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Vivo V3 review




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Vivo is one of the brands that is slowly being recognized in the market. It’s essentially known to offer smartphones with high-end features at affordable prices. Good examples of this are their current running models, the Vivo V3 and the Vivo V3 Max. Both the metal clad phones are powered with good hardwareTheonly difference between the two being the screen size and battery.  Vivo V3, the smaller variant comes with a 5-inch screen and a price tag of Rs. 15,000. As one of the flourishing segments for smartphones, it has plenty of competition to beat. The phone comes with its own unique features, but is it enough to take on its counterparts. It’s time to find out!

Design and Build

The Vivo V3 features the typical design we are seeing more and more affordable phones carry these days. There is nothing bad about it, but there is nothing exciting about it either. It carries the usual blend of metal casing at the back, with a glass coating at the front. We’re happy about the metal chassis, but it’s disappointing not to see Gorilla Glass at the front. The phone doesn’t come across as very sturdy. The only thing we like about the glass coating are the subtle curves around the edges, where it meets the side panels.

Vivo V3_all sides

To some extent, the design of the Vivo V3 comes across as an attempt to look premium. The phone is available in Gold and Rose Gold colours. They look decent, but the plain finish on it makes the device look a little cheap. The highlighted bands at the top and bottom add a little exclusivity, but it doesn’t help much. It’s also a little difficult to get a grip on the phone, around the edges. The screen-to-body-ratio is approximately 68 per cent, which is decent for a 5-inch screen smartphone. Given the space however, we think that the three capacitive buttons at the front could’ve been designed to be a bit larger. One thing you notice about the Vivo V3 is its blockish design. The chassis features straight lines with few curves around the edges. Surprisingly it’s still comfortable to hold the phone in one hand, mainly because of its light weight and a thickness of just 7.5mm. The blockish design continues with other aspects of the design as well. For example, the fingerprint sensor at the back is placed in a small square housing. It’s easy to access with your index finger when holding the phone in one hand, but people with broader fingers will find it a little difficult to get the placement right. Even the rear camera lens is square in shape.  

Vivo V3_design

That said, it’s the little details where the Vivo V3 stands out among other phones. A good example of this is the speaker grill at the bottom. It’s well-designed and looks pretty stylish. Next to it, is the USB port. The standby button and volume rocker keys are placed on the left. The 3.5mm audio jack is at the top and the SIM card / microSD card tray is on the right.


Features

Inside the metal chassis, the V3 comes with a decent set of hardware. It runs a Qualcomm Snapdragon 617 octa-core processor and 3GB of RAM. It’s not the latest hardware but put together, it has just the right amount of power to get through light to moderate tasks. On the storage side, you get 32GB with an option to expand to 128GB using a microSD card. That’s good enough to store plenty of movies, music and games. Alongside all of these, the phone provides a good number of features, such as 4G VoLTE support, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, OTG support and a fingerprint sensor. You also get a whole range of sensors, including an accelerometer, light sensor, proximity sensor and a gyrometer.

Vivo V3_finger print sensor 2

However, it’s the software where the V3 falls behind. It’s a little disappointing to see the Vivo V3 run the older Android 5.0.1 (Lollipop) operating system. It doesn’t look like the Vivo V3 might get the latest updates either. The OS is heavily layered with Vivo’s FunTouch UI. It puts a completely different spin on the experience. There is no homescreen, and you are directly greeted with the app drawer when you switch on the phone. Besides having a drop-down notifications bar, you also get a status bar that can be scrolled up from the bottom. You get to see recent apps here with the toggle options for brightness and audio. At the bottom, you see all the shortcuts for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, screen rotation and others.  

Vivo V3_FunTouchUi

People who have used other Android phones before might take a little time to get around the interface. The recent apps button, is not what it says. Pressing the button gives you access to widgets, sliding animations and a place to hide apps, you don’t want others to access. You can even encrypt these apps with a pin, if you like. The layout of the Settings app has also been played around with. Right at the bottom is where you’ll see all the advanced features. There are plenty of additional feature that the FunTouch UI carries. You get a whole bunch of motion controls on the Vivo V3. There are nine gestures controls to open apps instantly from the lock screen. Unfortunately, you can’t customize the list of apps. Besides that, you also get access to some air operations that bring the screen to life, by simply waving your hand in front of it. There is plenty of stuff to play around with here.  

Vivo V3_gestures

The 5-inch screen features an HD resolution, with a pixel density of just 294 ppi. It doesn’t sound like a lot. A multi-screen feature is included too. Unfortunately, it only works with video apps like Videos, Google Play Movies & TV, and YouTube. Here you get a pop up for notifications from apps, when you’re watching a video. Clicking on the icon opens the app next to the video in the split-screen format. This helps you deal with notifications instantly and have an uninterrupted video experience. There is also a Super Screenshot tool that lets you take long screenshots, doodle on them or even record them for some time.

