It starts by scouting for a well-lit area, where you raise your smartphone just above your head and tilt it at a certain angle to click a self-portrait of yourself. Dubbed as a 'selfie', the phenomenon has caught on like wildfire, raising the need for better front facing cameras in smartphones. Complying with the increasing demand, Chinese giant vivo launched the V5 selfie-centric smartphone (review) last year which boasted a 20MP front facing camera. Now, the company is back with an upgraded version of the same device dubbed the V5 Plus (review), which is why we decided to compare the two smartphones to see it is a worthy upgrade over its predecessor.
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The vivo V5's design was critiqued for being inspired by the Apple iPhone 7. With the V5 Plus, the company takes it one step further by imitating the position of the ports as well as the antenna bands as seen on the iPhone 7. However, that's not to say that the design is bad. Talking about the devices in question, the V5 Plus is constructed entirely from metal, which gives it a huge bump over the V5, which uses plastic in its construction.
In the camera department, the vivo V5 gets a 20MP front facing sensor and a 13MP rear facing sensor. Both the camera modules come with their standalone flash units too. The V5 Plus on the other hand comes with a dual-camera setup on the front, featuring a pair of 20MP and 8MP sensors which are aided with a flash unit. On the back, the device gets a 16MP sensor with its separate flash unit. This makes it evident that the V5 Plus comes with a better camera setup, on the front as well as the back, which will surely translate into better digital stills.
Powering the vivo V5 is a 3,000mAh battery, which falls marginally short off the 3,055mAh one fuelling the newer V5 Plus. However, bear in mind that the vivo V5 comes with a lower resolution display and therefore, should be able to give users a better battery life. Both the smartphones come with standard connectivity options along with support for 4G LTE.