While Vivo’s V-Series smartphones have received good reception, thanks to a combination of great performance and imaging capabilities, the company isn’t forgetting to show some love foe its Y-Series, which has undergone a “makeover.” Today, we’re taking a look at one the devices in this lineup, the Y17.
Specifications
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Design and Build Quality
Despite being technically in the budget segment, the Vivo Y17 looks more than its price. While the body is mostly plastic, a dual gradient glossy back panel certainly amps up its eye-candy factor.
The device is light enough for one handed-use, but heavy enough that it doesn’t feel flimsy or cheaply-made. The triple camera module slightly protrudes, which exposes the lens cover. Fortunately, this can be easily solved using the supplied jelly case.
Button position – power button and volume rocker on the right, and SIM slot on the left. It uses a triple slot tray, so you can use two SIM cards along with your microSD card.
As expected, Vivo sticks to a microUSB port at the bottom, along with the microphone and speaker grill.
The Y17’s 6.35-inch display has a resolution of 720 x 1544 pixels or HD+. And while it should benefit battery life, it needs to have more than that in order to compete with other phones at its price range, such as the realme 3 or the Redmi Note 7.
Performance
- y17 s 13
- y17 s 14
- y17 s 15
For the common daily tasks such as social media, web browsing, email, YouTube, and more, the Y17’s Helio P35 processor will not disappoint. Add 4GB of RAM to the mix, and it should hold up well in light to moderate multi-tasking.
If you’re planning to game with this, don’t expect too much, as it can only play PUBG Mobile at Balanced – Medium FPS at most. Lighter games such as Mobile Legends will run fine, even at Max Settings, but you won’t have access to High FPS mode.
Camera
It’s a feat that Vivo was able to equip this phone with a trio of shooters – including an ultra-wide angle camera that shows can capture a decent amount of detail even in less than ideal lighting.
Given enough light, the Y17’s camera’s can take on a finely detailed subject, such as gunpla, and capture most of that detail with ease. The bokeh effect it generates is also quite accurate and refined.
In low-light, overall quality does suffer drastically, but the quality is actually more than what I expected. The Y17 can capture a fair amount of detail, though it does struggle at controlling the exposure in some areas.
The front camera can only capture average looking selfies as far as detail is concerned. There’s an evident lack of sharpness as well.
Software
- y17 s 5
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- y17 s 11
Well, Funtouch OS has undergone quite an evolution since the V3 and V3 Max days, and is now quite polished in most areas. It’s fluid, snappy, and fast, most of the time.
- y17 s 8
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- y17 s 10
You still get the usual goodies, such as Ultra Game Mode, which does not only allow the phone to perform better in games, but also prevents notifications from distracting you during gameplay, and more.
It also offers the complete suite of methods for unlocking the phone including Face ID Access. All of which work fast, and work well.
Battery
If there’s one area where the Y17 excels at, it’s battery life. Based on PCMark’s Work 2.0 battery benchmark, which simulates tasks like basic video editing and data manipulation, the phone scored close to 15 hours, which means that in light to moderate use, it should last you at least a full day before having to be recharged.
Speaking of which, charging from zero to full only takes around 1.5 hours!
Emman has been writing technical and feature articles since 2010. Prior to this, he became one of the instructors at Asia Pacific College in 2008, and eventually landed a job as Business Analyst and Technical Writer at Integrated Open Source Solutions for almost 3 years.
