HIGHLIGHTS
- The Vivo V15 is powered by using the octa-center MediaTek Helio P70 SoC
- The new Vivo telephone runs FunTouch OS 9 based on Android Pie
- Vivo V15 functions with triple rear cameras and a 32-megapixel selfie camera
Lately, Vivo has been trying to make a mark by bringing progressive features from high-give smartphones to the mid-range segment. The employer’s modern-day imparting — the Vivo V15 — brings the innovative pop-up selfie digicam to a good lower fee bracket. On paper, the Vivo V15 appears to be a solid tool with an attractive design, three rear cameras, a massive battery, fast charging, and a high-decision 32-megapixel front digicam. The Vivo V15 has an uphill assignment in the face of fierce opposition no longer simply from fee-for-money champions inclusive of Xiaomi and Asus, but additionally from Samsung, a behemoth whose new Galaxy M-series and A-collection smartphones are making waves inside the marketplace proper now.
Can the Vivo V15 step out of the shadow of its Pro sibling and turn out to be a successful cellphone in its price bracket? Can it justify charging Rs. 23,990 and wow potential buyers? Let’s find out in our in-depth overview of the Vivo V15.
Vivo V15 layout
The Vivo V15 is barely larger than the Vivo V15 Pro but has an equal design at 161.97×75. Ninety three×8.54mm is not the smallest tool out there, and it suggests the scales at 189.5g. It would require a chunk of a stretch to reach contact controls at the pinnacle of the display.
Curved edges give this cellphone a comfortable in-hand sense, but the rear panel can get scuffed without problems. Within a few days of utilization, we observed that the rear panel had small scratch marks at the bottom and edges. The end is also pretty glossy and picks up fingerprint marks and smudges without problems.
There are three color options: Royal Blue, Frozen Black, and Glamour Red. We have the Glamour Red model for assessment, and its gradient sample shifts between a punchy magenta and deep maroon, with sparkling silver dots at the bottom. The gradient finish extends all the way to the frame of this telephone for a uniform appearance. The Frozen Black variation does not now have this top-to-backside color shift impact.
If it were no longer for their one-of-a-kind color schemes, it’d be nigh impossible to distinguish the V15 from the V15 Pro. Starting with its looks, the Vivo V15 flaunts a gradient finish on the rear panel — Spectrum Ripple Design, inside the corporation’s vocabulary. Though Vivo uses the equal description for both fashions, the gradient texture of the Vivo V15 lacks the wave-like micro-dot pattern that makes the Vivo V15 Pro stand out. This similarity isn’t necessarily a horrific element because the Vivo V15 inherits the solid construct of its Pro sibling.
As for building first-class, the Vivo V15’s rear panel is polycarbonate, and the curved strip frame jogs around the edges. The device feels stable, and we no longer observe any flex while applying pressure to the rear panel. The positioning of the fingerprint sensor is handy. The big digital camera bump is an eyesore because it sticks out prominently. The pop-up module for the front digital camera is in line with the rear cameras, similar to how it’s placed in the Vivo V15 Pro. The motorized selfie digicam module pops in and out smoothly in one 2nd. It stays to be seen how the mechanism will hold up after prolonged use, so we’d propose some caution during its usage.
The energy and extent buttons are located on the right side. They’re positioned effortlessly and provide pleasant tactile comments despite the volume buttons being too stiff. A ‘Smart Button’ is located on the left, and it can be customized to activate Google Assistant or trigger a Google search with a single press. Double-press and long-press actions trigger duties, launch the image reputation device and open the Google Assistant Visual Snapshot page. These shortcuts may be customized in steps according to users’ choice.
Above it sits a tray for 2 Nano-SIM cards and a microSD card. Thankfully, it isn’t a hybrid tray, which means that you may not sacrifice twin-SIM capability in favor of more storage. The Micro-USB port, 3.5mm headphone jack, microphone, and speaker are located at the lowest. On the top are another microphone and the cutout for the pop-up digicam module.
According to Vivo, this telephone has a 90. The front is almost occupied using the display of 6—fifty-three-inch Ultra FullView In-mobile full-HD+ (1080×2340 pixels). Ninety-five percent display screen-to-body ratio and is blanketed by Corning Gorilla Glass five. Except for the chin at the lowest, bezels are almost non-existent for a practically all-screen layout. The earpiece is centrally placed at the pinnacle.
The box includes a Vivo V15 unit, a Micro-USB cable, an 18W charger, a hard silicone case, a headset, a SIM ejector tool, and some office work.
