vivo V5

The vivo V5 takes a lot of design cues from the iPhone 6 but unlike Apple's phone, the V5 is made entirely out of plastic. However, the grey variant that we got for review does a great job of misleading the user to believe that the phone is made of metal. The unibody V5 is built pretty solidly, though, and you will be hard-pressed to find any creaking that comes with cheap plastic. Moreover, the power button and the volume button on the right edge produce such a satisfying ‘click’ sound when pressed that it reminded us of using a very good mechanical keyboard. The feeling of using hardware buttons with such great tactile feedback was truly the ‘little joys of life’ moment we were craving from a smartphone in ages. Additionally, the fingerprint scanner needs a special mention primarily because the fingerprint recognition is blazing fast, a pleasant surprise. All the other elements of vivo V5’s design are bog standard.

On the front of the vivo V5 is a 5.5-inch 720p IPS LCD panel. We predict quite a few raised eyebrows and yes, you could believe that vivo is committing harakiri by going for a 720p panel instead of a full HD one, which is the standard across most Android smartphones in this price range. However, let’s cut it some slack since the V5’s 720p panel is sharp enough for most users and you will be hard pressed to spot any pixelation. Also, the fairly accurate colour reproduction of the panel is mostly good. The colour temperature of the screen is generally warm, which means that reading on the V5’s screen doesn’t hurt your eyes. Oh, and lest we forget to mention, vivo also adds a Global eye protection mode, which casts a yellow shade on the screen just like Apple’s Night Shift mode.

The V5 runs vivo’s custom, weirdly-named, Funtouch OS 2.6 on top of Android 6.0 Marshmallow. If you’ve used a vivo phone before, you’d know that Funtouch OS takes a lot of design cues from Apple’s iOS rather than Google’s platform that it is based on. All the apps are lined up on the home screen and there is no app drawer. In fact, Funtouch OS also includes its own take on Apple’s Control Centre — pulling up from the bottom of the display brings up a shade that shows a few quick settings and the apps open in the background. Now, the multitasking menu is not a carousel like you see in regular Android and there is no preview of the app either, which is rather annoying.

Marketed as the ‘Perfect Selfie’ phone, the least you can expect from the vivo V5 is a great front camera that can take good self-portraits, and for the most part it delivers. The front camera is a combination of a 1/2.78-inch Sony IMX376 20-megapixel sensor, lens with f/2.0 aperture, and a flash module. The camera app itself is a basic affair modelled around the iOS camera app. It lets you take images and allows you to choose focus as well. Apart from this, you have a dedicated Face Beauty mode, a few Instagram-style filters, and your standard HDR, Panorama, and Manual modes.

The vivo V5 uses a MediaTek  MT6750 octa-core processor tuned at 1.5GHz coupled with 4GB of RAM. It also comes with 32GB of internal storage, which can be further expanded by up to 256GB using a microSD card. This combination of SoC and RAM offers a generally smooth performance but once in a while you will notice some lag here and there - partly thanks to the heavy-handed animations used by FunTouch OS. Gaming is no fun on the V5, especially if you like playing graphically-intensive titles like Asphalt 8 or Modern Combat 5. From load times to frame drops, the performance inefficiency is apparent.