vivo v5s features – Tech Raman

VIVO V5s Review

Tech Raman — Thu, 04 May 2017 02:10:37 +0000

market analyst firm like Counterpoint and Canalys, the company has secured third position in the Indian Smartphone market in the first quarter of 2017 securing a neat 10% market share. The surge is largely due to its single minded focus on offline channels and the marketing blitzkrieg along with its brilliant tapping of the selfie craze that many of the smartphone users are fond of. The Vivo V5 and V5 Plus sold on the selfie highlights and now they have added V5S to their portfolio. V5s though is not much different from the Vivo V5, it only augments on the internal storage, slight aesthetic improvement and improved camera alg0irthms. Like the V5, the V5s also features a 20-megapixel moonlight LED light promising a better selfie experience, does it deliver ? Let’s find out in this review along with what changes it brings over the V5.

Design, Build and Design

Poly carbonate body
5.5-inch IPS LCD display
720 x 1280 pixel resolution
Corning Gorilla Glass (version unspecified)
2.5D Curved glass
153.8 x 75.5 x 7.6 mm
154 grams
Colors: Crown gold and matte black.

Its surprising that Vivo had opted for a polycarbonate body instead of metal or glass that is in vogue now but on the positive side, the polycarbonate would fare better and avoid dents that a metal body might embrace during falls 0r the cracks a glass body might take. Honestly, the faux-metal does a very neat job and you need to be told that it is plastic and not really a metal body. Aesthetically looking at it, irrespective of the casing, it looks good. The V5s has the design flow and smoothness that is very familiar of its own other models and from the staples of the competition like the Oppo F1s. Its a clean design with good ergonomics. The design language has so far worked for Vivo so they had no reasons to change it at least not with V5s as yet. The sides are smooth and the edges gently curved, it gives a good feel when you hold it. The antenna lines are similar to what we have seen in V5 Plus and gives a neat look. The rear has the camera, LED flash and Vivo branding. The bottom is crowded with speaker grille, microUSB port, microphone and a 3.5mm audio jack. The top is devoid of any ports. The right side has the volume and power button, while the left side houses the ejectable pin tray. Vivo V5s is a dual-SIM 4G VoLTE phone that can also accommodate a microSD card but its a hybrid dual-SIM so either you accommodate two SIMs or sacrifice the second SIM for a microSD card. Overall, I have no complaints on Vivo V5s design but yes, a metal casing would have been a more contemporary clothing but in any case you would never know unless told about it. I expected the V5s to have a fullHD display but Vivo has retained the same display as it was in V5. While many companies have made fullHD a mainstay in models in mid-segment and even Oppo and Gionee have opted for their latest devices in this segment, Vivo is still sheepish to change. Not that the HD resolution is bad but a fullHD would have read better on sheet. In practical scenario, Vivo has done a rather fine job with its display. The display has a punch and the colors are well saturated with black rich. The touch sensitivity and responsiveness is very good, the viewing angles are great too! The display setting has minimal controls and there is a blue filter like in most phone these days and Vivo calls it global eye protection ( a rather elaborate term!)

Software – The FunTouch UI

While the base is Android Marshmallow, Vivo almost make it indistinguishable with its heavy apple inspired UI , the FunTouch OS . The biggest unlearn-learn is getting used to the quick access settings which needs a swipe up from bottom of the screen or long pressing the menu button. Again the recent apps are nested in the control panel below and can the icons can be scrolled horizontally and swiped up to close the running apps. The FunTouch OS has its own share of quirky features, my favourite being S-Capture which offers some awesome screenshot capabilities, gesture dial, some smart gesture options and a Smart click that allows you to turn the Volume down key to be assigned a task like opening an app or turning on flash light. The V5s also gets a new feature in vogue in many phones now- App Clone or popularly known as dual apps feature. The set up is not straight forward and you need to go to the edit mode of the homescreen to clone apps. While I had facebook, Instagram and Twitter running in my phone, I could duplicate only WhatsApp and none other apps. So if you have two SIMs in your phone, you can run two WhatsApp accounts associated with both the SIMs. https://youtu.be/RaxgeBlNQkY I have done a separate post on interesting features Vivo V5s has to offer and you can take a look at it, if you are interested. The Vivo inspite of the heavy customization doesn’t slow down the phone and manages to be nimble.