Vivo V15 specifications and features
The Vivo V15 has a thrilling blend of hardware. As cited above, it packs a 6.53-inch Ultra FullView In-Cell complete-HD+display (1080×2340 pixels). We might have a preferred Super AMOLED panel like the one the Vivo V15 Pro has, mainly thinking that the Samsung Galaxy A50 (Review) and Galaxy A30 (Review) both have Super AMOLED panels despite being priced appreciably lower.
The Vivo V15 is powered through the octa-core MediaTek Helio P70 SoC clocked at 2.1GHz, which has 4 ARM Cortex-A73 cores for all the heavy lifting and every other four power-efficient Cortex-A53 cores. At the same time, that is a reasonably capable processor, the Vivo V15’s rate tag warrants something beefier. For reference, the Realme three (Review) packs the same MediaTek Helio P70 processor; expenses are nearly one-third of Vivo V15’s asking charge.
Along with this SoC, you get 6GB of RAM and 64GB of the garage, which may be increased by up to 256GB using a microSD card. The Vivo V15 is available in an unmarried configuration and is priced at Rs. 23,990.
Aside from its eye-catching aesthetics, the principal appeal of the Vivo V15 Pro is its imaging hardware, particularly its 32-megapixel f/2.0 selfie shooter, which is the same as the Vivo V15 Pros. The rear setup comprises a prime 12-megapixel camera with a 1/2.8-inch sensor and f/1.Seventy-eight aperture. It is observed through an 8-megapixel huge-attitude digicam with an f/2.2 aperture. It’s described as having a hundred and twenty-diploma subject of view. However, it genuinely captures 108-diploma extensive photographs after factoring in lens distortion. There’s additionally a five-megapixel intensity sensor with an f/2—four aperture.
For connectivity, you get 4G VoLTE, Bluetooth 4.2, a Micro-USB port with OTG assist, GPS/ A-GPS, and a 3.5mm headphone jack. The battery is a four 000mAh unit, and this phone supports Vivo’s dual-engine Fast Charging. The use of a Micro-USB port on the Vivo V15 is surprising and disappointing since even phones that are priced extensively lower have already embraced USB Type-C in general.
The Vivo V15 Pro’s in-show fingerprint sensor no longer makes it to this more low-priced version, so there is a rear-hooked-up fingerprint sensor in the Vivo V15.
On the software facet, the Vivo V15 runs FunTouch OS 9, which is primarily based on Android nine Pie. Our evaluation unit had the January security patch. If you are coming from stock Android, there is a steep getting-to-know curve, specifically in terms of finding what you’re seeking out within the Settings app.
There is no app drawer, so you ought to swipe through your property screens to view all of your apps. A swipe to the right on the primary home screen will open the Smart Launcher, where you can locate task cards for the weather, a to-do list, app shortcuts, and information headlines. A standard search bar may be used to discover an app, jump to a gadget placement, or carry out a brief Web search.
The Vivo V15 has many pre-set-up apps, including in-residence and 0.33-birthday celebration, such as Gaana, Facebook, Paytm, Newsprint, UC Browser, and PhonePe. FunTouch OS 9 also has some neat features of its own. For example, the message display splitting function indicates incoming message notifications as floating bubbles that you may tap to instantly open the message in a cut-up-display screen view for multitasking. Other nifty functions include Smart Lock, Smart Mirroring, and Smart Motion. FunTouch OS nine additionally gives power-saving modes. The “Low Power Mode” optimizes the CPU and GPU speeds robotically, lowers the screen brightness, disables Wi-Fwi-fi Bluetooth, and takes other measures to lessen strength utilization. The “Extreme Power-Saving Mode” shuts down all sports and apps except Phones, Messages, Contacts, and Clocks. You can study about FunTouch OS 9 in the extra element in our Vivo V15 Pro overview.
Vivo V15 performance, cameras, and battery life
Before we delve into the overall performance of the Vivo V15, let’s discuss the display. Unlike the Super AMOLED panel of the Vivo V15 Pro, the Vivo V15 packs a 6.53-inch In-Cell LCD. However, the resolution remains the same at 1080×2340 pixels. The color output is right, and textual content appears crisp on it. Viewing angles are also respectable, with minimum shade shift while visible from unique angles.
Thanks to the all-display layout of this telephone, playing video games and looking at full-HD 60fps movies have become exciting. The Vivo V15’s default coloration profile is barely at the chillier aspect, but you can tweak the color temperature to your liking. Likewise, the color tone can be altered to lessen eye fatigue, which may either be activated manually or scheduled.
