Vivo V7 Review- Ups the Selfie Ante

Vivo has been a brand which has been focusing on selfie experience and we had reviewed their popular selfie phones like Vivo V5 Plus and Vivo V5S. In 2017, the company came out with their first 18:9 display smartphones focusing on selfie experience, the Vivo V7, and Vivo V7+. The Vivo V7 packs a 5.7-inch HD+ resolution display and is powered by Snapdragon 450 Octa-core processor with 4GB RAM and 32GB storage. The phone sports a 24MP selfie camera with moonlight flash and a 16MP rear camera with LED flash. It runs on Android 7.1.1 out of the box with Fun Touch OS. So how does the Vivo V7 stack up against the competition? Let’s find out in this detailed Vivo V7 review.

Design and Build:

The design is one of the strong points of the Vivo V7. While most of the smartphones have moved to metal build, V7 packs a plastic unibody construction. But nevertheless, Vivo has done a good job with the finishing and it feels like a metal chassis. The material finish is almost like metal and the chrome finish on the top and bottom to mimic the antenna lines adds to the beauty of the device. The camera unit on the rear panel has a chrome ring and has a slight projection. It is followed by the fingerprint scanner and Vivo branding.

At 139gms, the Vivo V7 is extremely lightweight to use and also slim to hold. It also provides a good grip with slightly sharper edges towards the display. You can use the device with a single hand even though it has a 5.7-inch display. It surprising feels good using the device and the build quality is amazing. The power and volume keys are on the right side, while the SIM tray is on the left side. The bottom panel houses the 3.5 m audio jack, charging slot and the speaker unit. Overall, Vivo V7 looks like a compact and well-built phone.

Display:

Vivo V7 features a full view 18:9 aspect ratio display with an HD+ resolution (1440 X 720p). While the display feels good, we expected Vivo to ship with a Full HD panel at this price segment. The display quality looks quite good and colors reproduction is good. The viewing angles are also good. There is no mention of any protective coating on the display.

Software:

Vivo V7 runs on Android 7.1.2 Nougat and has a custom UI called Fun Touch OS. Fun Touch OS is a custom UI from Vivo and feels similar to other Chinese OEMs with no app drawer and packs multiple home screens. The notification center is implemented similar to iOS and has Control center which can be accessed with a swipe from the bottom of the screen. The control center houses the options for multitasking and also quick toggles.

Looking at the settings of the device, you can see a plethora of options like gestures, smart multi-screen, one-handed mode, super screenshot and more. There are lots of options to make the device customized for your use.

The phone also comes with theme manager where you can download additional themes, wallpapers, fonts and lock screens. There is also a phone manager app which has options to clean the phone and also a data manager. The eye protection mode allows you to get warmer colors on display, specifically for reading.

There is also an app clone feature in the settings which allows you to clone apps and social networking apps are supported which means you can run multiple instances of the app.

Performance:

Vivo V7 is powered by Snapdragon 450 chipset which is the same processor powering the Vivo V7+. The Snapdragon 450 is a good chipset and the performance is almost similar to SD625. In day to day usage, there was hardly any issues and the UI was smooth without any lags. The gaming performance of the device was also quite good with the full view display. There wasn’t any considerable heating on the device with intensive gaming.

The fingerprint scanner is placed on the rear panel and it is one of the fastest in the segment and it unlocks the device in a fraction of a second. There is also face unlock feature available and it also does a good job of unlocking the phone.

The phone has dual SIM cards along with 4G LTE and VoLTE support. It features a hybrid SIM card which means you cannot expand the storage if you are using dual SIM cards. You get 32GB of storage and out of which around 25GB is available to the user in the first boot. The call quality of the phone was good and we did not see any major issues here. The speaker performance is again good for this price segment.

Camera:

The Vivo V7 is equipped with a 16MP primary camera with F/2.0 and it is supported by a LED flash. On the selfie front, it packs a 24MP selfie camera again with f/2.0 and there is a moonlight selfie flash for low light selfies. The camera interface offers a plethora of modes to choose from including Face Beauty, Portrait, Ultra HD, Time Lapse, Group Selfie, Filters and many more. The camera interface is also easy to use with a clean and clutter free UI.

The daylight captures taken with the device come with plenty of details, good color reproduction and overall looks good. The camera also offers portrait mode where you can take some really good portrait images. The close-up images also came out well with good details and color reproduction. Here are the samples taken with the rear camera.

The highlight of the phone is the 24MP selfie camera with moonlight selfie flash. The selfies taken with the device came out very well with good detailing and good color reproduction. There is also a bokeh mode in the selfie camera which can get amazing bokeh shots using software processing. Vivo’s software algorithm is near to perfect in identifying the subjects in the selfie. There is also an option to take group selfies using the camera. Here are some of the samples taken with 24MP selfie camera.

Battery Life:

Vivo V7 packs a 3000mAh battery and the performance of the battery is quite good with the 5.7-inch display. We tested the battery on a daily basis and we could get through a day of usage without any issues and battery lasted for a day even in moderate to heavy usage. There is no fast charging supported on the device, but the charging with the default charger was quite acceptable.

Verdict: 

Vivo V7 is priced Rs 16,990 and for the pricing, it offers a good looking compact device with good camera abilities along with music performance. Vivo V7 would have been a better deal if Vivo could have provided a Full HD+ display at this price segment. You can buy Vivo V7 from Amazon or Flipkart.