The V17 smartphone from a brand new to the Ukrainian market, vivo, competes for user wallets in one of the most
What is it?
Vivo V17 – smartphone in price categorythe bottom bar of the middle segment. It differs from what is on the market today for this money in design (the new product has already adopted a fresh trend in camera placement), proprietary interface (in my opinion, no one has gone further than vivo from bare Android today) and a rather active built-in intelligent assistant ( not Google).
What does the vivo V17 look like?
The model is available in two colors –white with pink and blue tints and blue with tints of different shades. We had the second option in our review. Material – plastic, although visually and tactilely resembles glass. Collects fingerprints, but worse has happened. The back cover of the smartphone shimmers in different shades of blue and cyan. The colors are very popular among manufacturers these days, but the shimmer is in its own way, and it seems that the texture has volume. It reminded me most of the blue in Oppo Reno2 – there is the same richness of shades, though for twice as much money. In general, vivo V17 looks expensive, rich and fun and youthful at the same time.
The frame around the screen is minimal.GSMArena estimates the display-to-body ratio to be 83%. This model has an almost archaic placement of the front camera – neither a popup nor a modest black dot, but a droplet that “flows” from the top of the body. Personally, I’m not a fan of popup solutions, so for me the camera placement is like this – Definitely a plus, there is less chance of damaging the device, less attention from others if you need to take a selfie.
Location of controls and connectors onsmartphone is quite typical: buttons on the right, speaker, microphone and Type-C on the bottom, except for the audio output on top – unusual, but normal. The fingerprint sensor is built into the screen and works perfectly, and the same can be said about the facial recognition system. The speaker is loud, but “flat” and not bassy. It doesn't get in the way when playing games or watching videos. The buttons are compact and sensitive. The screen lock key is highlighted – the lightest blue of those present on the body. A little thing that pleases the eye.
Rear – logo, camera module and flash.The module is triple, we designed it in a new way. But still, in my opinion, it turned out better than in the iPhone 11. The module is located in the upper part, in the center, located in a diamond shape, and does not protrude much above the body. There is no feeling of a strong skew of proportions, as in the above-mentioned models. Truth is, I’m sure that the camera’s more modest size is not due to a love of design, but to its photographic capabilities. Still, the optics here are simpler than those of the flagships.
What is in the box?
The vivo V17 has a generous configuration: smartphone, thick silicone case, charger and cable, headphones. The headphones are simple, but it’s still nice that the manufacturer did not sacrifice anything for this money. A protective film on which there is an oleophobic coating is glued to the screen at the factory.
How is the screen?
Super AMOLED, 6.38 inches, resolution1080 x 2340 pixels, which with such dimensions gives a pixel density of 404 ppi. There is no summer outside to check whether the sun is going blind, but this has long ceased to be a problem for smartphones and, in fact, manufacturers are fighting to improve the maximum performance in the upper segment. On average – everything is just fine.
There are many options in the screen settings forpersonalization – eye protection mode (when all colors turn yellower), dark (essentially a dark screen theme, useful for those who often look at the display in the dark or need to preserve the battery), correction of applications for the protrusion, reduction of flicker at low brightness. In general, everything works, although it’s difficult to fully evaluate the last point – too subjective. Of course, there are also color balance settings.
What about performance and interface?
Vivo V17 is equipped with an 11nm Qualcomm processorSnapdragon 665 and 8 GB of RAM. The storage capacity is 128 GB. By the standards of its price category, these are strong characteristics. The chipset belongs to the middle segment and was introduced last year. Includes eight cores, of which four – 2.0 GHz Kryo 260 Gold and four more 1.8 GHz Kryo 260 Silver.
I often use my Samsung Galaxy A50,It has less RAM, but comparable processors and Samsung pays a lot of attention to optimization, which means that the simpler hardware in the brand's smartphones is often not inferior to competitors in terms of performance. Here the comfort of work was not on Samsung's side. To be honest, I really miss the resources of the Galaxy A50 and the smartphone constantly slows down; I had no complaints about the vivo V17. On the other hand, a couple of weeks of use is not an indicator; problems often begin later. But even at first, the performance of the smartphone is comfortable, without question. Below in the gallery, as usual, are the benchmark results. I played Asphalt 9 – on my smartphone. I have no complaints about the graphics. Played with ultra gaming mode active.
The smartphone runs Android 9.0, on top of which the proprietary vivo FunTouch 9.2 shell is used. Even by default, it is not similar in many ways to stock Android, but you can personalize your smartphone in such a way that native Google will not recognize it. I did a fairly detailed review of the shell in this material. The key difference is the location of the quick settings panel and its capabilities, as well as – and this is already a new product – active intelligent assistant Jovi.
