Vivo T3 Ultra review: good mix of power, style and capability

Just when it seemed like Vivo was done with the T3 series for the year, after unveiling four smartphones, the brand has introduced an ‘Ultra’ variant in the lineup. This marks the first time Vivo has added an Ultra model to its T series range. Typically, Ultra variants are associated with top-tier specifications, a fair assumption given how this term is often used to market the crème de la crème option within a product range. While this seems to be true for the T3 Ultra, things get more complex when you throw the Vivo V40 (review) into the mix. Retailing at Rs 34,999, the V series handset falls in the same price bracket as the T3 Ultra and comes with ZEISS optics that make it a compelling buy. Does T3 Ultra manage to offer a completely different package that will appeal to more users? Read my detailed review below to find out.

Verdict

While the Vivo T3 Ultra doesn’t feature ZEISS branding and filters as far as optics are concerned, the handset delivers decent camera performance for its price. With a powerful processor, a smooth and immersive display, and an IP68 water and dust resistance rating, the T3 Ultra is a worthy all-rounder at its price.

Design and display

In terms of design, the T3 Ultra looks like it belongs in the V series, not the T series as it is similar to the V40 series handsets. Much like the V40 series handsets, the T3 Ultra also comes with a circular camera setup in an oblong-shaped module at the back. The Aura Light ring is present right below this module. As I said in the V40 review, the minimalistic design language gives the phone a premium look and a good in-hand feel. I don’t want to repeat everything I said in that review so I’ll just say that sans the ZEISS branding in the camera module, you would not be able to tell the difference between the V40 and the T3 Ultra. The new Vivo phone is available in Lunar Grey and Frost Green colours, and both look appealing in their own right. The phone comes with dual stereo speakers, which is a major plus point if you prefer to watch videos without headphones on.

As we’re talking about the slimmest 5,500mAh battery smartphone, the T3 Ultra is easy to hold and use with one hand. The power button and the volume rocker can be easily accessed with your thumb when using the phone and no major stretching is required as such. I occasionally covered the speakers at the bottom (beside the Type-C charging port) with my pinky finger but overall, I didn’t have any major qualms with the handset’s design.

The T3 Ultra comes with a 6.78-inch 3D Curved AMOLED display with a screen resolution of 1.5K (1,260×2,800 pixels), a 120Hz refresh rate, and a peak brightness of 4,500 nits. This level of peak brightness ensures that the phone’s display content is clearly visible even under direct sunlight. While this would have been the segment-leading number sometime back, Realme GT 6T takes a slight edge over the T3 Ultra in this department.

With vibrant colours, deep blacks, impressive peak brightness, and a silky-smooth 120Hz refresh rate, the display on the T3 Ultra ticks almost all of the boxes that you would want from a phone of this price range. However, I personally prefer phones with flat display panels. While the curved display on this phone does a great job of delivering an immersive viewing experience from the front, the off-angle viewing isn’t ideal due to the curved sides in my opinion. Having said that, if you’re used to curved panels, you’d be just fine with this one too.

Cameras

Although the T3 Ultra has been designed to be a performance-oriented phone, there is no denying the fact that any Vivo phone comes with certain expectations when it comes to cameras. Before I get into the camera performance, let me get the nitty gritty out of the way. The T3 Ultra comes with a primary 50MP Sony IMX921 OIS camera with a 1/1.56-inch sensor, f/1.88 aperture and Vivo Camera-Bionic Spectrum (to capture human eye-like images). The primary camera is assisted by an ultra-wide 8MP camera. The phone comes with Smart Aura Light as well, much like the V40 series to improve images in low-light scenarios. There is a flicker sensor on the phone as well to make sure your videos do not struggle with flicker issues.

At the front, you get a 50MP 92-degree wide-angle camera with F2.0 Ultral-Sensing aperture and AI Facial Contouring technology (to avoid facial distortion). In my usage, I found that the handset managed to take some impressive shots, especially in portrait mode. While the processing smoothened out the skin at times and changed the lighting to make images more aesthetic, I would still say that the images would please most users. One aspect where the phone struggled was capturing videos indoors as it showcased more flickering than regular phones despite the presence of the flicker sensor.

To find out how the phone fares against its competition, I checked its cameras against the Realme GT 6T (review) and the Honor 200 (review). Check out the results below.

Daylight

In the daylight shot, the Vivo T3 Ultra delivered a pretty decent shot but the Realme GT 6T managed to capture more details. Even in terms of colour accuracy, I would say that the Realme handset had the upper hand here.

In comparison with the Honor 200, I would say that the T3 Ultra delivered a better shot as the Honor handset showed some smoothening, which ended up hurting the details on offer.

Portrait

No prizes for guessing this one, the T3 Ultra produced a better portrait shot than the Realme GT 6T. Whether it was the application of the bokeh effect or the accuracy of the skin tone, the Vivo handset produced a much better shot.

In comparison, the Honor 200 aggressively blurred the background and struggled with edge detection too.

Night

In the night shot, the Vivo T3 Ultra managed to take a slightly brightened image for my taste. As a result, the handset compromised a bit on the colour accuracy in favour of details in the dark. On the other hand, the Realme GT 6T took the most colour-accurate image out of the three handsets but did sacrifice some details in the dark areas.

As you can see in the comparison between the T3 Ultra image and the one taken by Honor 200, the latter struggled with capturing a light signboard and could only produce a blob of light. The Honor handset could not capture details too well either.

Night Mode

This was one of the trickiest comparisons for me as Vivo T3 Ultra produced a detailed shot but colours were boosted into the unnatural territory. In comparison, the Realme GT 6T produced a slightly grainy shot but the colours were more accurate.

Finally, in comparison with the T3 Ultra, the Honor 200 produced more colour-accurate shots but smoothening impacted the details in the shots adversely. 

