Vivo V5 Plus Review - Selfie Dual Camera Done Right!

Vivo recently entered the Philippine market and they have been raging through like a storm with V5 late last year! And, it was teased the the higher-tier model would be released soon. So we were excited and here it is, the V5 Plus with dual selfie camera.

Vivo V5 Plus review

Disclaimer: This unit was borrowed from Vivo Philippines for an honest review.

Vivo V5 Plus Specs

Display: 5.5 Inch FHD IPS In Cell 1920 x 1080 resolution w/ 2.5D curved glass and Gorilla Glass 5 protection at 401 ppi

CPU: 2.0 GHz 64 Bit Snapdragon 625 octa core processor

GPU: Adreno 506

RAM: 4 GB

ROM: 64 GB

Main Camera: 16 MP f/2.0 w/ AF and LED flash

Selfie Camera: 20 MP f/2.0 Sony IMX376 + 8 MP w/ softlight flash

Battery: 3,160 mAh w/ fast charge

OS: Android 6.0 Marshmallow OS w/ FunTouch OS 3.0

Connectivity: WiFi 802.11 ac, 3G, LTE, Bluetooth 4.0, GPS, A GPS, GLONASS, BeiDou, dual SIM

Sensors: Accelerometer, light, proximity, e-compass, gyrocope

Others: Fingerprint scanner, AK4376 HiFi DAC

Dimensions: 153.8 x 75.5 x 7.6 mm

Weight: 158.6 g

Price: PHP 19,990

Unboxing / Accessories

Premium Box + Premium Phone = Premium Love!

The presentation is premium to the letter. Embossed lettering with textured silver accents are seen across the main box and the inner boxes. Each wire is tied neatly without any sign of entanglement.

Unboxed!

Out of the box is the standard documentation, power plug (that looks like Apple's), USB cables, and earphones (that looks like earpods). Clearly, from the hardware and the accessories, the Cupertino brand has been a big inspiration. The power plug and the USB cords feel solid and enduring. The cords of the earphones feel like they won't fray easily nor be pulled out quite quickly from regular use. 

Build Quality / Design

Dual selfie cameras, earpiece, sensors, and display!

The phone is clearly inspired by the iPhone 7, With an aluminum unibody that shines even with the brushed texture. The antenna lines are of a darker shade but are shaped to be very similar. The front is where you find the difference. The prominent difference is the dual selfie cameras, the menu and back buttons and the power, and volume buttons on the right side.

Dual camera sensors w/ softlight flash on top

Ports and speaker grills below

Left ejectable SIM tray slot

Power button and volume rocker at right

At the bottom is a single speaker grill, the micro USB 2 port, headphone jack and a microphone slot. The top is bare while at the left is the sim card tray. It's quite minimal as functionally possible.

Menu and Back Capacitive buttons can be customised to be always turned off!

The face of the phone has the dual 20 MP selfie cameras, the display, the earpiece, the various sensors, the capacitive and the home buttons, and the fingerprint sensor!  It's premium though inspired heavily from another brand but for the price, we are not complaining!

Display Quality

10 points of multi-touch!

The 10 point multi-touch, 2.5D 5.5 Inch FHD IPS In Cell 1920 by 1080 resolution that results in 401 ppi is bright, vivid and sharp! The viewing angles are great and at max brightness, we were able to read the screen no problem. We only found one or two situations where it couldn't compete with the sun!

There's 10 points of touch!

The blacks and the dynamic range of the screen is quite deep as well, we found the display as one of the best for its price range! 

Battery Life

Our usual battery benchmark would always fail at 20% because of the energy saving prompt kept popping up. There was no way to turn this off. I hope they fix this in an update. However, from 100% to 20% would take the benchmark at least 8 hours. This was consistent with the three times we tried to benchmark the phone. 

In real life performance, the 3,160 mAh battery would last at least 12 hours without LTE connection and with only texts, calls, and messaging. It would last roughly around 6 to 8 hours with a mix of social media browsing, YouTube video consumption and LTE connection. This is proves that the processor is power efficient!

Vivo has their own proprietary turbo charging feature that lets us charge from 0 to 100 in under 90 minutes and it delivers. Huge batteries with quick charge is a God send. What amazed us even more is how it never heated up when we were charging it. WE were relatively scared at first but thankfully it never gave us problems!

It also works with other fast charging hubs and fast charging cables! We used the Tronsmart cables and Tronsmart USB hubs with no problem.

Audio Quality

The single speaker is at the bottom beside the micro USB port. The sound quality is great with clear, distinct tones with decent range but with acceptable max volume. It won't be able to fill a room bigger than a single bedroom.

Once we plugged-in our personal RHA S500i in-ear monitors and the stock vivo headphones the audio beast revealed itself. The Volume, the power, the depth and the sound stage all come together to give the average music lover a personal concert like experience. There is no doubt and that was when HiFi button on the stock player was turned off. When we turned it on, it refined the details and release of the sound but to most people, they wouldn't notice it. Sound quality with earphones is one of the best for its price range.

We love it!

We played our standard FLAC file music playlist and the stock player can play it flawlessly. We did not experience slowdowns or problems with it.

My only gripe with the stock earphones is that it looks so much like the Apple earpods and that the part of the earpods that sticks to the holes of your ears are a little sharper than I would like. It's not sharp enough to cut your skin but its sharp enough for you to notice it. Hopefully they will fix this in the future.

