Vivo V5 : First Impression of the world's first Smartphone with 20MP selfie camera

selfie le re‘ and down south in Kollywood we hear ‘selfie puzha‘ (selfie girl) and a Malayalam movie even has a title ‘Oru vadakkan selfie‘, it signals selfie going mainstream and part of the culture. Almost everyone with a Smartphone likes to take selfie than a perfect picture with the rear camera, selfie has more drama around the picture and speaks a lot, so its natural the Smartphone makers wants to tap into the selfie craze and provide better hardware support to give a ‘perfect selfie’. Vivo V5 is essentially a selfie Smartphone with a massive 20MP front camera with a soft LED light for that perfect selfie. Vivo V5 is launched in India at Rs 17,980 and here is my first impression of the Smartphone that is up for pre-order now and will go on sale in retail stores across many cities and towns in India on November 26th. Vivo V5 comes in two color choices – space grey and crown gold. Personally I liked the Space grey with its black frontage. The gold model has a white face which is not of my taste but then each has their own design preferences. The 5.5-inch display with a 2.5D curved glass comes with a 1280 x 720 pixel resolution. While a fullHD would have made better sense, having used the phone for a while now, the display is punchy with deep black and good saturation.  While there is a unbranded toughened glass over the display, the V5 also comes with a pre-laid tempered glass out of the box, which along with transparent silicone back case might be a attractive offering for consumers especially at the offline channels, where such extra offerings score more brownie points for the device. The finger print sensor is housed at the front with the home button combing as the sensor and the company says it can unlock in 0.2 seconds. I was quiet impressed with the sensor, it is very fast and accurate. The front of course is where the talking point of the phone is – the 20 megapixel front camera along with the moonlight LED which gives a moon glow around the face when taking selfies. It uses a very capable Sony IMX376, 1/2.78” – behind a bright f/2.0 aperture with a fixed focus. The front camera like the rear camera can take 1080p videos as well. The V5 Max has a metallic unibody with rounded corners and offers a very good ergonomics. The phone is not slippery and feels good on hand while holding. The rear has the 13MP camera and LED flash on the top corner, antenna cut outs on the top and rear and Vivo branding at the middle. That is looks like iPhone 6S will not have any buyers complaining for its aesthetics. The body is unibody metallic and measures 7.6mm in thickness and weighs 154 grams. The left side has the ejectable SIM tray and it supports a microSIM and a nano-SIM along with a provision for a microSD card that can accommodate up to 128GB. V5 is a 4G VoLTE phone, so yet is supports the Jio SIM. The bottom is crowded with 3.5mm audio jack, micro USB port, speaker grille and a microphone. Talking about other specifications, the V5 runs on Mediatek 6750 chipset with a 4GB of RAM and 32GB internal storage. While the Android 6.0 Marshmallow is the base, Vivo uses their FunTouch 2.6 UI overlaid upon it. The UI has the iOS feel to it and has no app drawer. There are preinstalled apps like Easyshare, Vivo cloud. Vivo says they have a dedicated audio chip for good fidelity and the audio comes out good too. A 3000mAh battery is housed inside and is early for me to comment on the battery life, so wait for my complete review soon. Here are some of the samples taken with Vivo V5 for your reference. It’s too early too comment on the photo abilities, will do that in the detailed review. [gallery link="file" columns="4" ids="11789,11790,11791,11792,11793,11794,11795"] That wraps up my first impression of the Vivo V5. What you think of the device? Look forward to more Vivo stories on our website and YouTube channel in the coming days.]]>