[REVIEW] vivo V15 Pro – Elevated Our Expectation

In order to achieve an almost bezel-less display smartphone, phone maker has made a lot of bold design approach. Mainly is due to the sensors and front camera placement; vivo is the first company to introduce a pop-up selfie camera under the NEX lineup.

vivo is ready to bring this technology design to its more affordable mid-range V-series and the vivo V15 and V15 Pro are the first to adopt the new design. This offered as close to concept all-screen phone with an in-display fingerprint scanner and pop-up selfie camera.

vivo V15 Pro specification
• Qualcomm Snapdragon 675, 2x Kyro 460 Core @ 1.7GHz + 6x Kyro 460 @ 2.0GHz and Adreno 612 GPU
• 6.39-inch SuperAMOLED, 2,340 x 1,080 Full HD+ @ 19.5 : 9 aspect ratio
• 6GB of RAM
• 128GB Onboard Storage with dedicated microSD card slot
• A.I. Triple Rear Camera Setup; 48MP f/1,8 + 8MP (120-degree Ultra Wide) + 5MP Depth Sensor
• 32MP Pop-up Selfie Camera
• In-display Optical Fingerprint Scanner
• 3,700 mAh Battery, Dual-Engine Fast Charging
• FunTouchOS 9.0 Based Android 9.0 Pie
• 802.11ac WiFi, Bluetooth 5.0, GPS/A-GPS, 3.5mm Audio Jack

Here’s a quick unboxing video of the vivo V15 Pro:

The unit that we received is the 6GB + 128GB variant in Topaz Blue colour. It comes with a well designed TPU case with silicone side bumper and has a perfect cutout for the pop-up camera. User manuals, an 18W fast charger brick, microUSB cable and an earphone

Design

The first glance on the front, the V15 Pro does look like from the future. The near-to-bezel-less display and a motorized pop-up greet me when unlocking the phone.

The top bezel is pretty narrow which just barely to have enough space for the earpiece. The proximity and ambient sensors are placed at the top left corner of the display, which is not visible due to the blackness AMOLED panel.

With the thin top, size and decent chin bezels, the vivo able to achieve an impressive 91.64% screen-to-body-ratio. It comes with a pre-affixed screen protector out-of-the-box and protected with Corning Gorilla Glass (unspecific which gen)

On the rear is welcomed a protruded piece of three rear camera block and vivo logo at the bottom. The Topaz Blue has a blue gradient colour and subtle wavy pattern giving a unique look. The rear is made out of high glossy laminated plastic that gave a premium-touch look.

The volume rocker and power buttons are located on the right. On the left is Jovi, an A.I. assistant button and out of China, Google Assistant will be mapped. A dedicated microSD tray is located at the top of Jovi button.

Bottom are the dual nanaSIM tray, microphone, microUSB and speaker grill. On the top are the selfie camera and 3.5mm audio jack.

Display

vivo used Samsung SuperAMOLED display panel and it got the deep blacks and high contrast ratio. It sports a 6.39-inch display with resolutions of 2,340 x 1,080. The display is superb vivid and has punchy colours like others AMOLED display smartphone from Samsung.

Camera

The SONY IMX586 is essentially a 12-megapixels camera sensor that uses 4-in-1 binned pixels technic and bumped up the resolutions up to 48-megapixels. This brings more details, less noise and works great in the low-lighting environment.

The second camera is an ultra-wide 8-megapixels camera that can give a different viewing angle perspective. The third camera is a 5-megapixels depth sensor that assists in edge detection when we shoot in portrait/aperture modes.

The triple rear camera has A.I. capability where it will able to detect scenes and suggest which settings to go in order to capture better photos. It also comes with Night Mode that shoot in long shutter without the need of a tripod.

Pro-mode is also available in the camera app where it allows you to manually control the camera Shutter, ISO, Exposure, Focus and White Balance.

The elevated 32-megapixels selfie camera outputs images at 8-megapixels which also uses 4-in-1 binned pixels technic and it can shoot pretty sharp and details with less noise.

Here are some sample photos were taken with the vivo V15 Pro;

The rear camera is capable to shoot up to 4K @ 30 fps without EIS. EIS is only present when shooting in 1,080P @ 30 fps or lower.

Here is a simple video test of the vivo V15 Pro, shot in 1,080P @ 30 fps

Performance

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 675 is an octa-core process made on 11nm process with new Adreno 612 GPU. It may sound like the processor in between the Snapdragon 660 and 710 but it actual performance test, the Snapdragon 675 outperformed the 710 and on par or even better than the Snapdragon 835 that found on the Razer Phone.

Here is some benchmarks scores comparison:

The Snapdragon 675’s single-core performance able to beats strong contenders like Kirin 970, Snapdragon 835 and pretty much on par with the Snapdragon 845. On multi-core, the V15 Pro is pretty much on par with the other except the Snapdragon 845.

On the real-life test, the V15 Pro performance pretty snappy without any lags of slow throughout our review. When coming to gaming, the Adreno 612 able to handle pretty much all major mobile game title without any issue like PUBG Mobile, NFS and etc.

Do check out the graphics performance when I played PUBG Mobile at high settings

FunTouch OS 9.0 (Android 9.0 Pie)

FunTouch OS is a fully customized skin that brings offers a few useful features that others don’t. The V15 Pro gets to run Android 9.0 Pie out-of-the-box bring swiping gesture felt like at home.

If you are not familiar with FunTouch OS, you will need some time to get used to it after all the backbone is still Android.

Battery 

The 3,700 mAh battery is juiced via microUSB where a lot of people may find it rather disappointed – including myself but this doesn’t make the device not fast-charge compatible. The V15 Pro supports dual-engine fast charging (18W) which I able to charge a 10% to 48% in less than 30 minutes. The battery life is pretty good as I only need to charge the phone once every 2 days that I mainly use it to watch YouTube, Facebook and taking photos.

Facebook Comments
vivo V15 Pro
  • Design
  • Build
  • Display
  • Performance
  • Camera
  • Battery
  • Value
4.6

Verdict

The vivo V15 Pro is one of the most exciting mid-range smartphone this year. We never thought the vivo APEX concept phone design would come to the mid-range phone that soon.

It has checked all the flagship built and design, high screen-to-body ratio AMOLED display, in-display fingerprint scanner, 48-megapixels rear camera, elevated 32-megapixels selfie camera and not too shabby SoC. In fact, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 675 could be the best mid-range SoC to date.

Pros
• Immersive Almost Bezel-less AMOLED Display
• Improved & Fast In-display Fingerprint Scanner
• Great Camera (48MP & 32MP)
• Dedicated microSD slot & dual nanoSIM

Cons
• microUSB
• Uncertain pop-up camera motorized life-span

The vivo V15 Pro is now available to pre-order for RM 1,799 starting today from the online and offline stores.

There’s gonna be a Superday Sale on 2nd March 2019 at Sunway Pyramid (Blue Concourse) where early birds will receive a complimentary DJI Spark Drone (on a first come first serve basis) and vivo gift box.