Cellphone maker Vivo shot into the limelight when it announced its decision to replace PepsiCo as an IPL sponsor when it suddenly pulled out of its 5-year stint. Until then, few in India had Vivo as a top-of-mind choice for budget mobiles.
But in China, Vivo is fairly prominent and active throughout the rest of Asia. It has a number of firsts to its name as well.
Vivo has launched a number of smartphones in India of which we take a look at the Vivo Y27L. Unfortunate algebraic name, but it's a pretty enough phone. The front looks like most other phones, really, but the back, which is not removable, is metallic looking and put together very nicely. It looks elegant and the Vivo logo in the center glints prettily.
The Y27L is a 4.7-inch device. That's the sweet-spot size used by Apple for many years. It fits right into your hand and can be used one-handed. Some care has been taken to smoothen out the edges so that they don't push sharply into the palm. The back is flat, giving the phone a neat look. It's light and slim and easily slips into a bag or pocket. At the same time it also looks quite sturdy.
The display is a 720x1280 LCD and is bright and vivid and has adequate if not perfect viewing angles. The interface is typically Chinese, banishing the app drawer and lining up icons on successive home screens. It has a bunch of rather cartoonish themses and colours which perhaps isn't surprising since the user interface is called Funtouch. Presumably it's meant to appeal to the young. The interface sits on top of Android 4.4 Lollipop.
The processor is a 64-bit 1.2GHz 410 quad-core Snapdragon processor with Adreno 306 GPU. It has 1GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage. A micro-SD card slot lets you expand storage by 128GB if you pop in a memory card. The phone has some lag starting tasks. Browsing is visibly stuttering. It's usable if not pushed too much however and not treated like a powerhouse for heavy gaming. The 2,260mAh battery lasts the day if your usage is light to moderate.
The primary camera is an 8 megapixel and the front a 5 megapixel, but both are unremarkable make-do cameras. There's a dual-SIM 4G enabled model.
The Y27L was launched at Rs 12,980 but is available for less than that online. But anyone considering it has many choices in the same category such as the Moto G, phones from Xiaomi and Asus, all of them more known quantities.
BW Reporters
Mala Bhargava has been writing on technology well before the advent of internet in Indians and before CDs made their way into computers. Mala writes on technology, social media, startups and fitness. A trained psychologist, she claims that her understanding of psychology helps her understand the human side of technology.
