Intro
VIVO was able to emerge in the market here in the Philippines since last June 2016, and they had continued to release many selfie-centric smartphones.
Last week, the top 5 global smartphone brand unveils its latest ‘perfect selfie’ midrange smartphone to all selfie lovers, named the V5S.
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Design and build
It comes with a 5.5-inch IPS LCD display with 2.5D curved glass and a Corning Gorilla Glass panel. The resolution of the phone comes with a disappointed HD display. Considered the price range, many smartphone manufacturers are providing Full HD panel.
Vivo V5S resembles the back design to its big sibling, the Vivo V5 Plus, especially the unusual U-band antenna design. It gives a premium look because of the metal finishing in the rear panel.
You can read our hands-on preview here: [Vivo V5S – Hands-on Preview: Selfie again]
Software and UI
The UI of the Vivo V5S runs on heavily-customized FunTouch 3.0, based on Android v6.0 “Marshmallow”, inspired from iOS and obviously made by Apple Inc. There is no app drawer, so it means, all of the applications are altogether in the home screen. You can group some of them, though.
Camera
The camera of the phone makes it impressive as it carries a powerful 20MP front camera, with f/2.0 aperture, Sony IMX376 sensor and the company’s own “Moonlight” soft selfie flash to enhance the images, especially during night time for a clearer view. As advertised, it doesn’t disappoint us when it comes to quality. The images were captured in a crisp detail.
One of the other features of the Vivo V5s is the ‘face beauty 6.0’, that automatically applies beauty style in your face. By using some tweaks, you will be able to see your face in a lighter and smoother one. Kindly look the images below.
The rear camera of the phone packs a 13MP shooter with the phase detection autofocus to sharpen images and capture it in a fast response. It is accompanied with a single-LED flash. As you can see, the pictures below gave us ample details in daylight condition. However, more noises can be seen during night time.
Performance
Under the hood of the phone is the MediaTek MT6750 64-bit octa-core, clocked at 1.5Ghz and coupled with huge 4GB of RAM. I was able to use many benchmark tests like Antutu and Vellamo to measure the phone’s performance.
As I squeeze the phone, there is no noticeable lag even if many heavy applications like Facebook, Chrome Browser, Asphalt 8 for gaming, Spotify, Clean Master are still open. Casual games ran pretty smooth in the Vivo V5S like Temple Run, Candy Crush Saga and Plants vs. Zombies. Good job Vivo!
Loudspeaker & audio quality
The speaker, located at the bottom right side of the phone is surprisingly loud and clear at 90 decibels, which is considered as one of the loudest ever. The quality is fantastic and the bass is great. I didn’t hear any slight distortion even if I pushed the volume to its maximum level.
On an even more bright side, it sports a Hi-Fi (AK4376) chipset which enables the user to listen to high-quality reproduction of music and improves the sound quality, especially when using a pair of earphone.
Battery
Vivo V5S comes with a modest 3,000 inbuilt battery. Unfortunately, the battery section in the settings cannot show us the actual usage of screen-on time, the phone idle time and the battery chart, but according to our PCMark test, it lasted 8 hours and 25 minutes which is considered slightly above average compared to other smartphones.
At regular use like posting in social media accounts, watching music videos on YouTube, answering e-mails thru Gmail, listening music via Spotify, I managed to use the phone for one and a half day on a single charge.
In terms of charging time, it takes 2 and a half hours until it reaches 100% which is quite slow.
Verdict
Once again, people will definitely love how good the Vivo V5S is, in terms of selfie camera quality and spacious storage. The vivid display, light weight, and smooth performance make it very comfortable to hold and use. The performance of the phone is not outstanding but I never complained because of its smooth performance, thanks to the huge number of RAM. The price at P14,990 is a great deal, considering the looks and execution on how the phone manage to compete against rival smartphones.
Pros
- Premium design
- Big 64GB expandable storage
- 4GB RAM
- Front camera
- Speaker
- Impressive battery life
Cons
- Rear camera could be better
- Slow charging time
