vivo V7 Review: Compact All-rounder Selfie Smartphone

There’s a fierce competition in the mid-range market. It’s a space where most of the best-selling smartphones in the country occupy. The vivo V7 follows the footsteps of its bigger brother, the vivo V7+, which has proven its place in the said market with its capable processor, powerful selfie camera and timely design.

vivo V7 Review: Compact All-rounder Selfie Smartphone

vivo V7 Review

The vivo V7 is trying to capture a good spot in the sub Php 15K category carrying a bucket-full of bells and whistles from the vivo V7+. Will it be your next handset? Let’s answer that in this review of the vivo V7.

Design

There’s a high chance that you’re reading this review due to the fact that the vivo V7 comes with 18:9 aspect ratio. Most of its fiercest competitors offer a nearly bezel-less design. Comparing it to the V7+, the vivo V7 is definitely easy to use with it’s even more compact 77.1 percent screen-to-body ratio.

The handset is primarily defined by front-glass and aluminum body construction. What’s even more appealing is the fact that the handset is significantly light. Thus, if you wanted to use it with one hand, you could. With the advent of matte black color hues in the market, it’s still refreshing to see smartphones painted gold. Our review unit comes with a Champagne Gold paint-job and I should say a gold vivo V7 looks exquisitely elegant.

Vivo V7 Review: best budget smartphone in the Philippines

The back panel gives off a faux-metallic appeal. Antenna bands run on the top and the bottom portion of the back panel. The fingerprint sensor is also mounted at the back panel with the vivo branding below it. On the upper left portion, you’ll find the 16MP rear camera and accompanied by the LED flash.

vivo V7 Review: Compact All-rounder Selfie Smartphone
16MP Rear Camera, LED flash, Fingerprint sensor, vivo branding

Essential ports and buttons are on the lateral sides as we have discussed in our unboxing article and video. SIM tray is on the left with dedicated slots for SIM and microSD cards; power button and volume rocker are on the right; and the 3.5-mm headphones jack, speaker grill and microUSB port are on the bottom.

vivo V7 Review: Compact All-rounder Selfie Smartphone
From left to right: 3.5-mm audio jack, microphone, microUSB port, speaker grill

vivo V7 Review: Compact All-rounder Selfie Smartphone
Power Button, Volume Rocker

Display

The vivo V7 boasts a 5.7-inch display with 18:9 aspect ratio. Unlike its toughest competitors, the vivo V7 only comes with HD+ resolution. This means that the screen packs 720 x 1440 pixels with 282 pixel density. In my experience with its display, it’s surprisingly easy on the eyes. Compared to the vivo V7+, I love the way colors and texts registered in the V7’s display. It’s more compact and precise. Color reproduction is on point; as well as its accuracy. Plus, we can’t deny the fact that its viewing angles are very accommodating, even at oblique angles. The screen can be very bright though, so you just have to take it easy on the brightness kicker.

vivo V7 Review: Compact All-rounder Selfie Smartphone

Of course, we could also say good things about the bigger screen real estate. Many apps have been optimized with 18:9 Aspect Ratio like Netflix, Youtube, etc. This ups the ante of multimedia viewing in using a smartphone.

Performance

The vivo V7 is powered by a Snapdragon 450 which locally debuted in its bigger sibling. It's a highly efficient chipset that features 1.8GHz octa-core Cortex A53 CPU and Adreno 506 GPU. It still got 4 gigs of RAM which could drive smoother experience in using our daily apps.

Titles like Arena of Valor and Mobile Legends run smoothly on the vivo V7. Of course, just like any other midrange smartphones, the hardware stutters when subjected to heavily graphic-oriented apps. Check out our Gaming sample video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDtXrwmMnmY.

Other essential titles like Spotify, Gmail and social media apps take advantage of the power the chipset has to offer. Speaking of Spotify, the handset fires great sounding speakers just like the vivo V7+ with enough depth and separation. You'll definitely enjoy video and music streaming with this handset.

Benchmarks

In our Antutu Benchmark test, the handset scores 57,460. It also managed to hit 773 Single-Core Score and 3969 Multi-Core Score in GeekBench. Likewise, in our PCMark Work Performance Test, the vivo V7 scored 4660. The handset definitely fared well in both tests and real-time usage.

vivo V7 Review: Compact All-rounder Selfie Smartphone

Camera

One of the smartphone's deal-makers is its selfie camera. vivo picked a 24MP sensor with f/2.0 aperture which captures considerable amount of light in taking selfies. On well-lighted environment, selfies look crisp with great details. Its wide-angle shots help keep everyone in the picture. You can also fire up the Group Selfie Mode wherein the camera app allows you to rotate your phone to have a semi-panoramic selfie shot. My personal favorites are the Portrait Seflie Mode and the Face Beauty Toggles on the native camera app.