Chinese manufacturers are all working onown assistants (Huawei is also on the way) and application stores. Jovi can't do much yet – Reminds you of water and monitors physical activity. In theory, it should give some hints related to the location of home and work, but I used my smartphone while traveling, so it did not have the opportunity to learn my routine routes. You can call an assistant by clicking on a cute blot on the notification shade.
To access the quick settings panel invivo smartphones designed swipe from the bottom up. The company has not in vain shared notifications and quick access, both sections are overgrown with opportunities, and together they would already be crowded. In addition to, in fact, quick access to classic features (settings for connections, screen, power saving mode, etc.) there are shortcuts and access to recent applications. There are more of them in the “Label Center”. And what is surprising, really sensible things. There is quick access to maps, the file system, reminders, various timers and even links to quick access to various TikTok options (only the application will have to be downloaded independently).
Of course, vivo has its own app store,browser, cloud, quick access to the service, ID, theme store. Some of the topics are so mind-blowing that there are no words. Not in a bad way. They're just very different from anything I've ever seen. For example, this theme looks like a house from some casual game. Various objects in the house – these are applications and services. Can this be used seriously? I don’t know, I think that if you really like it and want to stand out, then you can get used to it. I played around for a couple of hours and changed the topic, but it gave me some additional points of sympathy for the brand. And a couple of my friends who saw this strange theme immediately wanted one for themselves and even ran to the Internet to read about the brand and see how much it costs in their country.
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You can customize various visualizations forsmartphone reactions to user actions. For example, animation when unlocking the screen. It is possible in any way, including how in iPhone. There is also a sea of settings for Always On Display.
What is the matter with the camera?
Vivo V17 comes with a quad-camera setup.Main– 48 megapixel (wide-angle, f/1.8, 1/2.0″, 0.8µm), ultra-wide – 8-megapixel (f/2.2, 13 mm, 1/4.0″, 1.12µm), there is also a two-megapixel macro sensor and another two-megapixel depth sensor.
The camera interface is unusualorganization of settings and some unexpected options. In particular, the blur mode, super-macro and super-wide are activated by a separate button in the interface. For selfies, there is a separate section with popular poses! Back in the last review, I talked about how many packaged improvers are for shooting “selfies”.
During the holidays I also had a Samsung on handGalaxy A50 and on the last day – Huawei P Smart Pro. All three smartphones are competitors, so it's fair to compare them in photography. So, Samsung is best at taking portraits. Despite the fact that Huawei has been honing this mode for years, and vivo by default decorates your face with all its might, if you don’t look good, take a selfie in the dark, and even with signs of a holiday on your face, only a smartphone of this brand will take a good picture of your face without any extra tricks . Huawei shows too many flaws, vivo, despite the photoshopped skin and other enhancements, also does not forget to highlight the flaws or photoshop the face in full. As far as I noticed from the pictures, the camera of this brand simply produces more shadows. In cloudy weather, his pictures also turn out darker (examples will follow). But Samsung has another sin – their cameras try to whiten everything, and in an attempt to brighten the frame, a smartphone can turn it just whitish. But in portraits this works to their advantage, oddly enough. The shadows on the face are not so clear and noticeable, which is refreshing and rejuvenating.
On the vivo V17 side – more quantityshooting effects, faster night photography, better detail in a special mode (AI in 48 MP resolution). The smartphone also has a special mode for shooting with a bokeh effect, and the focus can be edited after the fact. Huawei, in my opinion, beats this couple in shooting with the bokeh effect – No wonder the company invested so many resources into it.
But this is in general, and now let's go through the details.
As I wrote above, in cloudy weather it is darkit turns out even darker. You can manually show your smartphone which object to focus on based on lightness. But then there could be an explosion at the paint factory, since the artificial intelligence will try to extract as much color as possible from the environment and overdo it. In the top gallery there is an example of vivo V17, in the bottom – Galaxy A50 for comparison. It makes the dark areas not so dark, details show through in them, and when lightened, the colors are not so bright. Trees and park shade look more natural.
Night shooting and pre-sunset state. Vivo V17 removes the fastest. At night, the result is at the level, but at dusk it is too dark. There will be a few more examples, but these are the only frames where there were three smartphones. Alternately from top to bottom: vivo, Samsung, Huawei.
The blur effect works strangely.On the smartphone screen during the shooting process, everything looks as if the focus is in place, but later it turns out that it is nowhere. But this can be easily fixed on a smartphone. I didn’t really understand the macro mode (for objects at a distance of 4 cm), since it’s difficult to get anything useful in it. There is a lot of noise in the pictures (after all, the sensor is two megapixels) and the colors fade a little. But the thing is, competitors don’t know how to do this.
