Dato’ Siti Nurhaliza may have dissed photographers with her vivo V5 Plus, but vivo isn’t quite done yet in the selfie-shooting department. Pushing the selfie camera beyond 20MP is the new vivo V7+, vivo’s very first device with a FullView Display.
Selfie-centric camera phones have been gaining popularity, dominated by the likes of OPPO’s “Selfie Expert” range as well as vivo’s own V series. There are dark horses like the ASUS ZenFone 4 Selfie, too, as well as up-and-coming Huawei nova series.
So, what makes a great selfie camera? Vivo thinks it’s about how big a sensor you can cram into a mobile chassis, and has taken a no-holds barred approach with the front shooter.
Topping its own vivo V5 Plus, the new vivo V7+ rocks a whopping 24MP f/2.0 camera with front-facing Selfie Softlight flash. That’s a lot of megapixels. Warning: super sharp blackheads.
There’s plenty of software wizardry and fancy algorithms for one purpose: perfect selfies.
You’ll find Face Beauty 7.0 mode, Portrait Bokeh, Group Selfie, camera filters, Gender Detection and more. The Face Beauty mode is also available for video calls.
On the rear, it features a commendable 16MP f/2.0 shooter with PDAF, which is capable of shooting 64MP Ultra HD photos.
I found them to be pretty snappy cameras, having tested the device briefly during the launch.
It’s going to be weird not talking about the vivo V7+’s display, because it’s something vivo have been teasing a lot about prior to the launch.
Sadly, it’s rather a disappointment. While I commend them for pulling of an almost bezel-less look, I wished they’d put in a higher resolution screen. Ground-breaking visual experience it is not, despite how nice the expansive screen looks (from afar).
It’s a 5.99-inch 1440x720p IPS display with a 18:9 screen ratio, translating to an impressive 84.4% screen-to-body ratio.
It’s 720p folks, but I was surprised that it’s actually reasonably crisp and bright.
What’s impressive though is the glaringly absent physical home button. Swipe up at the bottom centre of the screen to return to Home, or swipe up on the right side of the screen to go Back. Swipe up from the bottom left to bring up the “Control Centre.” It works.
That said, you can enable Android’s stock capacitive buttons via Settings if you so wish.
Another deal-breaker is the bottom-scraper Qualcomm Snapdragon 400-series processor. I’d expect at least a Snapdragon 625.
Otherwise, things look better with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage. The dual-SIM device also supports microSD expansion.
The built-in battery is rated at 3,225mAh which is more than decent for a full-day’s worth of hi-res selfie taking. It charges up via micro-USB.
Another brownie point for the vivo V7+ is the AK4376A Hi-Fi chipset that delivers a good audio experience. For audiophiles, you’ll be chuffed to know it supports FLAC format, aside from the usual suspects—WAV, MP3, etc.
The vivo V7+ runs FunTouch OS 3.2, an iOS-like UI which is based on Android 7.1 Nougat.
Pricing and availability
The vivo V7+ retails for MYR1,499 and is available in Matte Black and Gold.
It’s easy to see where vivo is going with this. It’s jumping on the bandwagon where the edge-to-edge screen smartphone trend is concerned. And it continues pushing the selfie proposition. Which is well and good. The bottom line is, it could have done a little better in a few key areas. It’s more than capable, judging from the excellent V3 Max and V5 Plus.
The fact is, the just-launched Huawei nova 2i looks to be a more compelling buy at this point (also undercutting the V7+ by MYR200), the 24MP selfie camera notwithstanding.
Let the games begin.
What do you think?
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