The Vivo V20, a mid-range device, price starts at Rs 24,990, which has been showcased as the first device to come with Android 11 out of the box, made its way to us. The device has some considerable competitors such as the Oppo F17 Pro, the OnePlus Nord and the Galaxy M51.
With this device, Vivo is mainly focusing on the front camera, hence the selfies, the software experience and how the phone looks. Before starting with the main review, let’s talk about what is inside the box of Viv0 V20- manuals, the device, a 33W fast charger, a Type-C cable and a case.
Design & In-hand feel
Talking about the design, Vivo V20 is trying to play with the colours on the back panel. The variant we got was the ‘Sunset Melody’ one. It basically has 4 gradient colours on the back which are amber, purple, light pink and blue. Now, these colours keep changing depending on the way the light shines on it and in my opinion, it looks beautiful.
With a square triple camera array on top which has a metal casing, the device has a super-premium feel when you hold onto it. It doesn’t feel heavy or bulky in any way. The volume and power buttons are on the right, and the power button has a different finish to help you distinguish it with the volume rocker. On the bottom, we have a speaker, a type-c charging port and a 3.5mm Headphone jack.
The design of a device is always a personal preference but in my case, out of all the devices the V20 is competing with, I found it to be looking the most beautiful and premium. Definitely a 9/10 for the design. Not a 10 because it still picks up smudges and a bit of fingerprints as it’s a Matte glass finnish but I am just nit picking at this point.
Display
The smartphone has a 6.44-inch FHD+ AMOLED Display with a Resolution of 2400×1080. The display on the Vivo V20 looks great. It is bright enough for comfortable sunlight readability, the colours looked punchy and accurate. Also, Vivo has provided an option to change the colours of the display to a more warm or a cool tone, as per your liking. But in my opinion, the display looked great and I had a good viewing experience.
One thing which I did miss here was a 90Hz display which would have really upped the experience. I felt the same with the Oppo F17 Pro when I reviewed it. And OnePlus is already giving a 90Hz display with their Nord which makes it a better choice if display matters to you the most.
Performance & Gaming
The Vivo V20 is powered by the Snapdragon 720G paired with 8GB of RAM and 128/256GB of storage. Vivo also gives a dedicated slot for SD-card for further expansion of storage which is great. The variant we got had 256GB of storage.
Things we liked
The device runs on Funtouch OS 11 which is based on the latest Android 11. Vivo is trying to give you a very Stock Android-like experience here where it sticked to a UI that is very similar to Pixel UI but with its own additions.
As expected, the device is feature-packed. You get a bunch of customization features like changing the fingerprint animation, unlock animation, charging animation, etc. Always On Display customization is also present with various clock styles and much more. These are some useful and good features that add to the overall experience.
Gaming performance also turned out to be great. I could play Asphalt 9 at the highest graphics settings without any issues and even Call Of Duty Mobile was perfectly playable at the highest graphic setting available for the device.
The fingerprint scanner was also really quick in recognizing my finger and worked really well. It does feature all the Stock Android 11 features such as Bubbles, new notification categorisation, privacy features, etc.
Things we didn’t like
As much as Vivo tried to keep it stock, the performance still suffered. While RAM management was fine, the App opening and switching animations felt quite slow. The quickness in the software was definitely missing. Maybe Vivo can improve it in future updates, but for now, the device did lag sometimes even in day-to-day tasks despite being equipped with a good Snapdragon processor.
Talking about the competition, the Oppo F17 Pro performed better as compared to Vivo V 20 during our review.
Another thing we did not like was the amount of bloatware that was pre-installed in the device. I was able to uninstall some of it but even then a lot of it was present such as the V-store, Vivo’s own browser, Vivo Store, etc. Vivo could have provided an option to disable these apps but unfortunately, it wasn’t there.
The speaker performance was pretty average. While the speaker itself sounded good, even on the maximum volume the sound was not loud enough.
Vivo V20 still needs some work in the software department to improve the performance because the competition is already ahead when it comes to how quickly and smoothly a device can perform. But with Android 11 and some of the good additions like a gaming mode, dynamic effects, etc were some really nice things to have.
Battery Backup
The Vivo V20 is backed by a 4,000mAh battery with 33W Fast charging and the 33W fast charger is provided inside the box unlike some phones.
The Vivo V20 went beyond our expectations and turned out to be a beast in the battery department. I was able to squeeze out a screen-on time of more than 8 hours (8h 15m to be precise), from a total usage of 16 hours which included a stand-by time of 5.5 hours and included around 30 minutes of gaming, YouTube and YT Music streaming and a lot of Chrome browsing.
The device took around 1 hour to charge from 5% to 100% which is also amazing considering its a 4000mAh battery.
Even if the device lagged with performance, Vivo has done some good optimizations which can provide you with a battery backup that is so good.
Cameras
The Vivo V20 has a triple-camera setup with a combination of a 64-megapixel primary sensor with an f/1.89 lens, along with an 8-megapixel secondary sensor with an f/2.2 ultra-wide-angle lens, and a 2-megapixel Monochrome sensor with an f/2.4 lens. The phone has a 44-megapixel selfie sensor with an f/2.0 lens housed inside waterdrop notch.
Outdoor shots from the Vivo V20 turned out to be great with great amount of detail, dynamic range and sharpness. The colours looked punchy and natural.
The ultra-wide shots also had good colour accuracy with decent details. Macro mode shots also looked great with a good amount of details, bokeh effect and colours.
Under low-lighting conditions, the pictures did get a bit soft but not much and still retained much of the details along with natural colours.
Talking about selfies which the device aims to achieve the crown for, has successfully done so. This is one of the few devices which has impressed me to this extent when it comes to front cameras. Be it anything, sharpness, colours, details, bokeh effect, etc, the selfies just nailed it.
You can set the amount of bokeh you want in the background and even the EDGE detection was pretty good while clicking portrait front shots. Definitely, a 9/10 when it comes to the front camera.
Night mode shots did have some amount of detail and it did increase the visibility a bit compared to a normal shot clicked in pitch dark.
The cameras on the device really impressed us in every way and is definitely the winner when it comes to the comparison between the competition and the Vivo V20. You can definitely go for it if you are looking for great cameras in a mid-range device.