Vivo V3_display

One thing Vivo promises with the V3 is great sound. Fitted into the phone is an AK4375 Hi-Fi chip, which ensures a stunning audio output. It works with both, the on-board speakers and headphones. Vivo also claims to have put a lot of thought into the mono speaker at the bottom. It certainly looks good on the outside, but we’ll see how good the performance is.  

Vivo V3_speaker grill

If there is one thing the Vivo V3 isn’t short on – its camera features. Both the 13MP rear camera and the 8MP front camera get plenty of features to keep you occupied. For starters, there are 27 creative filters you can use. Additionally, there are 45 different watermarks to choose from. The main sceen of the app features three primary modes - Beauty mode, Photo and Video. You can simply switch between them by swiping. The rear camera features eight different modes that help click photos and videos in different situations. This includes the basic ones like HDR, Night, Panorama and Motion Tracking. There is also a Professional mode included, if you feel like taking controls in your own hand. You get access to Exposure, ISO, Shutter and Focus here. Advanced video modes like time-lapse and slow motion video recording are also included. Most of the settings for shooting videos are set to default and can’t be changed. You can’t even change the resolution of the video if you want. It’s a little surprising and disappointing to know that the rear camera only supports 720p video recording, while the front camera supports full HD.

Vivo V3_camera

The front camera supports touch focus, which is good. It can adjust exposure based on the focus and lighting. Out of all the fancy modes, the front camera only gets the night mode. It doesn’t even get the video modes, even though it can record full HD videos. However, it makes the most of the customizable options present in the Beauty mode. There is no flash but the screen flashes brightly to act as one. Besides that, you also get motion control and hand gesture recognition for easy control. After having a look at of all of these features, it is a little discouraging to find out that the V3 only uses a 2,550mAh battery. It’s too less compared to many smartphones that come with similar sized screens. However, the efficient processor and HD resolution on the screen should help deliver a battery life of at least a day, on moderate use. Vivo has also included an iManager app that lets you monitor performance and even switch between four different battery plans, based on the usage. In difficult situations, you can always switch to Super Saver mode, which shuts down almost everything, while only giving you access to calling and messaging features.


Performance

We noticed the Vivo V3 to handle basic to moderate tasks quite decently. Just simple web browsing or scrolling through daily Instagram photos was no problem. The performance was smooth. We had a similar experience with full HD videos playing off the phone, while using YouTube at the same time. The screen offers a decent performance as well. Colours are subtle and that gives the screen a natural look. Brightness can be a problem outdoors, and darker tones don’t show that much detail. However, it still manages to present good viewing angles all around. The lower resolution results in slightly jagged edges, but it’s not prominent unless you look for it.  

Vivo V3_screen

The on-board speaker is loud and surprisingly very clear. Along with the screen, it makes a good media bundle. We didn’t have any trouble in understanding the dialogues in the videos we played on the phone. Even music sounded good. On high volume, the speaker sounds pretty tight and offers good detail. The best part is that the phone also supports FLAC files. Comparatively you might not find the bundled earphones to be very impressive, so we recommend third-party ones.

Vivo V3_NOVA3

  With games, the performance is pretty good. There was occasional stutter but the overall, the experience was smooth, even with heavy games such as N.O.V.A 3, Need for Speed: No Limits, Asphalt 8: Airborne and UFC. We played games on both the Normal mode and Extreme modes. We didn’t notice a lot of difference in the performance and the battery consumption was also more or less the same. Games took the same amount of time to load on both modes. Heat levels are of some concern, with the phone heating up in five minutes of gaming or using the camera.

Vivo V3_gaming

The rear camera clicks decent photos indoors. Most of the photos we clicked, came out looking good with natural colours. This is because of the accurate white balance. You’ll notice some lack of detail as soon as you start zooming in on photos. Focusing is a bit sluggish too, but the image stabilization is good enough to help avoid blur in slight shaky situation. We like the professional mode. It might not be very advanced but it helps in some scenarios. Even with two people present in the frame, the front camera managed to focus well. Comparatively, we felt the results from the front camera were better than the rear camera’s. There is plenty of detail and skin tones also look natural. We found the filters quite fun to play around with. The fingerprint sensor also makes it easy to click photos.  


Verdict

The Vivo V3 is a good phone, but it fails to stand out in the crowd. At the same price point, you can get phones that offer better performance, bigger batteries and the latest Android update, which is a disadvantage for the V3. We’re not very big fans of the UI either, because it’s not easy to get used to. However, we wouldn’t rule out the V3 completely. It still makes a good purchase for someone who gives looks a slightly higher preference. We recommend getting the Rose Gold variant, because that looks more premium.  


5 thoughts on “Vivo V3 review

  1. Hi Mohd Rosli Mat Latip, MicroSD cards formatted in FAT32 file system are limited to 4GB file sizes, which could be causing this problem. Some phone manufacturers may stop videos from exceeding 4GB. First try copying a video larger than 4GB on your device and try playing it to see if that works. If that doesn’t work, maybe you need to format the microSD card from FAT to exFAT.

    Do this at your own risk, and after backing up all data on the card.

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