Vivo launched the V3 and V3 Max (Review) smartphones in April. Since then, the V3 has seen a price cut to take its place in the sub-Rs 15,000 category. However, the competition is tougher now than ever. Is the Vivo V3 still an attractive phone after the price cut? Find out the pros and cons of this phone in our review.
Design and build
The Vivo V3 looks just like its bigger variant. The design of the Vivo V3 Max is also not very good. If the Vivo branding was not there on the front of the phone, one could easily mistake it for the Oppo F1. The V3 has non-backlit capacitive navigation buttons and curved glass edges. Although there is no clarity about scratch protection in this phone, according to Vivo, the smartphone is equipped with Gorilla Glass protection. A screen guard comes pre-installed with the phone.
We liked the 5 inch display in this phone and it is comfortable to hold with one hand and is also easy to use. The IPS display gives good color reproduction and viewing angles but its HD resolution is only (720×1280) pixels. There is no problem in viewing text and icons on the display. But in a phone of this price, full HD display is necessary and the display could have been sharper too.
The metal frame of the V3 is quite sturdy and the buttons are ergonomically placed. There is a dual SIM tray on the left side and a separate microSD card slot (up to 128 GB) is provided on the top. There is also a headphone socket next to it. The V3 has a powerful speaker that comes with a dedicated amplifier chip. The speaker works well. The sound is good in music tracks and videos and the sound sounds great even outdoors. The speaker could have been better with stereo speakers but it is also good.
The texture on the rear of the phone does not provide a very good grip, so the phone is a bit slippery. But the silicone case that comes with the phone makes it comfortable to hold the phone. Apart from this, a headset, a charger, a data cable, a SIM ejector tool and an Airtel SIM are available in the box. With this SIM, you can upgrade your Airtel connection to 4G. The power adapter is too big and the phone does not support fast charging either.
Specifications and Features
Vivo V3 is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 616 octa-core processor. The phone has 3GB RAM and 32GB storage. Once again, the phone does not have specifications that are very attractive. We have seen these specifications in phones priced less than this. The phone supports dual band Wi-Fi b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, GPS, FM radio, USB OTG and 4G LTE bands 1, 3, 5 and 40.
The fingerprint sensor is placed on the rear and works quite well. It can also be used as a camera shutter. Apart from this, it can also be used to lock personal files and apps. The V3 runs on Funtouch OS 2.5 which is a custom fork of Android Lollipop. But the absence of Marshmallow in the phone yet is disappointing.
Like Oppo’s ColorOS 3.0, the V3’s interface and functions feel very similar to Apple’s iOS. However, if you’re already using a stock Android phone, it will take some time to get used to. The Recent Apps button acts as a menu button and tapping on it on the homescreen will bring up options like widgets, transition effects and hiding apps. A long press or swipe from top to bottom will open the app switcher and you can toggle between Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, etc.
Vivo’s apps like iTheme for visual customization, iManager for data monitoring and managing apps and their permissions, file transfer using Wi-Fi Direct come pre-installed. There is also Vivo Cloud for your bookmarks, messages, contacts and notes. WhatsApp, WeChat, Facebook and WPS Office come pre-installed on the phone.
The Settings app also has all the new controls like gestures, air operation which gets activated when the phone is held in the palm. Smart Multi Screen gives a floating notification when you get an alert and displays it on half the screen when opened. This works only when you are watching a video through the stock player or in full screen mode on Google Play Movies and YouTube.
Performance
The interface of the phone may seem a little confusing at first glance but it does the job smoothly. Multi-tasking is easy and the phone runs heavy apps and games without any problem. We got decent numbers from the phone in our benchmark tests. 4G works well on both SIM slots and the earpiece produces good sound during calls. The Vivo V3 is comfortable to hold and its small size makes it easy to use. Apart from a little heating while playing games, we did not face any overheating issues with the phone.
The V3 can play videos up to 4K but 1080p videos are no problem. The phone played our high bitrate files with ease. The music player supports FLAC and the audio quality from the speakers is decent. The bundled headset is not of very good quality.
The 13-megapixel rear camera comes with phase detection autofocus (PDAF) which locks the subject easily. Photos are good in daylight and look beautiful on the phone’s display. But they get a bit blurry when zoomed in. The same problem was seen in macro photos as well and the focused subject also lacks sharpness. To prevent standard photos from looking dull, it would be better to use HDR mode. The 8-megapixel front camera provided in the phone is good for taking selfies.
The phone can record up to 1080p but the quality is average. Videos and photos are very poor in low light. The camera app is well designed and has options like filters, watermarks and touch or voice triggered capture. The rear camera has several shooting modes like HDR, Panorama, Night, Professional, Slow-motion video and Hyperlapse video.
The 2550mAh battery provided in the phone does not look very big, but due to the low screen resolution and not very powerful processor, it lasted for 11 hours and 31 minutes in our video playback. At the same time, during normal use, we were able to use it for more than a day after charging once. This phone does not support fast charging, but the low capacity battery does not take very long to charge.
Our verdict
The Vivo V3 is a great product but the problem is that there are plenty of other smartphones lined up to give it easy competition. The Moto G4 Plus (Review), Redmi Note 3 (Review) and LeEco Le 2 (Review) have much better specifications and are far superior to the V3 in terms of display quality, camera and CPU performance. The V3 feels a bit dated today and doesn’t really appeal to the buyers despite its new price of Rs 14,980. Also, we’re not fans of Vivo’s confusing custom Android fork.
However, the battery life of the phone is good and we also liked the size of the phone. The audio performance in the phone is good from both speakers and headphones.
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