The microphone on the phone and on the stock earphones the other hand is good. I have never experienced complaints from calls I made with the Telco providers or with Facebook or Viber.

Camera

Both the dual camera selfie cameras and the primary back camera performed wonderfully!

The phone is equipped with a primary 16 MP f/2.0 rear camera. The camera app has HDR, Face beauty, Panorama, various flash modes, various filter modes with 4K video recording. It does not have options for how many frames per second at any resolution which is a bummer.

The camera modes

The main camera takes sharp, vivid and decent contrast images that pop and make taking photographs fun! Lowlight performance okay, not great. At least it isn't as bad compared with most midrange phones.

Complete for phone, Pro mode

You can control the exposure by tapping the area you want to be in focus and adjust the exposure by moving your finger from side to side to your desired exposure. It doesn't appear to have manual mode which would be a problem for photography enthusiasts. For most people, it wouldn't matter because the pictures are decent straight from camera.

Rear Camera Samples

Auto mode, daylight

Manually adjusted

Food shot

Night shot

Pro mode, light trails

The secondary dual 20 MP (from Sony) + 8 MP (for depth) cameras are even better than the main camera!

Adjust the aperture manually

You have the ability to change the aperture up to the f/16 maximum for the hardware and push it further with software all the way up to f/0.95. At F2.0 the bokeh is good enough to be comparable with dedicated cameras. The f/0.95 software however isn't up to par though it is quite obvious to the discerning eye that it is artificial so we advise to just stay at f/2.0 if you want those out of focus background portraits!

Best selfie dual camera so far!

It has a variety of flash settings that actually improve the quality of the shots when the lighting isn't the best. We have samples below of the different modes. Ultimately our favorite was the Ultra HD mode or the Pro mode where the details are sharpest with minimal noise and warmer tones. The color accuracy is off by a small margin but most people wouldn't mind. This already has become one of or the best selfie cameras out there!

Selfie Camera Samples

Beautify and HDR

Normal and bokeh mode

Indoor selfie bokeh test

Selfie auto at night

Beautify selfie w/ softlight flash and bokeh mode

Groufie night bokeh

The main camera shoots up to 4K, but without framerates customization and OIS. In front, the 20 MP selfie cam has the ability to shoot 1080p max. Quality is decent on both cameras, but would have been better if it had OIS or at least EIS.

Video Samples

Performance

The benchmarks scores

With an Antutu score of at least 63K, it is crushing benchmarks like it were nothing! The Single core geekbench is respectable for its price and will crush most apps while the multicore is where it shines at at least 3K! It wasn't a surprise that the phone can handle multiple apps in the background and with multiple chrome tabs too! This is one of the more powerful phones for this category!

Asphalt 8 Airborne graphics settings at high!

The 1080p resolution is the perfect balance between looks and practicality. Images look sharp and crispy but it does not eat too much battery, and so far it helps in games too. As Asphalt 8: Airborne is at high graphic settings with a constant 30+ frames per second with no noticeable lag or frame rate drops!

High graphics setting with consistent 30+ fps!

Android based Funtouch OS without app drawer with iOS design cues!

It is running Android 6.0 Marshmallow based Funtouch OS with Nougat version coming out soon. Funtouch OS is an interesting skin where it is Android but with design cues from iOS and surprisingly it is easy to use! It's the perfect marriage between Android and iOS. Almost everything is easy to see and to access. There are some settings that are hidden but you get used to it. Vivo can improve this via the Nougat update.

Command Center!

When you swipe down from the top of your screen, you get your calendar and notifications while if you swipe up from the bottom you get your control center where you have access to customizable quick toggles like WiFi, GPS, airplane mode, etc.

VPN and OTG are compatible but are buried under the more settings tab inside the settings app which is could be a annoying for people who use them on a regular basis.

Fingerprint is very good. On par with the second generation iPhone fingerprint sensors. It's fast and we never had a misread of our fingerprint ever. 

One of the things we missed was the SD card slot.

Pros - Premium design, UI is the perfect marriage of Android and iOS, Dual camera selfie performance and implementation is the best for price, robust camera software, bokeh effect is decent up to f/2.0, 4K video quality is good, audio quality via headphones is amazing, fingerprint scanner swift!

Cons - May turn off people who think it copied iPhone design, software based ,aximum aperture at f/0.95 is gimmicky, limited video controls, single speaker could get louder, earphone edges are sharp, no OIS camera, no SD card

Verdict

At this price range, it is best selfie dual camera phone in the market today! Image quality of selfie cameras are very good up to f/2.0 aperture and falters when using the software pushing f/0.95 aperture where bokeh is harsh and artificial. The main camera is no joke as well. It comes with decent visual quality 4K video recording but has almost no customizable settings like framerates.while Funtouch OS looks great and is one of the easiest skin to learn.

Funtouch OS looks great and is one of the easiest skin to learn, but could still be improved by polishing some parts to make experience quicker and more intuitive. Otherwise, the gaming and performance are stellar. The volume of the single speaker could get louder, but the sounds are clear with decent range. 

Overall, this is a great bang per buck device and we highly recommend it to anyone who wants best smartphone selfie dual camera experience today.

Build / Design - 4.25

Display - 4.5

Audio - 4.5

Battery - 4

Camera - 4.25

Performance - 4.25

Average - 4.29