Selfies

The 50MP front shooter on the T3 Ultra does shine through when it comes to selfies. In comparison to the Realme GT 6T, the T3 Ultra captured details much better. Even the portrait shots taken by the handsets were superior to those clicked by the Realme handset.

While the Honor 200 managed to click a pretty good selfie, the background details were better captured by the T3 Ultra.

Performance and Software

The standout aspect of the T3 Ultra, particularly from the V40, is in performance. While I was impressed by the V40, I pointed out that the phone should’ve done better with its processor choice as it features the same processor as its predecessor. However, the T3 Ultra comes with a much more powerful chipset at its helm – the MediaTek Dimensity 9200+. This octa-core chipset has been crafted using the 2nd-gen 4nm fabrication process and comes with a super-performance prime core Cortex-X3 CPU, with a clock speed of 3.35 GHz, the highest in the history of Vivo’s series T smartphones.

The chipset is assisted by an 11-core lmmortalis-G715 GPU for graphical performance. The T3 Ultra is available with up to 12GB of RAM and 256GB of built-in storage. With the Extended RAM feature, you can get a maximum of up to 24GB of RAM if needed for some intensive tasks.

To gauge the phone’s performance against its top competitors, we pitted it against the Realme GT 6T and the Honor 200. In this comparison, we started by performing the AnTuTu benchmark test on all these phones. As the AnTuTu benchmark score is a quantitative measure of a device’s overall performance, it evaluates various aspects of the device’s hardware and software capabilities through a series of tests. While the brand claims that the phone can get an AnTuTu score of more than 1600000, in our testing, we got a score of 1445926 on the T3 Ultra.

As you can see, the Realme GT 6T managed to get a slightly better score than the T3 Ultra, but the Honor 200 fell quite short. This goes to show that the MediaTek Dimensity 9200+ is a capable chipset that can handle heavy tasks efficiently.

Next, we ran the Geekbench test on these devices. The Geekbench score quantifies a device’s CPU performance through various tests, providing an overall measure of its processing power and efficiency in handling single-core and multi-core tasks. Here, the T3 Ultra managed to outperform both the other phones, indicating it can handle CPU-intensive tasks more effectively.

To find out how these phones handle excessive load, we ran the Burnout test on these handsets. In this test, the Honor 200 was a standout performer. The Honor handset managed to deliver 79.3 percent of its peak performance under heavy load, in comparison to the 58.4 percent and 54.2 percent delivered by the GT 6T and the T3 Ultra, respectively. While this test does show the phone could struggle to perform well under heavy stress, we didn’t use the extended RAM feature while running this test and I didn’t face any issues such as app crashes or lags with the phone in general usage.

Coming to the software, the T3 Ultra boots up Android 14-based FunTouchOS 14 out of the box. While the handset has around 47 pre-installed apps, the phone doesn’t feel cluttered as such. Much like the V40 series handsets, the UI animations are pretty clean. With a capable chipset and a 120Hz display refresh rate, the phone delivers an all-around smooth experience. One interesting thing to note here is that Vivo hasn’t gone on board heavily the AI train like some of the other brands. While there are some AI features on this phone – AI Erase and AI Photo Enhance, the brand hasn’t implemented AI across its platform. When we asked Vivo the reason for this, the brand shared that according to the data available to their team, people are not using AI features extensively in this particular price range. While I personally like the AI features such as AI Summary and AI Speak available on OPPO handsets, I can understand this omission from the brand.

As we’re talking about the FunTouchOS 14, there aren’t any major changes from the V40 here. This means you get apps such as V-Appstore (Vivo’s own app store), iManager (cleanup utility and security scanner), and Jovi Home, which is an AI assistant that shares recommendations after learning your usage habits. 

Battery life and charging speeds

With a 5,500mAh battery, it was hardly a surprise that the T3 Ultra managed to offer a pretty good backup for me in daily usage. While on some days I had to charge it the next day, on some, I had to plug the phone in by the evening. 

In our PCMark battery test, the phone lasted for 12 hours and 14 minutes. This is somewhat lower than the backup offered by other phones in this price range but as I said, in real life the backup feels pretty much the same as other phones within this category.

There is a Fast Charging option in the phone’s settings that allows you to charge the phone from 20-100 percent in just around 38 minutes. Keep in mind that the phone gets slightly warm once you enable this option. Without this option enabled, the 80W fast-charging allowed the phone to charge from 20-100 percent in around 47 minutes.

  
In our gaming test, where we played three popular games (BGMI, Real Racing 3, and Call of Duty: Mobile) on the phone for 30 minutes each, the cumulative battery percentage drop on the T3 Ultra was 23 percent. This is slightly on the higher side in comparison to the competition. This means that the phone suffers battery drain at a slightly higher rate while dealing with demanding titles.

Final verdict

The Vivo T3 Ultra can crudely be described as the perfect mix of V40 and the V40 Pro. It offers the processing power of the latter at the affordable price point of the former. All this in the same design and with the same battery capacity as both these V series smartphones. While the T3 Ultra doesn’t ship with the camera prowess of the Pro model, the phone does a good job in terms of photography and comes with IP68 dust and water resistance, which definitely provides peace of mind. Another handset you can consider in this price category is the Realme GT 6T, though I should point out that the T3 Ultra offers a better and slimmer design.

Editor’s rating: 8 / 10

Reasons to buy

• The phone comes with a powerful and capable processor
• This is the first T series phone with IP68 dust and water resistance
• The phone is capable of clicking impressive portrait shots

Reasons not to buy

• The flicker sensor on the phone doesn’t seem to help
• The image processing can produce overly smoothened images at times

Tested by: Aditya Pandey and Ujjwal Sharma