Vivo V5 Plus Smartphone Review

When Vivo launched their most happening smartphone in late January this year, in India, I was present there and saw it getting unveiled. Vivo V5 Plus was among the first smartphones to come with a Dual front camera setup and that too not ordinary cameras - a 20 Megapixel sensor and an 8 Megapixel front camera setup, while the rear camera is a 16 Megapixel shooter. You must have seen my Vivo V5 Plus coverage post on this blog a few weeks ago, if not then you can read it here. Vivo V5 Plus was the first Dual front camera smartphone which I've tested so far and I was really happy with what it offered. I personally tested the V5 Plus for nearly three weeks and today I'll be sharing my experience with it. Let's get started.

Unboxing

Vivo V5 Plus smartphone comes in an almost square shaped box with the pictures of the device on the front. On opening the box, you'll be greeted by the pleasant sight of the device resting on top of a flap cover, underneath which you find two additional rectangular boxes which contain the accessories. The first rectangular box contains the Fast Charging Adapter, MicroUSB cable, and earphones with microphone & in-line remote. The second rectangular box contains the User Manual, Warranty card, a SIM ejector tool, a Screen protector and a soft silicone transparent case. It's good to see that Vivo provides so many accessories with the phone itself. All the accessories which came with the device were of good quality and seemed durable for years to come. The earphones resemble very closely to the Apple EarPods. You can take a look at the unboxing video below, also do Subscribe to our YouTube channel for more such videos in the future.

Build Quality & Design

If you wish to buy an iPhone but can't afford it, not to worry, Vivo V5 Plus is the closest you can get at a much cheaper price. Vivo V5 Plus is very similar to iPhone in terms of design, but that doesn't mean that it's not well built- in fact, Vivo V5 Plus is quite solid in terms of build quality, the back is made up of metal, which gives it a premium look but also makes the smartphone slippery. The antenna lines on the back are designed similar to iPhone and re the only things which are plastic. The smartphone is 7.3 mm in thickness and weighs 150 grams, the front panel comes with 2.5D curved edges with scratch resistant Corning Gorilla Glass 5. Above the display, you'll find the Dual-Front Camera Setup, the earpiece, proximity & ambient light sensor. There's also a LED notification light.

The right side of the smartphone contains the Volume rocker along with the Power button, nothing else. The left side contains the Dual Nano SIM tray, there is no hybrid slot for the microSD card, both the slots only support Nano SIM cards.

The top section is empty, the bottom contains the MicroUSB port in the center with speaker & microphone on the sides, along with the 3.5 mm audio jack. I was expecting USB Type-C port but Vivo stuck to MicroUSB v2.0 port. The rear section contains the 16 Megapixel camera with LED flash.

Display & Audio

Vivo V5 Plus comes with a 5.5" Inch IPS LCD Full HD Display with a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels and pixel density of 401 ppi. The screen to body ratio is around 74 percent and the display comes with a 2.5D curved glass with Corning Gorilla Glass 5 protection. The smartphone by default comes with a screen protector applied (one extra inside the box). It equips one of the best-looking displays in this price segment. The display is very bright with a good amount of sharpness, deep blacks which result in good contrast ratio and pretty accurate color reproduction. There is a slightly cool tone which gives the Whites a blueish tint. The sunlight legibility of Vivo V5 Plus is quite decent, the display is very much visible under direct sunlight. 

Coming to the Audio part, let's talk about the loudspeaker first, the speaker on Vivo V5 Plus is placed next to the charging port, it is one of the best loudspeakers I've ever seen on a phone in the recent times. The speaker is very loud & clear and delivers very good quality audio. There is slight distortion when playing at max volumes but that's still is not a deal breaker, the audio output is really great. When earphones are plugged in, the audio quality is still pretty good and loud. 

Hardware & Software Performance

Talking about the hardware, Vivo V5 Plus packs a Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 chipset, an Octa-Core 2.0 GHz Cortex-A53 processor with Adreno 506 GPU, 4GB RAM and 64GB of internal storage. There is no MicroSD support but it's good to see that Vivo is offering 64GB on board as minimum storage. When the phone was launched, many people were wondering why Vivo opted for a Snapdragon 625 SoC in their premium flagship smartphone, since this SoC is popular among mid-range devices. Well, we can't answer this question accurately but I would surely like to add that Snapdragon 625 SoC is pretty stable, powerful and efficient. This chipset consumes less power than others and makes your battery last longer. The hardware performance was really great throughout our tests, you can take a look at the benchmark results below for a better idea.

The AnTuTu score of Vivo V5 Plus was; 62747. The score on Geekbench 4 for single-core was; 835 and for multi-core was 2955. The Quadrant score was 38654, the 3D Mark score for Slingshot extreme was 460.

