Vivo V20 review: Camera-centric smartphone with good design, battery life

Vivo is one of the Chinese smartphone brands that have been keeping itself busy this year, and the result is seen in shipment numbers where the company is now ranked in the top five smartphone brands in India. Known for its camera-centric innovations, the company’s latest smartphone, the Vivo V20 brings company’s premium imaging experience to midrange segment. Besides, the phone does not compromise on most sought features one expects in a midrange smartphone like performance, design, display, and on-battery time. Priced at Rs 24,990, the Vivo V20 seems to be an interesting proposition, at least on paper. How does it performs in real life? Let’s find out:

Design and Display

 

The Vivo V20 is lightweight (171g) smartphone with compact form factor that makes it easy to hold and operate even for extended hours. It has a thin profile with textured frosted design on the back, which looks premium and offers a good in-hand feel. The back cover has a Gorilla Glass 5 covering for protection against scratches.

 

On the front, the phone has a 6.44-inch AMOLED screen of fullHD+ resolution. The screen supports HDR10 high dynamic range profile and has a peak brightness of 600 nits. Details aside, the screen is bright and vivid. Though a 60Hz refresh rate panel, it works fine for most content that one consumes on a mobile device. Protecting the display is a new SCHOTT Xensation UP glass, which is touted to be as resilient to scratch as Gorilla Glass.

Camera

 

The Vivo V20 is one of its kind smartphone with a 44-megapixel selfie camera with ‘Eye Autofocus’ technology. It is a capable sensor for selfies; it takes detailed shots irrespective of lighting conditions. At the rear, the phone has a triple-camera setup, including a 64MP primary camera, an 8MP ultra-wide-angle sensor, and a 2MP monochrome sensor.

The pictures under good sunlight come out really well

Though capable, the rear camera array is marred by post-processing algorithms. For example, the camera captures dull colours even when the frame has vivid objects like trees and flowers in the background. The wide-angle camera leaves a lot to be desired as the details around the edges lack the clarity. Imaging in low-light conditions is not the best in its segment but satisfactory nonetheless.

Performance

 

The Vivo V20 is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 720G system-on-chip (SoC), paired with 8GB RAM and 256GB on-board storage. The phone works fine for regular operation but performance demanding tasks like gaming feel underwhelming. Not that the phone cannot handle graphic-intensive games but one will have to manually set the graphics a notch below extreme for better experience. The Vivo V20 boots Android 11 operating system based Vivo’s custom FunTouch 11 user interface, which brings several improvement over the previous iteration yet does not seem polished. The interface is somewhere between clean and cluttered.

Battery

On-battery time is one of the phone’s strengths. Powered by a 4,000 mAh battery, the phone easily lasts for a day on a regular usage with a bit of video streaming on YouTube and Netflix, music streaming on Spotify, and gaming. The supplied 33W charger is quick to replenish the battery in about an hour.

Verdict

The Vivo V20 may not be the best midrange smartphone but it is not bad either. It is a balanced smartphones with a bit of everything for everyone. Consider this smartphone for its design and performance. You might like to compare it with the Realme 7 Pro (read review here) before finalising your pick.


Here are some more photos from Vivo V20