Design:
The phone has a unibody design with a nice metallic finish and it certainly looks elegant. The smartphone weighs 154 grams and features a 5.5-inch HD (720×1280 pixels) IPS LCD display with Corning Gorilla 2.5D curved glass. The display is bright with vivid colors and good viewing angles. The build quality offers better grip over the phone and makes it feel solid in hand.
Upfront, the USP of Vivo V5, the 20 MP shooter is placed along with the front flash. Below the screen there’s an oval shaped finger-print scanner which is integrated into the Home button. It’s accurate and quickly unlocks the device. It comes with backlit capacitive buttons on the either side of the home button/fingerprint sensor. The back of the device has the rear camera and LED flash placed on the top-left, with Vivo logo at the centre.
The volume rocker and power button on the right hand side, while the hybrid SIM tray is placed on the left. At the bottom edge, there is a micro USB port with USB OTG support, bottom-firing speaker, headphone jack and the microphone. The smartphone is equipped with an ‘Eye Protection Mode’ feature that filters out blue light to protect vision and prevents eye strain. It supports ‘Smart Screen-Split’ feature allows users to multitask without having to switch back and forth every time a message pops up. You can also double tap to turn on/off the display to have a quick glance of notifications.
Camera:
The rear camera on V5 is a 13MP shooter with phase detection autofocus and LED flash which click decent photos. The overall quality of photos we have taken from V5 is good in both in light and low-light conditions. In the daylight and the primary camera captured detailed images. Auto-focus works well most of the time but struggles a bit in low-light conditions. It includes ‘Professional mode’ which offers users control over the camera’s ISO, shutter speed, exposure compensation and more.
Now, the highlight of the phone- 20 MP front camera. It features Sony IMX376 sensor with f/2.0 aperture. The front shooter captures great selfie images in bright light conditions and indoor shots were decent as well. In our review, it worked much better than Oppo F1s and Gionee S6s. Images appear sharp even after zooming in and the skin tone and colors remain accurate. There’s plenty of depth in the images as well.
The “Moonlight Glow” feature induces a natural glow on the face that lights up the picture irrespective of the lighting conditions. The quality of photos clicked using the selfie camera with ‘moonlight glow’ flash look decent. There is a ‘beauty mode’ that removes facial imperfections. Overall, the camera performance of the Vivo V5 is pretty good. You would appreciate it, if you’re a selfie lover.
Performance
The smartphone is powered by MediaTek MT6570 octa-core 64-bit processor. It houses 4GB of RAM and 32GB internal memory, which is expandable up to 128GB. It runs on Funtouch OS 2.6 based on Android 6.0 Marshmallow. The gaming experience on the smartphone was also decent but you need to reduce graphic settings for playing the hig-end games. Surprisingly, the phone doesn’t heat up at all. We did notice a lag while switching between too many apps but overall our experience was smooth. The phone supports 4G VoLTE and call quality is also good. The audio experience on V5 was pleasant and the audio quality through the speaker was very loud.
Battery:
Battery life on V5 is good. Moderate usage should comfortably get you a day out of the Vivo V5. We've been using this phone for 8 days now and its battery performance so far is pretty decent. The 3,000mAh battery easily managed to last for a day with calling, social media applications, music playback, web browsing and light gaming. It gets a thumbs up from our side on Battery.
Verdict:
With the V5, VIVO delivered a mid-ranger that attracts selfie enthusiasts. It doesn't only look great but offers decent battery that easily lasts throughout the day. The Vivo V5 beats the Oppo F1s, F1 Plus and Gionee s6 when it comes to selfies. It's a worthy investment if you are looking for a good selfie camera smartphone with lasting battery.