Vivo V7 Review – An Exciting Selfie Phone

Vivo V7 is the more affordable and perhaps the more reasonable alternative to the V7+, the current ‘perfect selfie’ flagship from the popular Chinese smartphone maker. The Vivo V7 (Unboxing) is among the new wave of mid-range smartphones that make use of 18:9 display with narrow bezels (aka full-view screen) to accommodate a bigger screen without bloating the overall footprint of the phone. In spite of a few trade-offs involved, this kind of works, mainly because it breaks the design monotony that we have been enduring for more than a few years, especially in affordable phones.

We have been spending some quality time with the Vivo V7 for the last few weeks to know if this is a phone we can recommend to offline or online buyers. Let’s sum up our findings in the Vivo V7 full review.

Vivo V7 Pros and Cons

Vivo V7 vs Vivo V7+ Specifications

Also Read: Vivo V7 FAQ – All Related Questions Answered

Vivo V7 Design and Build

The design is what pretty much takes center stage with the V7, and this is the part that Vivo gets right. As we noted earlier, it’s hard to go wrong with a full-view fascia. The Vivo V7 is narrower and shorter than the Vivo V5s and yet it houses a bigger 5.7-inch display panel.

Unlike the Vivo V7+ which had a full metal body, the V7 furnishes a metal finish plastic back. This, in our opinion, also works in its favor, as the phone feels remarkably light.  And being light and compact, the Vivo V7 is a breeze to handle.

Apart from its agreeable ergonomics, the V7 also looks premium and feels exciting.

To quickly walk you through whats-where: the fingerprint sensor had to be shifted to the rear, the audio jack, speaker grill and micro USB port (regular) are all on the bottom edge and the SIM tray on the top left has a dedicated SD card slot.

There are no capacitive navigation buttons below the display and you can also let go of the software ones for a more immersive experience. The phone has an option to navigate using iPhone X like gestures and that’s what we have been using. We got accustomed to the gestures very quickly.

Vivo V7 Display

Vivo is using an HD+ resolution panel, where the ‘+’ is for the added rows of pixels to cover the vertically stretched 18:9 panel.

Most consumers who gawk at it in offline stores would be hard pressed to notice the difference, but Vivo is certainly cutting corners here. Full HD resolution would have been better. Other than that, the display quality is quite convincing. Colors are vibrant and contrast is high. Viewing angles and sunlight visibility are pretty decent too.

The 18:9 aspect ratio allows the screen to fit in more content, save for when you are playing 16:9 videos in a streaming app. The display is lined by a narrow black border on all sides and there is the now-customary 2.5D glass on top.

Vivo V7 Camera Quality

The Vivo V7 has a 24MP (f/2.0) front selfie camera and the primary objective here is to make you look beautiful rather than rendering accurate colors. To that effect, the selfie camera does a fine job. The selfie quality has also noticeably improved compared to the last generation Vivo phones.

We could capture crisp selfies both indoors and outdoors. The details and metering should be fine if you can avoid any light source in the backdrop. If beautify mode is your thing, Vivo has a good one.

On the rear, the Vivo V7 has a 16MP camera with f/2.0 aperture optics. The rear camera can shoot very likable images with wide dynamic range and high contrast. However, don’t expect the performance to blow your socks off. If you go in with balanced expectations, you won’t be disappointed.

There are no dual cameras on front or rear, but the software still allows you to capture workable bokeh shots. The camera app is well designed and quite engaging and we particularly like the pro mode.

Vivo V7 Performance and Software

The Vivo V7 is powered by the 14nm process based Snapdragon 450 octa-core processor paired with 4GB RAM. The chipset doesn’t get hot, is light on battery, and is powerful enough to cater to all our requirements. Compared to V7+, the storage has been downgraded from 64GB to 32GB.

We could easily get through most of our day to day tasks without any issue. As for gaming, gameplay wasn’t very smooth with high-graphics settings for Asphalt 8, but it worked fine at medium settings. Other heavy games that we tried ran well. Multitasking works reasonably well but we did notice that the software is a tad aggressive when it comes to killing background apps.

The Funtouch OS on the V7 is based on Android 7.1.2 Nougat. The software is feature rich and intuitive but it does need a facelift. We have talked about cool Vivo V7 software features in a separate article linked below.

Also Read: Top 12 Cool Vivo V7 Software Features, Tips, and Tricks 

Vivo V7 Face Unlock and Fingerprint sensor

Vivo V7 puts all those pixels in the selfie camera to good use for Face Unlock. The Face Unlock in Vivo V7 is extremely fast (almost as fast as it is on our OnePlus 5T) and so is the fingerprint sensor on the rear.

Vivo V7 Battery and Audio

The 3000mAh battery on the Vivo V7 can easily last for more than a day. Battery drains slowly when the phone is on standby. With gaming, the battery drains fast. The charger bundled in the box can top up the battery quickly.

The audio output via headphones is loud and clear. You can also turn on HiFi audio for a slightly improved performance.

Vivo V7 Review: Should I buy it?

The Vivo V7 is a well-designed, light and comfortable-to-operate phone. It’s also a great mid-range phone for people who love clicking self-portraits. Features like button-less navigation and face unlock further spice things up and help you make the most of the full-view panel. On the downside, we would have liked a higher display resolution and slightly lower price.

Even after more than 2 weeks of usage, we are excited every time we pick up the V7 and that’s because Vivo isn’t compromising on the basics. And that’s why we have no qualms about recommending it to basic and moderate users who prefer buying from offline stores.

Best Phones With Both Dual Cameras And 18:9 Display To Buy In India