Read: Top Features of Vivo V5s

Hardware and Performance

MediaTek MT6750 processor
1.5GHz octa-core
4GB RAM
Mali T860 GPU
64GB storage / expandable
4G VoLTE
3000mAh battery
Sensors: Accelerometer, light, orientation,gyroscope, proximity, magnetic

Now we head to the crucial part of the review most would be interested – the performance. Let’s be honest, the hardware the Vivo V5 doesn’t excite me. It’s pretty old for my personal liking. But that doesn’t mean it would be a sluggish performer. I been using the Vivo V5s as my primary device for a week now. For normal usage, the V5s works like charm. It can handle multi tasking and for most part due to the lack of one click to close all background apps, I end up using the phone with multiple apps running parallely and it managed to handle the load. The call quality is good and I really liked the keyboard spacing which was very convenient and smooth. When it comes to gaming, it was not bad at all. I could run Asphalt 8 at the highest graphic settings, though for a keen gamer there will be slight frame rate drops but the bottom line, it was playable. So did NOVA 3. So it was a mixed bag, barring few games, the Vivo V5s was able to play almost all games, heavy ones included but it also struggled with few selected games. When it comes to audio, the V5s lives up to its reputation. Speaker position in many phones come in way of game play , but not in the case of V5s. Plus, thanks to the AK4376 dedicated Hi-Fi audio chip the the audio output is brilliant. The Hi-Fi audio setting when you listed with earphones on makes for a great listen. The fingerprint sensor of the Vivo V5s is one of the most reliable sensors I have come across and is also fastest. Apart from unlocking the phone, you can also secure apps with fingerprint sensor. Battery is yet another star performer of V5s, even the V5 gave me a good battery life and this one inspite of having the same battery scored a notch better than that. On a medium usage with WiFi and dual SIM with a Jio 4G VoLTE on constantly, I could get a full day easily. A let down though is the lack of USB Type-C.

Vivo V5s camera

Front camera:

20-megapixel
Sony IMX 376 sensor
F/2.0 aperture
5P lens
1080p videosta capability
Soft LED light
Face beauty mode 6.0

The star selling point of the Vivo V5s is its 20 megapixel front facing camera that comes equipped with a soft LED light. Unlike the standard flash that fires while shooting a pic, the moonlight flash (that’s what Vivo calls it) in auto mode turns on under low-light conditions as a soft light even before you click and stays on till you close the camera app. The light is not harsh and gives a natural glow to your face without straining eyes and gives a good highlight. Vivo has done a better job at the camera algorithm in the V5s, the pictures are remarkably better than the V5. The selfies come out with great detailing , even when you zoom in you can get good details. For the selfie lovers who love ‘beautification’ , the face beauty mode 6.0 offers up to 100 levels and works neatly. The camera on V5s strikes a good note and that is what Vivo V5s sells and it works well as its target customers would want it to. Rear camera:

13-megapixel rear camera
PDAF
LED flash

Only very few front camera steal the limelight in camera phones where the rear almost always bag bigger mega pixel count but not in Vivo V5’s case. While it is out shadowed by the front camera, it does deliver a very good output. What surprised more is the video quality of the V5s , it is one of the better Smartphone video camera I have come across in recent times in this segment. [gallery link="file" columns="4" ids="12118,12119,12120,12121,12122,12123,12124,12125"]

Vivo V5s to buy or not?

Say Yes to V5s for:

Good display inspite of 720 pixels resolution
Finger print sensor is accurate and very fast
Good battery life
Impressive audio output
The camera both selfie and rear got much better than the V5.

Frankly I expected V5s to be a better worthy upgrade to Vivo V5 but then it doesn’t seem to be. The S in V5s is basically Storage and double of it. Between V5s and V5 it makes sense to buy the V5s at least for the double storage it offers but also, somewhere I feel Vivo has done a bit of optimization to this device that seems to work better now.]]>

Top Features of Vivo V5s that might win over you

Lakshmi Rajan — Thu, 27 Apr 2017 07:30:59 +0000

Continuing their focus on the selfie-centric Smartphones, Vivo has launched the Vivo V5s , essentially very similar to the Vivo V5 but for a minor design change in the antenna design at the back and doubling the internal storage to 64GB from 32GB. The Vivo V5s has a 5.5-inch display with HD resolution and 2.5D glass layered. The Smartphone runs on MediaTek MT 6750 chipset with 4GB of RAM under its hood. The highlight though is the 20-megapixel selfie camera with a LED soft light for better low light selfies. It also has a groupie feature that can accomodate more people in your selfie , it is basically a panaroma mode fitted for group selfies. Here are some of the best features of the Vivo V5s that can impress you.

