design with the Vivo V7 plus. It has a plastic body with a metallic finish. The form factor of the mobile is long and thin, owing to the 2:1 aspect ratio of its display. It is easy to hold in one hand. It has a dedicated SD card slot. The thin chrome highlights at the top and bottom and the body colored fingerprint sensor at the back gives it an aesthetic appeal. Vivo V7 plus looks good and though it may not have a premium-like feel, it has a good build quality.

Display

The display is the key highlight of this mobile. It has a 5.99-inch display in 18:9 aspect ratio. The display has very thin bezels and it has a screen to body ratio of 83%. But it is a 720p display. 720p display stretched over 6 inches gives it very less pixel density of just 269 PPI. But to the untrained eyes, the display is bright and has good colors. If you pixel peep or compare a 1080p display side by side, you would notice the quality difference. Otherwise, on a day to day usage, you won’t notice anything wrong with the mobile. It is good to see some innovation in Vivo mobiles which are not around selfies.

Hardware and Performance

For a price tag of Rs 22000, if this mobile had a Snapdragon 6xx series processor, it would have become an overnight sensation, without the need for any celebrity endorsement. But the Snapdragon 450 on the Vivo V7+ is comparable to 625 in many ways. It is a major upgrade from SD435 and it is good to see that Vivo has not gone with some MediaTek processor. It has 4 GB of RAM and 64 GB of storage. The mobile is responsive. The apps run fast and have good memory management. Gameplay is smooth, but graphics rendering quality is average due to a 720p display. It does not have any heating issue.

The fingerprint sensor is fast and accurate. It supports VR and turn by turn navigation as it has gyroscope and magnetometer sensor. Audio quality over the speakers is loud and clear. Sound quality over headphones is rich and deep, thanks to Vivo’s dedicated DAC.

Camera

When it comes to Vivo mobiles, the primary camera is the one on the front. So let’s check out the selfie camera. After the mobile was launched, it was surrounded with controversies. While Vivo claimed that the front camera is a 24 MP camera, device info apps indicated that it had just 19.7 MP and to add to the confusion, Qualcomm Snapdragon 450’s official page did not mention support for 24 MP and it was later updated. But still we are not sure if the Sensor used is a 24 MP sensor or the ISP upscales 19.7 MP to 24 MP.

In real life, Mega Pixels is just a part of the formula that makes up for the quality of the camera. So let us not bother too much about the actual MP count, but see how the camera performs. Under daylight, the selfies are sharp and have good levels of details. The exposure is perfect and the colors are natural. It reproduces pleasing skin tones. Under low light, the selfies are good, but not sharp. It has noise around the edges and the moonlight flash is not helping much. If you are keen on selfies, you would be happy with the Vivo V7 Plus selfie camera.

But I am not a selfie hippie. The rear camera matters the most to me. The 16 MP camera on the rear has good details and sharpness under most light conditions. It is fast to focus and the colors are not natural. Both the rear and front camera can shoot 1080p videos, but it does not have any form of image stabilization. Overall, the camera performance will not disappoint you, but it won’t excite you either.

Software

Vivo V7 Plus runs on Android 7.1.2 out of the box with Funtouch OS 3.2 skin on top. Funtouch OS offers a lot of features like App clone, one-handed operation, smart split screen and gesture controls. Virtual navigation keys is one unique feature I found useful on the Vivo V7 Plus. It gets rid of the on-screen navigation keys and helps you control the entire Android navigation with swipe gestures. In my 3 weeks of usage, I never noticed any lag in the UI. The UI is fast and smooth.

Battery

V7 Plus is powered by 3225 mAh battery. With the provided 2A charger, it gets charged from 10% to 100% in 2 hours. Once charged, the mobile lasts for little over a day of moderate usage. I get a screen on-time of 4 hours of intensive usage.

Verdict

The usual complaint against Vivo mobiles is that they are heavily priced and powered by a low-powered processor. But with the Vivo V7 plus, the Snapdragon 450 is much better than the MediaTek processors. It is comparable to Snapdragon 625 in many departments. Though we see innovation in design and display, Vivo must come out of the selfie game. We don’t need great selfie mobiles. We need great mobiles, which can also click selfies. As Vivo targets the offline market, it does not make sense to compare it with mobile available online. If you are not comfortable with buying mobiles online, the retailer is more likely to sell you a Vivo V7 Plus and very likely that you won’t be disappointed. But if you can buy mobiles online, hold on! so many interesting mobiles on your plate.