There’s an awful lot of smartphone makers these days, well beyond the usual trilogy of Apple, Samsung and Huawei.
Many of those specialize in the mid-range smartphone category, aiming to give punters a decent smartphone that will not break the bank. It has led to quite the competitive market, with technology firms cramming more and more tech into phones and offering them at a decent price tag.
Vivo is one such company that thinks its V19 can give punters most of what they want and need in a smartphone, for a rock bottom price. That said, tradeoffs must be made for any budget blower to come in at just AED1,400.
Does Vivo’s V19 do enough to warrant a place in your pocket?
Vivo V19: Design
The phone certainly subscribes to the 2020 smartphone design aesthetic. This thing is a hunk of glass and plastic. It’s minimalist to say the least, and you’re not going to get any comments on how pretty your phone is.
But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Smartphone design is all about form and function, and the V19 certainly functions as it should.
You also get a 3.5mm headphone jack (which is a rarity in today’s smartphone world) along with a USB-C for charging and an under-screen fingerprint reader.
Vivo V19: Screen
The 6.44-inch Super AMOLED screen is a real highlight here, with decent colour reproduction and a punchy amount of contrast. You get a hole punch display top right, that gives you not one but two selfie-cameras (more on that later).
Vivo V19: Camera
Vivo is really pushing its cameras, and we think we know why.
The V19 boasts six of them. You get a 48-megapixel main camera, as well as an ultra-wide, macro and boke camera. Those two front-facing cameras are 32 and 8-meg respectively, which gives you some freedom when it comes to snapping a selfie. Keep the phone on auto and it take decents snaps, even in low light.
Vivo V19: Performance
Remember that bit about tradeoffs? It’s under the hood where the V19 suffers the most, packing a Qualcomm Snapdragon 712 processor (which is almost 18-months old at this point).
In practice, you won’t notice much stutter or lag, however with multiple applications open (especially some games or multimedia) and you will notice some slowdown.
You do get a whopper of a battery though, and the V19 will more than last a day of decent to heavy usage.
Vivo V19: Verdict
The V19 is a decent smartphone then, with a great screen and decent cameras. Yes, you have to forgo the bleeding-edge processor to pick up a phone that’s roughly 30 per cent the cost of current flagship blowers, but at this price we really can’t complain.
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