Awesome screenshots in V5S

This is easily my favourite feature , the FunTouch UI of Vivo offers in this device. I keep gathering interesting cliparts making use of the interesting patterns the S-Capture offers. To access the screenshot options in Vivo V5s, go to the control panel by swiping up the home screen from bottom. There you find a quick access option for S-capture. Tapping upon that, it shows a round dial that gives four options – long screenshot, funny screenshots, rectangle and recording. Long screenshot allows you to take a scrolling screenshot not limited to the screen page of the webpage but also the portion that might be there above or below the screen page. Suppose you are at a recipe page of a cooking webiste, you can take a screenshot of the entire webpage even if it scrolls above or below. In usual devices, you might be ending up taking multiple screenshot to cover the full web page but here you can take on long screenshot. Makes sense right? Funny screenshot is what I enjoy more personally. Tapping on that gives three sub-options – pattern. lasso, doodle. Pattern has interesting cutouts for cliparts , lasso can give you ability to cut the portion of the screen image you want and doodle is more of a fun. Rectangle, as the name suggest helps you get angular screenshot in rectangle shape. Recording is the screen recorder, so when you are playing games, you can record the entire gameplay and watch it later as a video.

Vivo V5S Call recording

Settings > Phone settings > Record settings. Vivo V5S allows you to record the calls and you can choose to record all the calls automatically, or make a custom list with particular numbers.

Other phone settings

Go to contacts and you find an option personal. This gives you the following features.

My QR Code: You can make your personal information as a QR Code.
Private communication: You can encrypt certain numbers from your contacts and it won’t be visible on the contact page. The encrypted numbers will be moved to private communication which is secured via finger print or password.
Gesture dial: There is speed dial settings but what is more interesting for me is the gesture dial settings. You can assign a gesture to particular six contacts and in the dialer you can simply draw the gesture to call them.

App lock with fingerprint

Apart from unlocking the phone, Vivo V5S do have the app lock feature with fingerprint sensor. Make sure the option is enabled in the fingerprint management setting and then head over to the iManager app and to app manager option there. You find the app lock setting there and you can choose the apps you want to secure.

iManager

While we mentioned the app lock feature that is found in the iManager, there are whole lots of other settings nested here including the auto start manager and other app management settings like uninstall, floating app management etc. The privacy option allows you to stash your selected pictures, videos, audio and other files in a password protected different layer. Power manager option gives you different power saving mode also to identify apps that drain excess power in your phone and to kill them. There are few other phone cleaning tool too in this, if you want to explore.

Limit your hotspot sharing

Settings > Personal hotspot > One-time sharing limit Sharing is good but it also makes sense to be prudent. So next time if someone asks you to share your Wi-Fi and you want to make sure the sharing is within a limited data, there is a one-time sharing limit where you can choose the amount of data you want to share.

Visitor mode

V5S also has a guest mode with a visitor password on the lock-screen interface to enter the visitor mode. You can hide contact information including namecard, messages and call log of the selected contact , hide app icons which you don’t want your guest to see in your phone and also protect albums and videos.

SOS call

Settings > More settings > SOS call When there is an emergency, you can press the power button three times to call 100.

Search bar customization

Settings > More settings > Search Swiping down from the home screen shows a search bar where you can search in-phone apps, contacts, messages, music, settings, notes and file manager plus google search engine. You can enable the disable the parameters in the search bar settings.

OTG

Settings > More Settings > OTG Vivo V5S supports OTG but it has to be enabled in the settings page. Don’t forget once enabled, the OTG auto turns off after 5 minutes of inactivity.

Smart motion

Settings > More settings > Smart motion Smart motion settings page offers lot many ‘smart’ or ‘gimmicky’ features that you may like or not like, use or not use , nevertheless those options are nested here. There are draw gestures options to open certain apps or perform action like unlock phone or take a photo by drawing certain gestures when the screen is off. There is even an air operation like ‘black screen glance’ which shows the phone status when the screen is turned off by simply waving your hand some few cms above the phone. Other features you could find here include double tap to turn off screen, smart call features like lift the phone to automatically answer calls or wave over the screen to mute an incoming call or to enable hands-free. There is even a turn on the flash light by shaking the phone and tilt to zoom picture while viewing in the gallery.

Multi screen

The multi screen functionality is limited to three apps – facebook, messages and Whatsapp. So when you are on full screen say like watching a movie and there is a notification from any of these three apps, you can tap the notification to split the screen and chat while watching the movie.

One-hand operation

I rarely use the one-hand operation as am perfectly fine with big screens even more than 6-inches but for those who want to minimize the screen there is a one-hand keyboard and mini screen options.

Smart Click

When the screen is turned off, you can the hold the Volume down key to turn on / off the flashlight, record video, open camera, facebook or any other selected app.

Also watch:

https://youtu.be/GnRFwnpieCk]]>