While the full-display design appears accurate, the rounded corners tend to cover a few screen contents, especially in apps that do not support aid scaling. You can either live with it or turn off complete-display scaling per app; however, doing so will upload unsightly black bars on each facet while playing video games and watching films in landscape mode.
The Vivo V15’s display also could have been higher in phrases of brightness. Using the tool indoors posed no issues. However, sunlight legibility was now not as accurate as we’d expect. Videos and snapshots seemed dim despite the brightness cranked to the hundred percent mark. Another disappointment is the lack of Widevine L1 certification, which became lacking from the Vivo V15 Pro. This approach might not be capable of moving HD films on Netflix or Amazon. This isn’t very easy for a telephone that costs over Rs. 20,000. We discovered the MediaTek Helio P70 to be a successful processor. In our day-to-day utilization, we no longer encounter any shortcomings. The usual social media and productivity apps launched fast, and switching among them became buttery clean. The 6GB of RAM enables at the same time as walking more than one app in the heritage.
In terms of the Vivo V15’s overall performance in synthetic benchmarks, it scored 1,46,753 in AnTuTu. It also controlled 1,511 and 5,767 points in Geekbench’s unmarried-center and multi-center checks, respectively. As for greater portraits-intensive tests, the brand new Vivo smartphone controlled 35fps inside the GFXBench T-Rex check and put up 11fps inside the GFXBench Manhattan three.1 test. These scores are similar to those of the Oppo F11 Pro, which is not surprising as each smartphone is powered using the same processor and has the same amount of RAM.
However, gaming performance was no longer as extraordinary. We examined the Vivo V15’s gaming chops with PUBG Mobile, Asphalt 9: Legends, and Modern Combat 5. PUBG Mobile is set to the Medium preset by default, with a Medium frame price and Balanced pix. While the experience became easy, we dealt with sporadic lag and stutters. Asphalt 9: Legends ran without troubles, but amping up the visual fine to High led to several body drops and stutters.
FunTouch OS 9 provides a function called Game Cube, which claims to beautify the in-sport revel; however, we did not see any considerable gameplay enhancements before or after adding a name to the Game Cube listing. Another gaming-centric function is Game Assistant, which claims to optimize the CPU and RAM for a better experience and offers short access to buttons for blocking notifications and controlling call behavior.
There’s an Esports Mode that allows customers to close heritage apps and block notifications simultaneously as gambling recreation and disable touch gestures to prevent accidentally establishing the color of the notification. There is also a choice known as the “Smart temperature growing strategy,” which, when activated, maintains performance steady despite producing extra warmth.
One substantial omission is the shortage of face popularity. Both the Vivo V15 and the Vivo V15 Pro feature 32-megapixel selfie cameras housed in motorized pop-up modules, but the latter helps face recognition, while the former inexplicably misses out on it.
A Vivo spokesperson confirmed to Gadgets 360 that the Vivo V15 no longer helps this protection feature, and there may be no word on whether it may or could be enabled with a software program replacement within the Destiny. Alternatively, the fingerprint sensor is impressively short and unlocks the device in much less than a 2d.
As for the digital camera’s overall performance, the Vivo V15 proved pretty competent. The Digicam UI is truly the same as the Vivo V15 Pro. Shortcuts for the record scanning mode, Pro mode, AI splendor, and AR stickers are laid out at the lowest; at the same time, controls for extensive-attitude mode, scene choice, and portrait mode are neatly organized above the shutter button. At the pinnacle, you’ll locate the controls for the settings section, portrait lights consequences, live snapshots, and HDR mode.
The 12-megapixel foremost digital camera employs a 1/1.28 inch sensor with 1.28-micron pixels and an aperture value of f/1.78. Vivo claims that the main digital camera has 24 million photosensitive gadgets and employs Dual Pixel Focusing generation to deliver brighter pictures with better clarity. Indeed, the pix captured using the Vivo V15 grew to become quite exact, exhibiting punchy hues and commendable surface info. The Vivo V15 truly shines on the subject of macro pictures. Subjects with wealthy color profiles had been captured with great detail. Shades became colorful, gradients were decent, and floor tendencies, including ridges, were also distinguishable while zoomed in. Even though close-up shots captured through the Redmi Note 7 Pro are better, the ones captured by the Vivo V15 can preserve their personal. Daylight shots also became crisp with proper dynamic range and sharpness.
There are some shortcomings, too. We noticed occasional shade bleeding alongside the edges in macro shots, particularly if the awareness turned brightly colored. Also, some daylight hours pictures were a little muted and exhibited washed-out shades, mainly those captured below harsh lighting fixtures.
