Vivo launched the V5 smartphone back in November 2016 with a 20 MP front camera. This surely means that they are focusing on the selfie market. But now they have gone one step ahead and launched a new smartphone Vivo V5 Plus that comes with a Dual Lens front camera. We all know that having a Dual lens camera is the new trend, but who knew we would see it on the front side. Let us check out the other features of Vivo V5 Plus smartphone.
Vivo launches V5 Plus with Dual Lens front camera :
Design
Vivo V5 Plus has a flat back with the antenna lines shifted to top and bottom edges. This gives the phone a uniform look. The device has a nice grip and you can easily hold it with one hand. It has a premium finish on the back with the camera at one corner and Vivo logo at the center. Volume rockers and power button are on the right, while the 3.5 mm jack and speakers are at the bottom along with the micro-USB port. The dual SIM slot is on the left while there is nothing present on the top of the phone. Vivo V5 Plus has some thin bezels around the screen. The phone is quite slim and has a thickness of 7.3 mm. Overall the phone looks quite similar to iPhone 7.
Camera Samples:
Display
Vivo V5 Plus comes with a 5.5 inch full HD screen with Gorilla glass 5 protection. The display quality is just great. SInce the bezels on this device are thinner, playing games or watching movies is now a better experience. The viewing angles on the phones are decent enough. Just below the display, there is the fingerprint scanner sitting on top of the home button.
Performance
Vivo V5 Plus runs on a Snapdragon 625 chipset with an octa-core processor clocked at 2 GHz. It has 4 GB of RAM and 64 GB of internal storage with no option to expand the storage. It runs on Adreno 506 GPU. We haven’t tested the performance of the phone yet, but all these hardware will give us a good performance for sure. The heating might be low due to the 625 chipset.
Software
The phone runs on Android marshmallow with FunTouch OS 3.0 running on top of it. I don’t know for some reason Vivo has not included the latest Android version with this smartphone. The FunTouch OS is something that is again similar to iOS. You have the control center and no app drawer. You have to turn on the USB OTG feature from settings when you want to use it. The bluetooth settings are hidden in more settings while you can toggle it by pulling up the control center. The fingerprint sensor works quite well on this device.
Camera
Vivo V5 Plus has a 16 MP rear shooter which protrudes out from the back. Along with that you have the simple LED flash. Now the rear shooter performs good in daylight, but the low light photos are not that great. Plus there is the problem of glare from a direct light source which is an issue of light exposure. You can also record 4K videos with the rear camera. The main highlight of the phone is the 20 MP + 8 MP dual lens front facing camera. The second lens present on the smartphone actually helps to record the depth of the scene. So can have a very nice Bokeh effect. For those of you who don’t know what it is, the bokeh effect focuses on one part and blurs out the rest of it. So if you are taking selfies and the background is not that great, it will automatically blur the rest of the part. The dual lens will actually help in giving true depth to the image. Now the amazing thing is that, if you capture a photo in bokeh effect mode then you can even re-focus after clicking the image. We tried this feature and it worked quite well. You can adjust the focus easily using vertically slider that appears when you tap on a certain area. Plus there is the front facing flash which has this soft white color which illuminates your face while taking selfies and the term is called moonlight selfie. That certainly helps when you want to take selfies in low light. Sadly there is no OIS (Optical Image Stabilization) support for the rear shooter which should be a must feature to prevent the shaky videos.
Connectivity and Sound
The device has various connectivity options like Wi-Fi, bluetooth, GPS, USB OTG(On The Go) etc. It has got 3.5 mm jack on the button which is again a relief.. For charging and data syncing you have the micro-USB port and not the type-C one. The speaker grill is at the bottom right of the device. We didn’t get a chance to test the sound output which will be covered in our full review.
Battery
Vivo V5 Plus comes with a 3055 mAh battery. The device is capable of fast charging. We can tell you the performance only after putting it through a full review.
Price
The Vivo V5 Plus smartphone is priced at Rs. 27,980 and has some serious competition with OnePlus 3, Zenfone 3. Though none of its competitor even have a dual camera setup. I guess Vivo has taken a lead by including dual lens on the front. So for all those selfie freaks out there, this is a phone that I would recommend or you can wait for our full review to decide. You can actually go grab the phone in the offline stores near you from 1st Feb 2017.