vivo V9

There's no denying the fact that the V9's design is heavily influenced by the iPhone X. However, once you look past that, you'll have what is essentially a well built and a rather good-looking smartphone. As far as the materials used in the construction are concerned, the V9 is fashioned out of plastic, and the back of the device features a glossy finish, which is a treat to look at. The experience doesn't last all that long though since the back of the smartphone is a fingerprint magnet and smudges really easily. I'd also like to mention that the device is a tad bit slippery, but thanks to Vivo's excellent weight distribution, the V9 doesn't feel unwieldy in the hand. On the contrary, the smartphone offers excellent ergonomics and one-handed usability which is a rarity, considering the smartphone's rather large display.

Let's get the obvious out of the way first – the 24MP selfie camera on the Vivo V9 is incredible. If you like to look at all the blemishes on your face at a microscopic level, then the V9 is the phone for you. In all seriousness, the smartphone captures some of the most detailed selfies I've ever seen, which coupled with its built-in beauty mode ensures that you never have to go to a salon for a makeover ever again. While the smartphone doesn't feature an LED flash module upfront, you do get the option of turning on the screen flash which lights up the smartphone's 6.3-inch display to give you some good-looking night-time selfies. You also get the option of clicking selfies in Bokeh mode, which was absent on the V7+ I reviewed a while back. As far as the quality of the portraits is concerned, the smartphone manages to separate the subject from the background really well, but the edges turned out a tad bit soft.

The good news? The Vivo V9 ships with Android Oreo v8.1 out of the box. The bad news? The heavy custom skin on top of Android Oreo is a far cry from stock Android. Now, depending on how you like your dessert served, you might fancy the makeover Vivo has given to Android Oreo. Unfortunately, I am not a big fan of the skin and during my review, I noticed that the UI transitions got significantly better once I switched to Nova launcher. In terms of features, the smartphone has an edge over the competition's Android Nougat offerings since the V9 supports functions like Picture-in-Picture mode which are specific to Android Oreo. Other than that, most of the software features are same across previous Vivo smartphones, including support for theming, smart split and a game mode which enhances a user's gaming experience by giving them the option to automatically block/take calls and messages while gaming.

Spec-heads will be delighted to hear that the V9 is powered by a Snapdragon 626 processor which works alongside 4GB of RAM. For the uninitiated, the SD626 chip comes as the successor to the Snapdragon 625 processor and offers a 10 percent bump in performance. Moreover, similar to its predecessor, the SD626 processor strikes a good balance between performance and battery life too, which I'll talk more about in a later part of this review. In terms of daily usage, the Vivo V9 managed to surpass my expectations and didn't stumble even when I was juggling between a plethora of applications. That said, I did notice a bit of lag when I was browsing through the feed on some demanding applications like Facebook and Snapchat.