Review: Vivo V15 Pro

Vivo has been innovating regularly with its pop-up selfie cameras and in-display fingerprint scanners, and the V15 Pro brings a bunch of these features at a more accessible, sub-30,000 price point. Classy and elegant, the V15 Pro is quite the looker in its blue and red avatars and is comfortable to hold in the hand courtesy its curved rear edges. Bear in mind, the glossy rear panel looks like glass but is actually plastic and is quite the smudge magnet. No IP rating either for spill/splash resistance.

Oh, and a micro-USB port when you’re paying close to Rs 30,000? Not cool.The front is dominated by the notch-free 6.39-inch Super AMOLED display which, courtesy the pop-up selfie camera and super thin bezels, gives you an immersive visual experience unmatched in this segment. The selfie camera rises quickly for photos and face unlocks, and the fingerprint scanner under the display is snappy and responsive. Under the hood, it sports the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 675 chipset with 6GB of memory and 128GB of expandable storage, which translates into capable performance befitting the premium mid-range segment. Performance is good for the price, but pure speed junkies should look at the Asus or the Poco phones.

The triple rear camera setup, with a 48MP primary, an 8MP f/2.2 120-degree wide-angle and a 5MP f/2.4 depth sensor, turns out excellent images, but you’d do well to use the pixel-binned 12MP (rear) and 8MP (front) images which combine four pixels into one for better imaging performance. FunTouch OS 9 is based on Android 9 Pie but is heavily skinned and takes some getting used to, plus there’s a ton of pre-installed bloatware to contend with. If you can live with its quirks, this is a well-rounded smartphone for its price.