Bokeh – performed by three. Also from top to bottom: vivo, Samsung, Huawei.
And just a gallery with photos taken on a vivo V17 camera (in the original resolution they are on Torba).
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Photos of the Samsung Galaxy A50 from a review on Torba.
Photos of Huawei P Smart Pro 2019 from a review on Torba.
In general, all three competitors (still invisible here)there is Honor 9X, another competitor with a strong camera and an even more attractive price) they shoot at the same level. It’s just that everyone has different strengths, and the vivo V17 – these are the most modern capabilities, speed and resolution, weakness – poor lighting, but not yet night.
What about autonomy?
The smartphone is equipped with a 4500 mAh battery.Essentially, this is the same two days of work, one and a half – if you try hard, listen to music and play a little. It’s strange that sometimes the smartphone spent almost no charge in standby mode, and sometimes it could consume more than 10% overnight. I haven't identified a pattern. The PC Mark battery life test crashed three times, so I gave up trying to take measurements using the benchmark.
What are the alternatives?
Of all the direct competitors of this model, I alreadylisted above: Honor 9X, Samsung Galaxy A50, Huawei P Smart Pro 2019. In addition to them, there is also Xiaomi Redmi Note 8 Pro. And a couple of OPPO models, one of which is closer in characteristics, but more expensive by UAH 1,500 (OPPO Reno2 Z), and the second costs about UAH 1,000 cheaper, but is much simpler in memory size and lacks NFC (OPPO A9), so they are not very fit for this role.
Purely technically vivo V17 is stronger than competitors into everyone. It has NFC (hello to the competitors of Huawei and Honor), a really working sub-screen fingerprint scanner and a face recognition system (the Galaxy A50 is just a shame, not biometrics), a high-resolution camera, decent performance and autonomy.
At the same time, there are some nuances of the camera, inwhich are stronger than competitors, this cannot be denied. From a design point of view, in my opinion, the vivo V17 is not bad, but I like the Galaxy A50 and Huawei P Smart Pro 2019 much more, but it's all a matter of taste. It was not possible to compare with Xiaomi Redmi Note 8 Pro, but from the specifications on paper I can only say that there is more RAM and a better screen matrix (from the IPS competitor), which most likely affects autonomy. But Xiaomi is cheaper by 500 UAH and it already has a 64-megapixel camera.
In the dry residue
In my opinion, in its price category vivo V17– Definitely a hit that you can’t really complain about. Like many other even cool Chinese brands, this smartphone is still inferior to the market leader in some shooting modes, but in some places it is technologically superior. For the totality of its capabilities, we with a clear conscience give the device the editorial “we recommend” award.
4 reasons to buy vivo V17:
- optimal balance of price and performance;
- comfortable performance;
- have NFC;
- biometrics work fine;
- generous delivery.
1 reason not to buy vivo v17:
- Despite all the advantages of the camera, it still has much to grow against the background of competitors in this segment.
Specificationsvivo V17
Display
Super AMOLED, 6.38″, 1080×2340 pixels, 404 ppi
Dimensions and weight
159x75x9 mm, 187 g
CPU
Qualcomm SDM665 Snapdragon 665, 11 nm (4x2.0 GHz Kryo 260 Gold and 4×1.8 GHz Kryo 260 Silver), Adreno 610 graphics
Memory
RAM 8 GB, ROM 128 GB + microSD up to 256 GB (hybrid tray)
Main camera
Main 48 MP (f / 1.8 wide-angle), 1 / 2.0, super wide 8 MP (f / 2.2, 13 mm, 1 / 4.0, 1.12µm), 2 MP depth sensor, 2 MP macro sensor
Front-camera
32 MP, f/2.0, 26 mm (wide angle), 1/2.8″, 0.8µm
Interface
USB Type-C
Wireless technology
Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac (2.4 and 5 GHz), Bluetooth 5.0, A2DP, LE
Battery and Charging
lithium-polymer, 4500 mAh, charging 18 W
operating system
Android 9.0 (Pie) with Funtouch 9.2 add-on
SIM card
2 x nanoSIM
The fingerprint scanner
subscreen
Vivo V17
A strong competitor for old familiar brands in the segment is slightly more affordable than the average
A smartphone with a quad-camera (48 MP), 8 GB of RAM, an on-screen scanner and an NFC module. Productive, autonomous, stylish
Buy at Rozetka
Buy at F.ua
Inexpensive smartphone with quad camera
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