Vivo is bringing its pop-up camera to the mainstream market with the V15 Pro in India. The phone, its first in 2019, has been priced at Rs 28,990 and will be available from 6 March onwards.
This is also the first mid-range to pack Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 675 processor. Other than the pop-up camera on the front, the Vivo V15 Pro is also the first in its series to get three cameras at the back.
At this price range, V15 Pro has to contend with the Nokia 8.1 Plus, but its supposed leadership in this segment could work in its favour. So, does the V15 Pro offer enough for its price? Here’s a first look at the phone and its feature set.
In terms of the design, V15 Pro offers a mix of premium features with a focus on keeping the costs down. The blue shade of the V15 Pro gets a tall screen over a 6.3-inch form size with thin bezels spread across the display.
Even the chin size at the bottom is surprisingly small, adding to its overall screen to body ratio.
Speaking of which, the V15 Pro doesn’t get a notch, and this is where its design execution from the Nex series comes out with flying colours.
The 6.3-inch display is heavy on colours and contrast, all thanks to the Super AMOLED panel in use. The colours do come alive and offer the punchy touch that we’ve become used to with Samsung’s patent display panel.
At the back, you have three camera sensors placed vertically, which somehow adds to the thickness of the device, making it protrude from the surface, ever so slightly.
Moving on, the phone is also the first to come with a Snapdragon 675 processor, with 6GB RAM and offering 128GB on-board storage, which is further expandable. It comes with Android 9.0 Pie based FunTouch OS out of the box and with Android Q to be announced in the coming months, it’s good to see brands finally able to offer the latest version to the consumers from day one.
For biometric security, users get an in-display fingerprint scanner and software-based face recognition tech as well.
However, the one thing that really doesn’t make sense to us on the V15 Pro, is the use of a microUSB 2.0 port.
I mean, if this was a sub Rs 20,000 phone, I’d say, consumers are yet to find Type C ports mainstream. But for a phone that costs over Rs 25,000, Type C should have been the go-to standard. Also, because of where the SIM slot is given, you’re missing out on dual speakers at the bottom of the device. Hopefully, this will change with Vivo’s next V series product.
Next up, there’s the camera. The one on the front pops up and packs a 32-megapixel sensor, which is big improvement on the 8-megapixel unit that we saw with the Nex. The quality is also better and the resulting pictures are, fair to say, selfie-worthy.
But it’s at the back where we’ve seen things change with the V15 Pro, the three sensors, offering different inputs, and the results were good. We’ll be doing a detailed comparison with other phones in this segment to see if the V15 Pro matches or is better than its rivals.
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