Vivo V7+ Review - Bezel-less 24 MP Selfie Machine!

The latest and greatest from Vivo is a 24 MP Selfie machine with immersive bezel less display has arrived for PHP 18K! Does it hold up? Let's find out! Here's our Vivo V7+ full review.

Vivo V7+ full review!

For our review part 1: Vivo V7+ Unboxing And First Impressions

Display Quality

HD+

Being one of the very few phones with an immersive high screen to body ratio displays on the market today at this price point is a major feat. The display immerses you that as you stare at it, it draws you in. It even made us forget that it was 720p.

Completely immersive display!

Yes we admit it, we prefer a 1080p display but it just drew us in that we forgot that it was 720p. The colors on the other hand are vibrant and the display is bright. The resolution is okay but some will find it lacking for 2017. We would love 1080p but the V7+ compensates on other things.

It is also a 10 point multitouch display that will greatly benefit multitaskers and smartphone gamers alike!

Audio Quality

Single speaker grill

The Vivo V7+ has a single speaker grill at the bottom. At max volume it can get loud with little distortion but with crisp details, wide range, and strong bass.

It also gets muffled easily when held in landscape mode. The phone would have cost more had Vivo added a second speaker. We just hope Vivo finds a way to do so in their upcoming phones. It needs great speakers to do it justice.

The stock earphones however does bring justice. There is very little distortion in all volumes and the sound stage is decently sized. The trebles, the mids and the bass are well balanced. It is very good for the price you're paying for it.

We used our trusty RHA S500i and the earphones just sings. It brings out the deeper sound and crispier details in each tone. The DAC on this thing is so good.

The V7+ has two microphones that work for noise cancellation during calls or audio recording. We've never had problem with voice recording and voice calls. Our callers never had problems with it as well.

Battery Life

Wild battery score!

The phone is equipped with 3,255 mAh battery w/ 1.6A battery charger on a 5.99 inch 720p display sounds good. In our benchmarks, we got at least 17 hours. This was a surprise to us given that huge display. We expected it to be way below that.

Insane battery life for the battery size!

In our real world usage of email, texting, calling, youtube streaming, chrome web browsing, social media and transportation hailing apps, we got 5 to 6 hours of LTE on screen time. This is astounding given the fact that there are few phones that outperform this. Some of them are the ZF4 Max, and the Lenovo K6 Note but both of those have 4,000 mAh and above battery capacities. 

It has the standard low power mode and the super power saving mode. The Low power mode lowers performance to save battery life while the super power saving mode disables most features except for the essentials like contacts, phone, messaging and clock apps.

It takes 90 to 120 minutes to charge the phone from under 10 to 20 percent to full battery depending on how much battery was left when plugged in.

Camera

Main camera!

The V7+ sports a 16 MP f/2.0 w/ AF and LED flash at the back. You'll find the regular Auto photo, HDR, High resolution mode (Ultra HD), professional, beauty, slow motion and time-lapse modes.

In Pro mode you can only have a max ISO of 3200 but you can have a max shutter speed of 1/3333th of a second and up to 16 seconds which makes this great for high speed action or super bright conditions and for 16 second long exposures.

In the camera settings you have the option to add geotagging and varying ways to release the shutter like touch, voice or palm releases.

It produces vivid color images with decent resolution and contrast. The f/2.0 aperture with its sensor is sufficient enough to provides low light images with acceptable levels of grain but at the cost of resolution. The loss of resolution is not that high but somehow noticeable. It still remains better than some of the competition. Color and contrast remains to acceptable in terms of low light.

The flash on the rear camera can illuminate up to 5 feet which is on par with most phones right now. 

Rear Camera Samples

Daylight 1

Daylight 2

Close-up!

Indoor

Close-up lowlight

Lowlight

In front, it has an 24 MP f/2.0 camera for selfies, and like other Vivo phones, we think that this is the main camera. It goes w/ the usual auto HDR, face beauty, and group selfie panorama modes.

