Looking at the breakneck speed at which smartphones are putting cameras in their devices, at some point one will have to ask the pertinent question: how much is too much? Six cameras in a phone sounds over the top, isn’t it? Well, apparently not if you are Vivo and have just launched a phone called Vivo V17 Pro. The a quad camera setup at the back and at the front it boasts of the world’s dual pop-up selfie camera setup. Vivo has always pitched itself as a smartphone that clicks better selfies than others but it promises to take it a notch up with the V17 Pro. How does the smartphone fare in all aspects or is it just about the cameras and selfies? We try to answer this and more in our review of the
V17 Pro. Read on to find out:
Vivo V17 Pro: DesignThe V-series of smartphones have always wanted to maintain a certain premium image and the V17 Pro is no different. There’s a textured glass back, notch-less display that gives it a certain level of premium-ness. The biggest talking point in the design – and perhaps overall – is the pop-up dual camera at the front. The pop-up mechanism is quite reliable and has features like fall detection, face unlock. The popup module also houses the popular moonlight selfie light and the earpiece grille. We will get to the details of selfie cameras in our camera section of the review.
The
Vivo V17 Pro is not too distinct from other notch-less smartphones from Vivo. It’s all display at the front with slimmer bezels on the side, except the chin. The chin of the smartphone has slightly thick bezels.
Despite the biggish display size, we found the smartphone to be compact and had no issues using the smartphone even with one hand.At the back of the device is a quad-camera setup placed horizontally on the top-center. A LED flash further separates the four camera sensors. The camera setup has a silver edge which goes with the overall design aesthetics of the phone. At the bottom, there's a Vivo logo printed beneath the glass panel.
The back panel of the phone has a glossy finish with a new reflective treatment that helps the
Vivo V17 Pro to look slightly different from any other phone with dual-tone texture. The back of the phone is also slightly curved making it more ergonomically suitable for hands and it fits nicely into the curves of the hands. Moving to the sides of the Vivo V17 Pro, the power and volume rocker are placed at the right, while the left of the phone just has the digital assistant button which is customizable between the company's own Jovi assistant or the Google Assistant. The buttons work fine and provide good feedback when pressed.
The top of the phone has the world's first dual popup selfie camera, along with the good old headphone jack and the secondary microphone. At the bottom, there's a USB-Type-C charging port, primary microphone and SIM card slot.
Vivo V17 Pro is a fresh looking, comfortable to hold and well-built smartphone.
Vivo V17 Pro: DisplayIn the last few years, smartphone displays have come a long way. The display on Vivo V17 Pro has become more immersive with the all-new notch-less design and reduced bezels. The smartphone sports a 6.44-inch Ultra FullView display with FHD+ (2340×1080 pixels) screen which on paper seems to be a right choice at the given price. The display is bright enough and offers good outdoor visibility. The colours are vibrant, blacks are deep and saturation levels are fine too, courtesy the Super AMOLED display.
The AMOLED display is add-on bonus for those who love to binge watch movies or TV shows for hours. Gamers will also appreciate the somewhat symmetrical bezel design which makes the overall experience more immersive.
Vivo has packed the usual set of features like auto-brightness, eye protection, colour temperature adjustment, Dark mode, among others. The ability to manually adjust the aspect ratio to view it in the full screen is also available. Another notable feature here is the new anti-flicker display which prevents the smartphone from flickering at low brightness levels.
With punchy colours, deep blacks and good viewing angles, we had zero complaints with the display of Vivo V17 Pro.
Performance on the Vivo V17 Pro is managed by Qualcomm Snapdragon 675 processor coupled with 8GB RAM and 128GB storage. The same processor was found on the Vivo V15 Pro which was launched earlier this year. Vivo V17 Pro manages to handle day-to-day tasks with relative ease. The smartphone feels snappy and there's no noticeable lags or stutters while performing routine tasks.
The smartphone handles almost everything we threw at it without stressing too much. Opening apps, navigating through menus, switching between apps and many other operations was smooth as well.
Gaming performance, however, is a slightly different story. The processor manages to run almost all basic games like Subway Surfer, Candy Crush, without breaking a sweat or heating too much. Games like Asphalt 9, PUBG Mobile, Fortnite, also ran pretty smoothly at the medium settings on the smartphone. However, compared to Vivo;s own Z-series of phones, there’s a noticeable lack of gaming performance on the V17 Pro. Although Vivo has added some game improvement features like Game Boost, etc to enhance the game performance, it hardly seems to help in case of
Vivo V17 Pro.
The problem here is that Vivo could have easily managed to equip the phone with a more recent processor and eliminated performance quotient on the smartphone. Having a Snapdragon 712 processor could have changed the ball game for Vivo when it comes to gaming performance.
Talking about the software, the smartphone runs of the FunTouch OS 9 based on Android 9 Pie. FunTouch OS isn't the most user-friendly custom UI around. However, the UI has come a long way since its inception and we appreciate the fact that Vivo has been trying to make it more user-friendly with its every iteration. For example, the latest version of FunTouch OS is more usable than ever. The performance is optimised, menus are more reachable and accessible too. Features too are at par with competition. The OS comes with features like Ultra Power saving mode, Motorbike mode, Game Booster and Face Unlock. Basically, the UI offers almost all the features a user need in this price segment. However, the one issue here is the lack of uniqueness and freshness as the UI design is similar to other competitors. We felt that Vivo could have done something more than just adding an array of features.
