Vivo V20 features a shiny back with a matte finish.
Vivo V20 was recently launched in India, as a company's effort to target the mid-range smartphone market with a sleep premium looking and good performing phone. The Vivo V-series has always strived towards a perfect balance of looks, features and price. As a part of the highlights, the phone gets a slim design and a 44-megapixel selfie camera. But, is it enough? Let’s find out.
Vivo V20 Review: Specifications
Vivo V20 sports a 6.44-inch FullHD+ AMOLED display with an aspect ratio of 20:9. It is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 720G processor paired with 8GB of RAM and 128/256GB of onboard storage. The storage is further expandable using a microSD card slot. It runs on Android 11 based ColorOS 11 out of the box. All of this is backed by a 4,000mAh battery.
On the optics front, the V20 features a triple rear camera setup including a 64MP primary camera, an 8MP ultra-wide-angle lens and a 2MP monochrome sensor. Upfront, there is a 44MP selfie snapper.
Vivo V20 Review: Design and Display
Vivo V20 brings a somewhat unique look to the table. The smartphone looks similar to many other phones in the market from the front with an edge to edge screen and a waterdrop notch. The rear has a triple camera setup, arranged not vertically, not horizontally, but in a triangular fashion which looks great. The smartphone is glass-backed and has aluminium sides which feel great in hand.
The phone comes in at only 7.44mm thick, which makes it one of the thinnest phones in the segment. The frosted back glass with our Sunset Melody review unit looks really good. There is also a textured powered button which is always a nice touch. The fact that the company decided to go with a waterdrop notch instead of a punch hole is the only design gripe I have with this phone.
As for the placements, V20 sports a USB Type-C port on the bottom edge surrounded by the 3.5mm headphone jack, speaker grille and the primary microphone. The right edge houses the power button and the volume rockers. On the left edge, there is a SIM tray that can accept two SIM cards and a microSD card. The top edge of the phone is left clean apart from the secondary microphone.
Coming back to the display, it is a 6.44-inch AMOLED panel with a resolution of 2400x1080 pixels. The AMOLED offers deep black and rich colours, a great for watching content on the go. The display is HDR 10 compliant and gets pretty bright for outdoor reading. The 90Hz refresh rate would have been better, but 60Hz is also good. Devices like the Poco X2 offer 120Hz but with IPS LCD which you can consider if you are more into gaming and don’t mind trading off-screen quality for that higher refresh rate.
Vivo V20 Review: Performance, Software and UI
Vivo V20 is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 720G processor paired with 8GB of RAM. With the phone being priced around Rs. 25,000, the Snapdragon 720G is a decent processor. During the review period, I installed multiple social media apps on the phone and did not notice much of the performance issues. During long gaming sessions or heavy gaming even for a short while, I didn’t notice much lag.
With the Vivo V20, the company went back to a waterdrop notch.
While it performs really well for its price point, the 765G in the OnePlus Nord offers better performance, and most importantly it is 5G ready, whenever the 5G comes to India.
The V20 runs on Android 11 based FunTouch OS 11 out of the box. Usually, these phones are somewhat slow on updates, but as it already comes with Android 11, the future looks bright. The user interface feels smooth. But it does bring in some features including a system-wide dark mode, a themes store and much more. The customizations of the basic system are limitless, you can customize the animations, theme colours and much more without a theme, configuring the phone to have small unique touches that you like. Like you can change the fingerprint animation, face recognition animation, charging animation, and much more. The Funtouch OS is a bit heavy on the CPU side, but the 720G takes good care of it. Overall, the software experience is good, way better than Android 10 based Funtouch OS.
Vivo V20 Review: Cameras
There is a triple camera setup at the back.
Vivo V20 sports a triple-camera setup at the back. The setup comprises a 64-megapixel primary camera, an 8-megapixel ultra-wide-angle camera and a 2-megapixel monochrome sensor. The focus of the camera is a 44-megapixel selfie shooter. The smartphone also gets Portrait Mode, Night Mode, Time-Lapse, Slo-Mo and other features.
The camera app is straightforward and offers a good amount of features. The sensor can be changed easily, which is a plus point. The 8-megapixel ultrawide sensor can also help you take macro shots, which are nice.
During our tests, the V20 managed to click some decent shots. In daylight, you get a surprisingly natural shot, with nice colours, good contrast, and a well-balanced exposure. The story was a bit different indoors. Due to the absence of a depth sensor, the 64-megapixel portrait shots weren’t good indoors. The low light performance is not that great also.
The front 44-megapixel camera with eye focusing technology as the company calls it is a hit of a miss. The photo quality is great, but I do not see any benefit of the eye focusing technology.
Vivo V20 Review: Battery
The battery segment is where the V20 manages to outshine among its competition. The handset comes with a respectable 4,000mAh battery. During my time with the device, light to medium usage got more than a day of usage. Even with heavy usage, the phone lasted around a day which is really nice. This makes it a great smartphone for people who travel a lot or watch a lot of movies on their smartphone, especially with the AMOLED display.
With the battery being so huge, the charging speeds take a hit. The smartphone does come with a 33-watt fast charger in the box. But even with that, the device takes less than an hour to fully charge the massive battery which is really good.
Vivo V20 Review: Verdict
The Sunset Melody colour variant is the best out of the three options available.
The Vivo V20 starts at Rs. 24,990 for the 8GB RAM variant and 256GB storage variant costs Rs 27,990. For the price it offers great design, along with good performance and a great battery, the camera is also good. Overall, it's a good package.
However, with the competition being stiff in this price range, with the OnePlus Nord, Pixel 4a, Galaxy M51 all being under this price range, the company needs to offer something unique to stand out in a sea of look-alikes. If you are concerned about buying the V20 for yourself, you cannot go wrong with this one, unless you need to be 5G future-ready.