Vivo V5 Plus runs Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow, topped by Funtouch OS 3.0, which is the custom user interface by Vivo. The software looks quite similar to the Apple iPhone, there were many features which closely resembled the iOS, including the icon designs, up-swipe toggles menu and even the camera interface, it's so iOS-like that at some point you start thinking that it's an iPhone. There is no app drawer, all your apps and icons are present on the home screen itself. The dock below can take up to 5 apps at once, including folders. The notification shade can be viewed by swiping the status bar down, it does not contain the shortcut toggles or anything like that, only notifications, for toggles you'll have to swipe from down to up, to view a separate quick control toggles menu. There's even a system-wide search screen, just like Apple's Spotlight search, which can search your phone quickly. Other features available are the quick gestures, multi-window etc. The software performance was top-notch, we didn;t experience any lag or sluggishness, it was smooth & snappy throughout. There was almost no bloatware except all Facebook apps like Instagram, Messenger, and the Facebook app.

Camera

Vivo V5 Plus is famous for its Dual front camera setup and today we'll take a detailed look at it but let's start with the rear camera. On the rear, you get a 16 Megapixel camera with f/2.0 aperture lens, LED flash, Phase Detection Autofocus, and 4K video recording support. On the front, you get a 20 Megapixel + 8 Megapixel Dual camera setup with f/2.0 aperture, 1/2.8" sensor size, and Full HD 1080p video recording support. 

Other camera features include Face Beauty mode, HDR, Panorama, Face Detection, Professional mode etc. The front 20 Megapixel camera is co-engineered by Sony and comes along with an additional 8 Megapixel sensor which is used for depth sensing, using a combination of both, you can achieve stunning bokeh effect when taking selfies. I was really impressed with the bokeh effect, it works like charm and the results are simply stunning. You can adjust the bokeh using the Live preview before clicking the selfie, this can also be adjusted after the picture is clicked, you can change the focus point and simulated aperture (f/0.95 to f/16) which is simply awesome. For a better idea, you can take a look at the sample pictures clicked by the front camera.

The rear camera of Vivo V5 Plus captures good enough pictures with sufficient detail and accurate colors with a slight warm tone. I did experience some issues when using the autofocus on the rear camera, and I hate how the camera clicks the picture automatically when you try to focus an object, this was the most annoying thing I experienced on V5 Plus. There are plenty of modes present on V5 Plus; Professional mode, Anti-Shake, Ultra-HD, Time Lapse, Night mode. PPT and Slow motion. The videos clicked by Vivo V5 Plus are decent, you can take a look at the sample video shot by it. Overall the camera was really good, I'm happy with the output but yes, Vivo should really work on that autofocus thing.

Front Camera Sample Shots   |   Rear Camera Sample Shots   |   Rear Camera 1080p sample

Battery & Connectivity

The battery which comes inside Vivo V5 Plus is a 3160 mAh Li-Ion non-removable battery and since the chipset here is Snapdragon 625, the battery efficiency is much better on Vivo V5 Plus, as compared to other smartphones in similar price segment. The battery supports fast charging and can easily last more than a day with moderate use. Even if you are a hardcore user, you can still easily stretch it up to a day. The battery takes around two hours to charge fully. During our tests, it took 1 hour 50 minutes to charge from 7% to 100% using the adapter which came with it. 

Connectivity wise you get 3G, 4G LTE support along with Bluetooth 4.0 with A2DP, Wi-Fi, GPS with A-GPS, GLONASS and BDS support, USB OTG, MicroUSB etc. There is no FM Radio support. The fingerprint sensor is front mounted, inside the physical home button. The fingerprint sensor on Vivo V5 Plus is really fast, it really takes a fraction of a second for it to take you to the home screen. Till now I've tested several smartphone fingerprint sensors but Vivo V5 Plus is among the fastest ones ever tested. 

Verdict

I don't want to drag this much, Vivo V5 Plus is an amazing smartphone with a really awesome camera. Call it an iPhone impersonator or whatever, the fact is that its a pretty solid device with decent hardware and performance. The battery backup is also quite good. The front camera is very hyped but still captures stunning selfies, thanks to the bokeh effect, you can easily blur the background and get DSLR-like photos from your smartphone. The rear camera was decent and it's good to see that it supports 4K video recording at 30 frames per second. The only issue is the price, Vivo V5 Plus is priced at Rs.28,000 in India and in my opinion, is overpriced, you can easily get a OnePlus 3T or a Xiaomi Mi5s at a similar price with more flagship like features, but keeping all aside, if you're looking for a smartphone which looks like an iPhone in almost every way, good battery backup, amazing display, awesome front & rear cameras etc. you can definitely try Vivo V5 Plus.

My Rating: 4 Out of 5

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