vivo V7 Review: Compact All-rounder Selfie Smartphone

The rear camera is surprisingly good. On a sunny day, photos are clear and registers with balanced saturation. Details are also on point. Low-light shots are also decent. Though there are times the camera struggles in getting detail in a light-challenged environment. However, I still took great low-light shots as seen in the samples below. Samples are taken with Automatic HDR.

vivo V7 Review: Compact All-rounder Selfie Smartphone

vivo V7 Review: Compact All-rounder Selfie Smartphone

vivo V7 Review: Compact All-rounder Selfie Smartphone

vivo V7 Review: Compact All-rounder Selfie Smartphone

vivo V7 Review: Compact All-rounder Selfie Smartphone

vivo V7 Review: Compact All-rounder Selfie Smartphone

vivo V7 Review: Compact All-rounder Selfie Smartphone

vivo V7 Review: Compact All-rounder Selfie Smartphone

vivo V7 Review: Compact All-rounder Selfie Smartphone

vivo V7 Review: Compact All-rounder Selfie Smartphone

vivo V7 Review: Compact All-rounder Selfie Smartphone

Software: FunTouch OS

The vivo V7 runs with Android 7.1.2 Nougat with FunTouch OS 3.2. The skin is heavily influenced by Apple's iOS mobile operating system. The interface is pretty straightforward in installing and uninstalling apps. Likewise, the FunTouchOS also left the app drawer in the cutting room. Which is personally a great thing.

vivo V7 Review: Compact All-rounder Selfie Smartphone

You can open both the Notification Shade and the Control Center by swiping down and up, respectively. Likewise, you can also opt to customize the icons and its arrangement in your Control Center.

There are several gesture-oriented settings you can toggle in the Settings app. For one, you can set the Navigation Keys to be hidden while invoking Sliding Gestures: sliding up in the leftmost portion of the Navigation area will pull the Control Center; sliding in the middle will bring you to Home screen; and sliding up in the rightmost will perform Back operation.

vivo V7 Review: Compact All-rounder Selfie Smartphone

The Face Unlock is also a nifty feature, though it may not be as good as iPhone X's Face ID or Galaxy S8's facial recognition, but it still proved to be a useful feature of the FunTouch OS.

Battery

The battery is also one of its strongest points. Since it only carries an HD+ display coupled with an efficient processor, the vivo V7 could last 24 hours without a sweat if you're a moderate user. In our standard PC Mark 2.0 Work Battery Life tests, the vivo V7 scores 7 hours and 36 minutes. It maybe solid in battery life but the chipset does not support fast charging. However, if you won't mind charging your phone overnight, that would definitely not be an issue.

vivo V7 Review: Compact All-rounder Selfie Smartphone

Conclusion

In several ways, the vivo V7 is a fighter in the mid-range category. The 5.7-inch All Screen display is perfect for those who love both compact smartphones and bigger real screen estate at the same time. It's highly aggressive in positioning itself to be the best in both multimedia consumption and self portrait capabilities. The vivo V7 is a great selfie-centric smartphone that does not offer trade-offs in its feature set. It may only sport an HD+ display but this did not bother me at all. This even bolstered the phone's battery life.

The vivo V7 is arguably the best all-rounder compact selfie-centric smartphone there is in the market. If you're in the market for a great selfie handset with 2017-ish design, 18:9 Aspect ratio, great battery life, and good muscle for gaming, video and music playback; then the vivo V7 got you covered.

vivo V7 Specs

  • 5.7-inch HD+ IPS LCD Display, 720 x 1440 pixels at 282 ppi
  • Corning Gorilla Glass 4
  • Qualcomm Snapdragon 450 SoC
  • Octa-core 1.8GHz Cortex-A53
  • Adreno 506 GPU
  • 4GB of RAM
  • 32GB Storage, up to 256GB via microSD card (dedicated slot)
  • 16MP Rear camera, f/2.0 aperture, LED Flash, PDAF, 1080p at 30fps video
  • 24MP Selfie camera, f/2.0 aperture
  • 4G LTE, 3G, 2G
  • Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n
  • Bluetooth v4.2
  • microUSB 2.0, USB OTG
  • 3.5mm Audio Jack
  • Fingerprint Sensor, rear-mounted
  • Gyroscope, Proximity, Compass, Accelerometer Sensors
  • Android 7.1.2 Nougat with FunTouch OS 3.2
  • 149.3 x 72.8 x 7.9 mm at 139 grams
  • 3000 mAh Battery
  • Champagne Gold, Matte Black
  • ₱14,990 Official Price in the Philippines
Previous Post Next Post