It does have the blur / bokeh mode that dual cameras have popularized this year but curiously, it can only be used with the selfie camera. It's also hidden away in the face beauty mode and not when you switch the from the main to the selfie camera. This may confuse some people.

The beautify still has an adjustable level of beautification from soft level to harsh.

The resolution is unparalleled at this price point. The colors, the contrast and the punch are good.

Selfie bokeh is better than ever. It's still not as great as the Huawei's and other artificial bokeh modes, but it does have creamier background blur effect now. Face beauty mode has a more natural look as well.

Surprisingly the increased grain in low light doesn't affect resolution too much but it does have this magenta cast when it's really dark.

Otherwise, the way this handset handles low light is staggering for a phone! One of our pictures were taken in a pitch black room with little light coming from the windows and it managed to raise the exposure with decent amount of grain and some magenta cast but the resolution is still high!

It even has a nice softlight LED flash.

Selfie Camera Samples

Daylight selfie

Daylight beautify

Daylight bokeh

Selfie panorama

Indoor shot

Indoor selfie bokeh

Lowlight groufie without using the the groufie mode

Selfie in pitch black condition

For videos the main camera can shoot up 1080p but with no control of the frame rates. The video from the main camera are sharp with vivid colors and good noise control. It is one of the best video footage at this price point.

The selfie camera can shoot up to 1080p and the quality of video is better than the main camera. The low light video and the noise control is also superior. We are happy to say that this is one of the best selfie camera for video today.

Video Samples

Performance

Decent overall performance!

The phone packs the 1.8 GHz 64 Bit Snapdragon 450 octa core processor with 4 GB of RAM and the Adreno 506 GPU. What's interesting is that the Snapdragon 450 is better than the processors on the Samsung Galaxy J7 Pro and OPPO F3!

Snapdragon 450 + Adreno 506 + 4 GB RAM!

The processor, GPU and the 4GB are powerful enough to push that 5.99 inch 720p display with any app thrown at it that we never experienced lag or drop in framerate.

We did however experience force closures with our keyboard app. This then disappeared after updating the FunTouch OS and the keyboard app.

Android 7.1 Nougat w/ FunTouchOS 3.2

Equipped with the latest Nougat Android 7.1 based FunTouchOS 3.2, the interface is clearly Vivo with the choice of wallpapers, colors and the swipe down notifications and swipe up control center. We've said before that the FunTouchOS is one of our favorites because it combines the great things from Android and iOS in one package and this is still the same only refined.

Fingerprint scanner is fast, accurate and instantaneous. We have no problems with it. We liked that it was moved to the back of the phone but after registering for the face unlock access, we almost never use the fingerprint sensor now. The accuracy and seamlessness of the face unlock access makes the simple tap of a finger on the scanner feel like so much effort. It would miss one out of ten times though but a second try usually fixes this quickly.

Multitasking was one of the bigger updates to Android lately but FuntouchOS actually limits multitasking windows with selected apps. This is probably because of the 720p which limits real estate.

Telephone connectivity is good with strong signal and steady 4G data connectivity. There's the usual WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS as well that never failed us.

Pros - Wide screen, adreno 506 is good for gaming, 5 hours of LTE screen on time, best selfie camera so far, face unlock access is so convenient, good main camera

Cons - 720p 5.99 display could be lacking for some, plastic back plate

Verdict

The Vivo V7+ is a 720p 5.99 inch display with an amazing back camera and an even stunning 24 MP that takes great pictures even in low light. Yes, it's priced at PHP 17,990 but there is no other phone with that offers the same immersive display with the camera and battery life that this offers.

The 720p display will stir some away but to us, when it is in your hands the resolution remains good at eye level. It will only be noticeably less sharp when placed side by side with higher resolution phones.

SO, if you are looking for a phone with great cameras, good LTE battery life and can live with 720p then this phone is for you!

Build / Design - 4

Display - 4

Audio - 4

Battery - 4.5

Camera - 4.25

Performance - 4

Average - 4.125 / 5