Talking about security features, the smartphone comes with in-display fingerprint scanner and Face Unlock feature. Despite the popup mechanism, the face unlock is quick, but it is not as reliable as the fingerprint scanner. Talking about fingerprint scanner, the setup process is fast and is quick to unlock as well.
The addition of the privacy and app encryption helps to add an additional layer of security.
The audio output from single firing speaker is good and clear, though loudness could have been a little better. However, it is good to see that Vivo has not discarded the old piece of tech that is 3.5mm audio jack. Also, it is good to see that Vivo has gone with the top placement of the jack instead of the bottom one.
Overall, the performance of the phone is reasonably good, but considering the rather old-generation processor at the given price is kind of a bummer in the case of Vivo V17 Pro. It would have been good to see a relatively newer processor like SD712 or even SD710 for that matter.
Vivo V17 Pro: CameraVivo V-series smartphones’ cameras – or rather selfie cameras -- have always been the most highlighted and advertised feature of the smartphone. Let's start with the dual popup selfie camera setup, the smartphone gets a 32MP primary camera sensor and an 8MP Super wide-angle lens along with the Moonlight flash. The 32MP selfie camera has f/2.0 aperture, an autofocus sensor that is fast to lock focus on the subject and has almost no shutter lag. The image quality from the primary sensor is good and sharp but just not as natural as we would have expected. However, the image look good in most of the situations including low light, thanks to the new ultra-low light mode.
The second lens has an 8MP super-wide angle sensor with 105-degrees of field of view. Although the images comes out detailed and sharp, there's a good amount of fish-eye effect to it. The distortion level on the edges are on the higher side here, which is not ideal for taking selfies.
The ability to shoot 1080p videos makes it more suitable for those looking for video blogging and producing content for YouTube. Moonlight flash is basically a soft diffused light that is used by most professional photographers to even up the facial features while taking portrait photos. The flash on V17 Pro does a commendable job of softly highlighting the details on the face, even during low to moderate light situations
Vivo has also equipped the front camera with several shooting modes like Bokeh, Ultra wide-angle, Panorama, among others. The Bokeh effect from the camera is also quite good. The camera allows the users to manually adjust the level of blur and focus point even after taking the photo. Other modes also work fine without any glitches or bugs.
Moving to the rear camera sensor, the 48-megapixel primary sensor at the back doesn’t come as a huge surprise as it is a typical IMX582 sensor from Sony which we have witnessed in so many other smartphones in the market. What comes as a surprise though is the quality of the photos it clicked during our test. The images came out to be detailed, sharp and the sensor also show some fantastic dynamic range capability. Also, the colours are well pronounced, the saturation levels are good as well. Talking about the RGB calibration, the images are a little heavier on the Red colour, making them look slightly warmer than the actual colour tone of the scene. Overall end, it makes the images look more vivid and pleasing to the eyes. Vivo V17 Pro also comes with the option to shoot in full 48MP resolution with tons of details in it.
Talking about other three cameras, there's an 8MP Super Wide-angle lens, a 13MP telephoto lens with up to 2X optical zoom and 10X digital zoom. The fourth lens measure 2MP for capturing the Bokeh effect. So, let's start with the Super Wide-angle lens that is capable of shooting 120-degree FOV. The images clicked are impressive and Vivo V17 Pro manages to keep the distortion level less without sacrificing on the overall quality of the photos. Even the edges of the images don’t take a hit. The telephoto lens of the phone also managed to deliver similar quality images.
Apart from this, there are a bunch of other things that are worth mentioning. Vivo V17 Pro also comes with a Super Macro mode that allows users to capture their subject by moving as close as 2.5cm, which is awfully close -- in a good way though. This enabled us to capture insects eyes, details on leaf petals and many such things that are hard to click with most other smartphones. Also, Vivo has extended the Macro mode to the video mode as well. Switching to the video mode with 2X zoom automatically turns on the Macro mode and allow users even to record the pupil movement.
In addition to this, there's Night mode that captures some suitably impressive photos in low light conditions.
Vivo has also revamped the design of the camera app and tucked down some of the less-used features under the More section. Also, there’s a new edit button that allows users to manage camera modes in a better manner from the camera app quickly.
We were suitably impressed by the overall camera performance of the Vivo V17 Pro and is the biggest highlight of the device.
Vivo V17 Pro packs a 4100mAh battery along with an 18W fast charging tech. The battery backup of the smartphone is good. We used the smartphone as our daily driver and as per our usage, which included gaming, watching videos, surfing, social media activities, calls, and the smartphone managed to last an entire day. Charging is also not a problem with the phone as it comes bundled with the 18W charge which takes around 1.5 hours to completely charge the device.
The Vivo V17 Pro has a lot going for it: good design and display, impressive cameras and long-lasting battery life. However, despite having the bells and whistles in the camera, the
Vivo V17 Pro will be a hard sell for the company. Why? Because it packs in an older processor which manages to deliver but when you compare the OnePlus 7 that is available at Rs 3,000 more or the Redmi K20 Pro, it’s not up to the mark. If and only if camera is the criteria of buying a smartphone, then go for the Vivo V17 Pro. Otherwise you can do much better especially at this price.
Vivo v17 pro full specifications
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