Vivo has been focusing entirely on camera phones and that too selfie centric camera phones. We had a fair share of V5’s and now Vivo has decided to raise the bar several notches higher by launching V7+ with a brand new design and upgraded optics as well. That said, it is important for a device to perform well in real-world scenario rather than just on paper. Not only did Vivo work on the design of the device but they also “skipped” entire V6 series and even the base V7 model cant be seen anywhere. However, Name hardly makes any difference to the performance of a device so read ahead our detailed Vivo V7+ review where we try to find out if the Vivo V7+ stands true to the hype or not.
Vivo V7+ Specifications
5.9-inch HD (1440*720) display | 1.8 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 450 octa-core processor | 4GB RAM | 64 GB internal, expandable up to 256GB via dedicated SD card slot | 24MP front camera | 16MP rear camera | 3,225 mAh battery | Android 7.1.2 | Rs. 21,999
Vivo V7+ SAR Value
1.180W/KG@1G(Head) | 0.727W/KG@1g(Body)
Vivo V7+ Unboxed
Inside the box, you get pretty regular stuff like
- Vivo V7+ Mobile phone itself
- A bulky Power Adapter (5V-2A)
- Headphone
- Data cable
- SIM eject tool
- Quick Start Guide
- A Silicone Back Cover
Vivo V7+ Review : Build and Design
The Vivo V7+ is an attention grabber right from the moment you take out the phone from the box. It comes with a minimalistic design and the phone feels light, easy to hold, compact and premium. The front of the device is all occupied by the tall display that comes with 18:9 aspect ratio like the LG G6 or the Samsung Galaxy S8/S8+.
There are very thin bezels on the sides while relatively thin bezels on the top and bottom. A front-facing camera, earpiece, selfie flash and necessary sensors are located on the top of the display while the bottom part of the display is buttonless. The 3.5 mm audio jack, a secondary mic, micro USB charging port and the speaker grille are located on the bottom of the device.
1 of 5On the back, you can find the rear-facing camera, flash, and the fingerprint sensor is located right in the middle of the device. It is easily accessible when you hold the phone in one hand and very fast and accurately every time. The Power button and a volume rocker are located on the right while the triple sim tray that can hold 2 sims and a micro SD card (yes triple sim tray!) is located on the left.
The V7+ carries a minimalistic design and there is no physical button on the front whatsoever. Apart from the rear camera which protrudes out, the device is uniform and even the fingerprint sensor is also located at the level of the body of the phone with just a thin border helping to identify the location of the sensor.
Overall we quite liked the looks an design of the Vivo V7+ as it looks very premium and classy. There are very thin silver colored antenna lines as well as a silver colored line that runs across the border of the device makes the phone look elegant and impressive.
Vivo V7+ Review : Software and Battery
The Vivo V7+ comes with a heavily customised skin on top of Android 7.1.2 Nougat out of the box. Though there are not too many bloatware as compared to other Chinese phones, the UI and the icons still look highly “inspired” by iOS. Overall the software performance has improved several notches as compared to the previous devices.
1 of 4The UI is customizable and you can make adjustments as per your needs. The onscreen buttons to status bar modifications, gesture, and smart motion actions can be changed as per the convenience. However, you still need to do a couple of steps extra by going to Settings then scrolling down to more settings to be able to check the basic pieces of information like the model no, IMEI, processor details etc about the phone. Vivo somehow is still not showing the battery capacity in the settings which is quite strange.
Another irritating issue is with the SMS inbox. You just cant multi-select spam SMSes (which we in 100s every day)and you need to delete messages one by one. A very basic thing yet extremely irritating. You can access the control center by swiping up from the bottom of the display while the alerts and notifications can be accessed by swiping down from the top. Again that is thanks to the iOS inspiration.
With the size of the display, split screen is a really handy feature for multitasking. However, this feature also is crippled due to the limitation of apps that support split screen. Wish Vivo had properly implemented this feature to get the maximum out of the huge display at the hand.
The UI still needs a bit of refinement as a lot of places you still get alerts in Chinese and in a few built-in apps the corners are still not rounded. Overall Vivo V7+ is fairly smooth in operation.
In terms of the battery, the phone comes with 3225 mAH battery easily lasts just over a day of usage with full brightness and internet connectivity. We tried the battery drain test and the battery lasted for over 12 hours. Which means on regular usage you can spend a day easily without looking for a charger often.
With a recent update, Vivo has also pushed in face unlock feature on Vivo V7+ and it works fast and perfectly fine 9 out of 10 times.
Vivo V7+ Review : Performance and Display
The Vivo V7+ comes with a 5.99-inches HD display which is 1440*720 pixel in resolution with a 18:9 aspect ratio. This 18:2 aspect ratio makes the phone almost bezel less and qquite easy to operate. On papers a large display is good for media consumption and playing games however the low resolution somewhat spoils the experience. Although the lack of a full HD display is most prominent while playing high-end games on a day to day use you wont fine much difference.
1 of 2Vivo’s choice of using an HD display on a device priced at Rs. 22,000 is strange. Other smartphones like LG Q6 or the Redmi 4 etc come with a full HD display and yet are priced way lower.
The Vivo V7+ is powere by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 450 processor and comes with 4GB RAM and 64GB internal storage. Some applications like CPU-Z or CPU-X show the processor as Snapdragon 625 which is strange. As per Vivo, “This may be because the apps are not updated with the new processors. The Snapdrgon 450 is a fairly new processor.”
Anyways, We tried playing games like Asphalt Nitro, Assasins Creed, Paralyzed etc. and found that the game play was smooth and hardly any lag at all. Playing games and Watching movies on the go was a pleasant experience, thanks to the large screen. It was a please experience since the phone did not heat up at all, unlike any other device. The auido outuput was way better than any other device in this range thanks to the updated audio DAC. I barely needed to conk up the volume to the max since the ausio was already very loud and clear from the speakers located at the bottom of the phone.
Vivo V7+ Review: Camera
Coming to the last and most controversial part of the Vivo V7+ review, we will talk about the camera on the phone. Vivo claims that the phone comes with a 24-mp front camera that comes with an led flash and a 16MP rear camera. While there is/was a lot of controversy around the front camera regarding the megapixel count or the sensors used.
1 of 8While I found that the phone is much more about the experience and not just plain selfies like a few previous generation devices from Vivo, the camera performance surprised me to a certain extent. I’m not a big fan of the beauty mode as it makes the person look unnatural.
I quite liked the potrait mode in selfies, which blurs out the background. the images looked impressive and gave nice effect to the selfies. There is a live photo mode on the V7+ as well like the one present on iPhones. The Rear camera on the V7+ also does a decent job. It is able to capture very good details in normal and controlled llighting environment however slightly struggles in the low light situations.There are a tonnes of other features available in the camera app including a professional mode as well. The phone only records 1080p videos from the rear camera while the front camera only records at 720p max. which again is a downer.
The phone only records 1080p videos from the rear camera while the front camera only records at 720p max. which again is a downer. There is a real time beautification mode for video calls that helps you remove blemishes while making video calls. This feature works on Facebook messenger, WhatsApp Viber, BBM etc. Thisis quite like the one present on Asus Zenfone Live (review)