Users may specifically omit to have a night mode. The pictures we took in low light exhibited grainy textures and had a large amount of noise. HDR mode attempts to make up for this with higher saturation and evaluation; however, it finally softens info. In comparison, the Redmi Note 7 Pro (Review) kept information and brought out hues much better.
As for portrait shots, they came out properly and had excellent depth. We much favored the capability to adjust the electricity of the blur impact before and after photographing. The Vivo V15’s cameras do an amazing process of locking attention and retaining detail. However, aspect detection could have been a tad higher. We frequently observed the extremities of an object in awareness blurred mistakenly when the depth of the impact changed into accelerated. The blurring impact was particularly uneven with complicated topics, including vines.
A devoted wide-perspective digital camera is one clean advantage the Vivo V15 has, letting customers capture huge panoramas. Thankfully, we did now not see any barrel distortion as we did with some of the wide-perspective photographs captured via the V15 Pro. Instead, we found that items look slightly flat, as though they are inclined inwards. This only became noticeable with items that had sharp definitions.
The video recording resolution maxes out at complete HD, with the frame price set to 30fps. It is disappointing that the Vivo V15 can not shoot 4K or complete HD 60fps video. Recordings end up decent. However, the loss of stabilization in this telephone approach shows a lot of shaking and trembling inside the motion pictures. Slo-mo video recording is likewise on the desk, with the decision set to 1280 x 720 pixels at 30fps.
The 32-megapixel front digital camera rather redeems the shortcomings of the rear cameras. Selfies captured by the front digicam had impressive detail, with proper coloration reproduction and sharpness. Edge detection also became fairly correct, and the studio lighting outcomes assist in making pictures social-media-ready by letting you add filters and colorful outcomes. The AI Beauty mode gives many beautification alternatives such as skin smoothening, pores and skin lightening, jawline slimming, and eye expansion. Full-frame beautification gear also reduces waistlines and makes legs appear thinner and longer. While the face beautification filters do their job as promised, they generally alternate the color profile of the entire photograph. For instance, skin lightening clears you up. The ISO affects the whole body.
Battery performance is one area where the Vivo V15 rises above its Pro sibling. The four 000mAh battery easily lasted through an afternoon of demanding utilization. During our everyday utilization — which worried being connected to a Wi-Fi-immunity all day long, the use of social media and productivity apps, paying attention to music with wi-fi-find phones for at least more than one hour, around an hour of gaming, and a few calls — the Vivo V15 nevertheless had round a 30-35 percentage rate left at the end of the day. In our HD video loop test, the Vivo V15 lasted for 15 hours and 22 mins.
As for staying power figures, a 30-minute consultation of PUBG Mobile at peak brightness caused a battery drop of 9 percent. Vivo ships the tool with an 18W charger, which takes the battery from 0 to 40 percent in 30 minutes and 75 percent in just one hour. Charging this smartphone to its full potential took around 1 hour and forty minutes. We noticed a discount in the charging speed as soon as the battery reached the three-quarters mark.
Verdict
The Vivo V15 inspired us with its lengthy battery life, lovely design, stable build quality, and successful front digicam. However, it has its fair share of shortcomings, too. It continues to be caught with a Micro-USB port, cannot stream HD films from offerings like Netflix, and its UI desires a few refinements. Moreover, low-mild pictures are sub-par for a phone at this rate.
Unfortunately for Vivo, its competition has greater to provide substantially lower price factors. The Redmi Note 7 Pro (Review) has an extra effective processor, better rear cameras, a larger battery, a USB Type-C port, a stunning build, and greater Rs. Thirteen,999. Even the Realme three (Review), starting at just Rs. 8,999, is powered by the same processor as the Vivo V15 and is a great budget supply.
The Vivo V15 also faces stiff competition from the Samsung Galaxy A50 (Review), which flaunts an attention-grabbing design, a lovely Super AMOLED display, triple rear cameras, and an in-display fingerprint sensor. Then there is the Oppo F11 Pro (Review), which gives comparable specs, including a pop-up front camera with higher camera overall performance, for a barely better asking fee. The Poco F1 (Review) and Asus ZenFone 5Z (Review) also provide flagship-degree specs around the identical charge factor.
To round matters up, the Vivo V15 has some things going for it; however, it is competing with several competitors that provide more bang for the dollar. Even if you like the idea of a pop-up digital camera, you could get tons of higher hardware and normal overall performance somewhere else.
